Courses

This interdisciplinary seminar explores the ways early East Asian cultures represented the human face and form. Elite individuals and deities are rarely represented in East Asian visual culture before the entrance of Buddhism into China at the end of the first millennium BCE. The fact that the earliest cultures of China, Korea, and Japan did not prioritize realistic representation of elite human bodies remains a major point of contrast vis-à-vis other early civilizations. Focusing on excavated materials, this seminar covers ways in which these cultures portrayed the human (or human-like) face and body, primarily from Paleolithic through late Bronze Age contexts, highlighting how the entrance of Buddhist iconographic traditions radically shifted local contexts in the second half of the course. In addition to challenging students to reevaluate their preconceptions of what kinds of objects should center art historical cannons, this course provides firm grounding in the formation of social complexity and other themes foundational to anthropological study of the pre- and early history of China, Korea, and Japan. 

This course introduces students to contemporary China through ethnography and film. Global political economic forces are dramatically reshaping the Chinese landscape—by the end of next decade more than half of its 1.3 billion people will live in cities. The China of today is unfolding within these cities, where generational change and social disparities are sharpened, new consumption patterns and identities take shape, and conflicts among the city-dwellers, nouveau riche, and labor migrants play out. The ethnographic texts and films in this course capture how these changes are experienced in everyday life. We examine the lure and disillusionment of “modern life,” a buzzword in today’s China, and how the major socio-economic and cultural transformations of the present relate to the past.

This course explores the role of memory as a social, cultural, and political force in contemporary society. How societies remember difficult pasts has become a contested site for negotiating the present. Through the lens of memory, we examine complex roles that our relationships to difficult pasts play in navigating issues we face today. This course explores this politics of memory that takes place in the realm of popular culture and public space. The class asks such questions as: How do you represent difficult and contested pasts? What does it mean to enable long-silenced victims’ voices to be heard? What are the consequences of re-narrating the past by highlighting past injuries and trauma? Does memory work heal or open wounds of a society and a nation? Through examples drawn from the Holocaust, the atomic bombing in Hiroshima, the Vietnam War, genocide in Indonesia and massacres in Lebanon, to debates on confederacy statues, slavery, and lynching in the US, this course approaches these questions through an anthropological exploration of concepts such as memory, trauma, mourning, silence, voice, testimony, and victimhood.

This course explores the role of memory as a social, cultural, and political force in contemporary society. How societies remember difficult pasts has become a contested site for negotiating the present. Through the lens of memory, we examine complex roles that our relationships to difficult pasts play in navigating issues we face today. The course explores the politics of memory that takes place in the realm of popular culture and public space. It asks such questions as: How do you represent difficult and contested pasts? What does it mean to enable long-silenced victims’ voices to be heard? What are the consequences of re-narrating the past by highlighting past injuries and trauma? Does memory work heal or open wounds of a society and a nation? Through examples drawn from the Holocaust, the atomic bombing in Hiroshima, the Vietnam War, genocide in Indonesia, and massacres in Lebanon, to debates on confederacy statues, slavery, and lynching in the United States, the course approaches these questions through an anthropological exploration of concepts such as memory, trauma, mourning, silence, voice, testimony, and victimhood.

This seminar explores the variety of archaeological methods and theoretical approaches that have been employed to investigate the development and nature of social complexity in ancient China. The session meetings focus on the later prehistoric and early historic periods, and several geographic regions are included. They also consider how developments in ancient China compare to other areas of the world. Most of the readings emphasize archaeological remains, although relevant information from early historical texts is considered.

This interdisciplinary seminar explores the ways early East Asian cultures represented the human face and form. Elite individuals and deities are rarely represented in East Asian visual culture before the entrance of Buddhism into China at the end of the first millennium BCE. The fact that the earliest cultures of China, Korea, and Japan did not prioritize realistic representation of elite human bodies remains a major point of contrast vis-à-vis other early civilizations. Focusing on excavated materials, this seminar covers ways in which these cultures portrayed the human (or human-like) face and body, primarily from Paleolithic through late Bronze Age contexts, highlighting how the entrance of Buddhist iconographic traditions radically shifted local contexts in the second half of the course. In addition to challenging students to reevaluate their preconceptions of what kinds of objects should center art historical cannons, this course provides firm grounding in the formation of social complexity and other themes foundational to anthropological study of the pre- and early history of China, Korea, and Japan.

Intended for students with no background in Chinese. An intensive course with emphasis on spoken language and drills. Pronunciation, grammatical analysis, conversation practice, and introduction to reading and writing Chinese characters.

First level of the advanced learner sequence. Intended for students with some aural proficiency but very limited ability in reading and writing Chinese. Training in listening and speaking, with emphasis on reading and writing.

An intermediate course that continues intensive training in listening, speaking, reading, and writing and consolidates achievements from the first year of study. Students improve oral fluency, study more complex grammatical structures, and enlarge both reading and writing vocabulary.

The second level of the advanced learner sequence. Intended for students with intermediate oral proficiency and elementary reading and writing proficiency. Students receive intensive training in listening, speaking, reading, and writing, supplemented by audio and video materials. The objective of the course is to balance these four skills and work toward attaining an advanced level in all of them.

Third level of the standard foundational sequence of modern Chinese, with study in speaking, listening, reading, and writing. Use of audiovisual materials, oral presentations, skits, and longer and more frequent writing assignments to assimilate more sophisticated grammatical structures. Further introduction to a wide variety of written forms and styles. Use of both traditional and simplified forms of Chinese characters.

This course is intended for heritage speakers with intermediate high to advanced low speaking and listening skills and with intermediate reading and writing skills. The class follows CHNS 142 in the heritage track. The goal of the course is to help students effectively expand their skills in reading and writing while concurrently addressing the need to improve their listening and oral skills in formal environments. The materials cover a variety of topics relating to Chinese culture, society, and cultural differences, supplemented with authentic video materials.