Courses in Asian Studies (Division 323)

Winter Term, 1999 (January 6-April 29, 1999)

Take me to the Winter Term '99 Time Schedule for Asian Studies.

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.

Students wanting to begin language study, at a level other than first year, must take a placement exam to be held on Tuesday, January 5, 1-3 p.m.

Instructor(s): Victor Lieberman (eurasia@umich.edu)

Prerequisites & Distribution: (4). (SS).

Credits: (4; 3 in the half-term).

Course Homepage: No Homepage Submitted.

See History 152.001.

Instructor(s): Tom Buoye (tmbuoye@umich.edu)

Prerequisites & Distribution: (4). (SS).

Credits: (4; 3 in the half-term).

Course Homepage: No Homepage Submitted.

See History 122.001.

Section 001 – Public and Private Lives: Traditional Chinese Writers and Their World. Meets with Chinese 150.001

Instructor(s): Anna Shields (ashields@umich.edu)

Prerequisites & Distribution: 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.

First-Year Seminar,

Credits: (3).

Course Homepage: No Homepage Submitted.

This course explores familiar questions: How does your work affect your personal life? Does public failure mean personal failure too? Can you or should you separate these two parts of your life? Although these questions may seem modern and American, they lay at the heart of the Chinese scholar-official's search for self-definition. In this course, we will explore the writing and lives of five important traditional Chinese writers, and we will see how differently they balanced the demands of their public and private lives. In Chinese culture, the two options were essentially "engagement" or "reclusion." We will spend the first weeks defining these options as they are laid out in Confucian and Taoist texts such as the Analects, the Mencius, the Chuang-tzu, and the Lao-tzu. Then we will turn to the five writers, whose lives span 2,000 years of Chinese history: Ssu-ma Ch'ien (Han dynasty), T'ao Ch'ien (Eastern Chin dynasty), Tu Fu (T'ang dynasty), Su Shih (Sung dynasty), and Yuan Mei (Ch'ing dynasty). We will discover that each writer managed to establish his own position (or positions) somewhere between the two poles of engagement and reclusion. Readings will include poetry and prose from each writer as well as historical and biographical material. The format of the course is lecture and discussion. There will be two short papers, one longer paper, and a final.

Section 002 – Other Hearts and Other Minds: Poetries of Asia

Instructor(s): Peter Hook (pehook@umich.edu)

Prerequisites & Distribution: 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.

First-Year Seminar

Credits: (3).

Course Homepage: http://www-personal.umich.edu/~pehook/as150.html

This course will introduce first-year students to traditions of poetic theory and practice in times and places distant from their own: the poetries of India, Persia, China, Korea, Japan, and Indonesia. The primary objective of the course is to explore a range of different conceptions of what poetry is, of how it should form (or transform) the ways in which people interpret their lives, and of what relation it should have to other parts of social life. As this is a seminar, an equally important objective is to assist students in developing techniques and habits of reading and research. At least once during the course each student will give the class a half hour biographical/historical introduction to a poet or set of poets. The instructor and visiting faculty lead discussion of poetry and poets in more abstract terms. Shorter written assignments build on the interplay of a specific poet or poem and general questions explored by the course. (Translation or transcreation will be an option for some of these assignments.) There will be one hour exam and one longer paper. On completing this cross-cultural exploration the student should also have a more informed and more articulate conception of the poetry he or she has grown up with.

Instructor(s): Donald Lopez (dlopez@umich.edu)

Prerequisites & Distribution: (4). (HU).

Credits: (4).

Course Homepage: No Homepage Submitted.

See Buddhist Studies 231.001.

Section 001 – Culture in Times of Crisis: Literature from China's "Middle Ages," 220-589

Instructor(s): Anna Shields (ashields@umich.edu)

Prerequisites & Distribution: No knowledge of Chinese language is required. (3). (HU). May be repeated with department permission.

First-Year Seminar,

Credits: (3).

Course Homepage: No Homepage Submitted.

This course will introduce you to literature from the four centuries that separated the Han and Tang dynasties. During this period, many kingdoms rose and fell, new styles of writing flourished throughout China; it was one of the most exciting eras of Chinese history. From the dangerous politics of the Three Kingdoms through the "decadent" salons of the Southern Dynasties, we will read a variety of literary texts, including poetry, essays, witty conversations, "tales of the strange", and religious scriptures. In our reading, we will explore the ways in which writers responded to the challenges of their times, whether through satire, criticism, reclusion, drunkenness, or a search for nirvana or transcendence. The format is lecture and discussion. The texts will include The Columbia Anthology of Traditional Chinese Literature, a course pack, and reserve readings. There will be three short papers and a final exam.

