Note: The Department Waitlist policy for all courses is 2 - Go to the department office to get on a waitlist, and then attend the first class meeting. Policies and procedures for handling the waitlist will be explained there.
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111/Hist. 151. South Asian Civilization.
(4). (HU).
See History 151. (Trautmann)
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121/Hist. 121. Great Traditions of East
Asia. (4). (HU).
See History 121.
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150. First Year Seminar in Asian Studies: Civilizations of Asia. No knowledge of Asian Languages required. Only first-year students, including those with sophomore standing, may pre-register for First-Year Seminars. All others need permission of instructor. (3). (HU). May be repeated with permission of instructor.
Section 001 - Language in Asia. Through hands-on exercises and investigations, students in this course will explore aspects of language and its place in Asian societies. Topics will include the relationships of Asian languages to each other, linguistic clues to early history and prehistory, Asian scripts and their development, Asian languages in the computer age, and the interaction of language and culture. Emphasis will be on direct investigation of actual examples from a wide variety of Asian languages, including minority languages. (Baxter)
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220/Buddhist Studies 220/Rel. 202. Introduction
to the Study of Asian Religions. (4). (HU).
See Buddhist Studies 220.
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252/Japanese 250. Undergraduate Seminar
in Japanese Culture. No knowledge of Japanese language is required.
(3). (HU). May be repeated with department permission.
Section 001 - An Introduction to Japanese Theater. The aim of this seminar
is to identify and explore characteristic aspects of theater as it has been
practiced in Japan. As a set of diverse performance traditions shaped by
cultural history, Japanese theater will be approached in terms of a number
of unifying problems, among which are performance contexts and staging,
audiences and reception, thematic concerns, authorship and production, use
of music and dance, innovation and renewal of tradition, and training procedures.
Representative theater traditions such as noh drama, bunraku
puppet theater, and kabuki will be considered in both historical
and modern day forms. Forms of theater that emerged in response to engagement
with Western culture and performing arts during the late nineteenth and
early twentieth century, and select developments from the latter half of
this century, such as butoh dance-theatre, will also be introduced.
As there is no more effective gate to understanding of a performing art
than first-hand experience, the seminar will include some practical study
of the basic techniques of chant used in noh drama. A workshop in
the music and dance of noh, to be led by a Japanese colleague, is
also under negotiation. Class preparation will include readings and the
viewing of assigned videos. Student assessment will be done on the basis
of written reports, contributions to discussion, and the results of two
exams. WL:2 (de Ferranti)
Section 002 - Reading "Japan". Using textual and visual
media like literature, film (Japanese and Hollywood), newspapers, Japanese
animation, and Japanese toys, this course will interrogate the ways in which
"Japan" is understood in a transnational context. Focusing first
on Japanese animation and Japanese monster toys, these will be shown to
function in inter-textual networks with high-culture texts such as the Old
Testament, Shakespeare's Hamlet, and Japanese classical literature. Next,
the course will explore the ways in which films like Godzilla are understood
and experienced differently with regard to gender, ethnicity, and national
identifications. The last part of the course will treat canonical texts
of Japanese literature to show how these too are participating in "crossings"
of high and low culture, and "crossings" between and beyond nation-states.
Students will be introduced to the critical theories of cultural studies,
psychoanalysis and Marxism, and will read Japanese (in translation) and
English texts emphasizing queer theory and critical theories of race and
ethnicity. (Driscoll)
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253/S&SEA 250. Undergraduate Seminar
in South and Southeast Asian Culture. No knowledge of any Asian language
required. (3). (HU). May be repeated with department permission.
Section 001 - Traditions of Poetry in India. Throughout readings and
discussions this course introduces the student to six traditions of poetry
in India: (1) Vedic-Upanishadic mystic poetry; (2) Tamil Sangam love poetry;
(3) classical Sanskrit and Prakrit court poetry; (4) medieval devotional
poetry; (5) Urdu metaphysical poetry; and (6) modern secular poetry. We
will read translation of selections from each of these six traditions, appraise
them as sources of aesthetic enjoyment from our own points of view and where
possible evaluate them in the context of their own place and time, the student
will come to know something of Indian esthetic theories and the continually
renegotiated role of the poet in forming and transforming the ways in which
people interpret their own life experience. Each student will introduce
one of the poets whose work we will read. The course will require several
short papers, at least two of which will be close readings and explanations
of individual poems, and at least one other will compare notions of what
makes poetry in India and the West. Translation and/or transcreation is
an option for some of these assignments. WL:2 (Hook)
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