Section 001 – Religion in Modern India

Instructor(s): Pashaura Singh (psingh@umich.edu)

Prerequisites & Distribution: No knowledge of any Asian language required. (3). (HU). May be repeated with department permission.

First-Year Seminar,

Credits: (3).

Course Homepage: No Homepage Submitted.

This course is about the diversity of religious life in modern India. It will begin with the examination of the following three points, namely, (1) that ancient layers of India's religious life are alive and well in contemporary India; (2) that the hybrid discourse of the "secular state" is itself a religious discourse in modern India; and (3) that India's unique agony over religion is instructive for rethinking some of our most general notions about "religion" and "secularization." In this course we will discuss the overall periodization of the various layers of India's religious life, namely, (1) the Indus Valley (c. 3000 – 1500 BCE), (2) the Indo-Brahmanical (c. 1500 – 600 BCE), (3) the Indo-Sramanical (c. 600 BCE – 300 CE), (4) the Indic (Hindu-Buddhist-Jain) (c. 300 – 1200), (5) the Indo-Islamic (c. 1200 – 1757), and (6) the Indo-Anglian (c. 1757 – present). We will then apply the overall analysis to the five salient religious crises in contemporary India: the Sikhs in the Punjab, the Muslim issue in Kashmir, the Shah Banno case and the Muslim Women's bill, the Mandal Commission Report on Other Backward Classes, and the controversy in Ayodhya. We will also examine the role of ethnic and racial conflicts that led to these crises. Course requirements include: presentation and participation in tutorial discussions, an essay of 3,000 words, a midterm and a final exam.

Section 002 – Bhagavad-Gita: The Activist View of Hinduism

Instructor(s): Madhav Deshpande (mmdesh@umich.edu)

Prerequisites & Distribution: No knowledge of any Asian language required. (3). (HU). May be repeated with department permission.

First-Year Seminar,

Credits: (3).

Course Homepage: No Homepage Submitted.

This course introduces Hinduism to students through an intensive study of this single most important scriptural text, the Bhagavad-Gita. We spend half the time going over the text-in-translation, chapter by chapter. The other half of the class time is devoted to critical issues relating to the text, i.e., history of the text, its transmission, its location within the history of Hinduism, its connections with political/cultural history, its ancient and modern interpretations. The grade is based on class participation, two papers, and two in-class examinations.

Section 001 – From Bushi to Boredoms

Instructor(s): Hugh de Ferranti (hbd@umich.edu)

Prerequisites & Distribution: (3). (HU).

Credits: (3).

Course Homepage: No Homepage Submitted.

See Japanese 375.001.

Section 001 – Pacific Rim Image, Text, and Politics

Instructor(s): Mark Driscoll (markwd@umich.edu)

Prerequisites & Distribution: (3). (Excl). May be repeated for a total of six credits.

Credits: (3).

Course Homepage: No Homepage Submitted.

The oceanic version of world history claims that the cultural-economic center of the world has shifted from the Mediterranean (classical antiquity through the European Renaissance), to the Atlantic (fifteenth century through 1970), to the Pacific (post-United States War in Vietnam to now). In historically analyzing politics and culture in the Pacific from 1950, this course is less concerned with the "reality" of U.S.-Asian interactions than with the Pacific Rim as discourse – based on the principle that representations of the world are never neutral, but are always ideologically invested. The course centers on U.S.-Japan relations, but also treats the Cultural Revolution in China, the American (Vietnam) War, the rise of Hong Kong, and the economic ascendance of the NICs (Newly Industrialized Countries). The class will deal with visual (the TV series Hawai'i 5-0, Godzilla films, Japanese anime like Speed Racer, Hong Kong cinema of the 1980's), literary (U.S. and Japanese cyberpunk science fiction, underground Japanese women's writing, Chinese autobiographies), and journalistic texts (articles from the U.S. magazines Time, Life, and Newsweek). Themes will be concentrated on multi-national capitalism and feminist, queer, and subaltern resistances to it from the early 1960's to the late 1990's.

Instructor(s): Nancy Florida (nflorida@umich.edu)

Prerequisites & Distribution: Junior or senior standing and concentration in Asian Studies. (3). (Excl).

Credits: (3).

Course Homepage: No Homepage Submitted.

This colloquium is an intensive research-oriented seminar designed for all those interested in exploring specific Asia-related topics or themes. These topics can be historical or contemporary, humanities or social science related. Students are expected to research and offer presentations to the class on topics chosen in consultation with the instructor. Although all Asian Studies concentrators are required to take this course, it is open to all interested students.

Asian St. 395. Honors Seminar.

Section 001.
Instructor(s):

Prerequisites & Distribution: Honors candidate in Asian Studies. (3). (Excl).

No Description Provided.

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Section 001 – Japanese Literature and Thought in Translation: Nationalism/Sexuality/Ethnicity

Instructor(s): Mark Driscoll (markwd@umich.edu)

Prerequisites & Distribution: A knowledge of Japanese is not required. (3). (HU).

Credits: (3).

Course Homepage: No Homepage Submitted.

See Japanese 402.001.

Instructor(s): Pierre Landry (libite@umich.edu)

Prerequisites & Distribution: Upperclass standing. (4). (Excl).

Credits: (4; 3 in the half-term).

Course Homepage: http://www.umich.edu/~compap/NEWhome/courses/PS428/main.html

See Political Science 428.001.

Section 001 – Dialogue of Violence: Cinema in WW II's Pacific Theater. Meets With Film and Video 455.002

Instructor(s): Mark Nornes (amnornes@umich.edu)

Prerequisites & Distribution: (3). (HU). May be repeated for a total of six credits.

Credits: (3).

Course Homepage: http://www-personal.umich.edu/~amnornes/violence.html

This course will explore moving image media about WWII in two movements. First, a comparative history of Hollywood and Japanese films shown in the Pacific Theater raises issues of race, nationality, propaganda, and representations of violence. The second half of the course continues to analyze these problems by turning to post-1945 attempts to remember, critique, and commemorate (or forget) WWII in media as disparate as cinema, television, video art, and the Internet. Laboratory fee ($35) required.

Instructor(s): Phillip Ivanhoe (ivanhoe@umich.edu)

Prerequisites & Distribution: Upperclass standing; no knowledge of Chinese required. (3). (HU).

Credits: (3; 2 in the half-term).

Course Homepage: No Homepage Submitted.

See Chinese 469.001.

Instructor(s): David Rolston (drolston@umich.edu)

Prerequisites & Distribution: No knowledge of Chinese required. (3). (HU).

Credits: (3).

Course Homepage: No Homepage Submitted.

See Chinese 472.001.

Instructor(s): Yi-tsi Feuerwerker (ymfeuer@umich.edu)

Prerequisites & Distribution: (4). (HU).

Credits: (4).

Course Homepage: http://www.umich.edu/~hartspc/histart/winter99/487-001.html

See Chinese 475.001.

Section 001 – Women in Tantric Buddhism. Meets with Women's Studies 483.006 and Religion 402.002

Instructor(s): Janet Gyatso

Prerequisites & Distribution: Buddhist Studies 230. (3). (Excl).

Credits: (3).

Course Homepage: No Homepage Submitted.

See Religion 480.001.

Section 002 – Drawing Maps of the Spirit: Buddhist Debates on the Spiritual Path. Meets with Humanities Institute 411.001 and Religion 402.001

Instructor(s): Luis Gómez (lgomez@umich.edu)

Prerequisites & Distribution: Buddhist Studies 230. (3). (Excl).

Credits: (3).

Course Homepage: No Homepage Submitted.

See Religion 480.002.

Section 001 – Japanese Cinema

Instructor(s): Mikiro Kato

Prerequisites & Distribution: (1). (Excl).

Mini/Short course

Credits: (1).

Course Homepage: No Homepage Submitted.

This course is being taught through the Center for Japanese Studies by Mikiro Kato, Associate Professor of the University of Kyoto. It will be an intensive study of the national cinema in a historical, sociocultural context with emphasis on deconstructive analysis. The course focuses on questions of style and meaning of particular Japanese filmmakers such as Hiroshi Shimizu, Heinosuke Gosho, Kenji Mizoguchi, Mikio Naruse, Yasujiro Ozu.

Section 001 – Popular Culture and the Colonial Gaze. (3 credits). Meets with Women's Studies 342.001

Instructor(s): Saloni Mathur

Prerequisites & Distribution: (1-3). (Excl). May be repeated for a total of six credits.

Credits: (1-3).

Course Homepage: No Homepage Submitted.

This course is being taught through the Center for South and Southeast Asian Studies by Saloni Mathur. This course will explore the politics of gender and popular representation in relation to colonial and postcolonial histories. With an emphasis on the visual, we will examine how a variety of cultural forms which emerged in the 19th century such as exhibitions, museums, circuses, department stores, photography, and postcards, created a powerful stock of public images of non-western women, which in turn helped re-define European social identities. Themes to be addressed include the question of authenticity, the commodification of the exotic, the investment in primitivism, the female body on display, and the theoretical utility of the notion of "gaze." The primary goal will be to trace the ways in which ideologies of race and gender have become uniquely enmeshed in popular culture, while considering the implications of this for the postcolonial present.

Asian St. 499. Independent Study-Directed Readings.

Prerequisites & Distribution: (1-4). (Excl). (INDEPENDENT). May be repeated for a total of eight credits.

No Description Provided.

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