This course will survey recent scholarship on East Asian diplomacy from the sixteenth century to the present. We will engage several fundamental debates about the relationship between China, Japan, Korea and the outer world and introduce not only orthodox diplomatic analyses but also newer approaches to modern China, Japan and Korea by international and global historians.

This course will survey recent scholarship on East Asian diplomacy from the sixteenth century to the present. We will engage several fundamental debates about the relationship between China, Japan, Korea and the outer world and introduce not only orthodox diplomatic analyses but also newer approaches to modern China, Japan and Korea by international and global historians.

This seminar introduces students to the graduate-level study of Japan. In addition to getting a broad overview of Japanese culture, students in the course will develop familiarity with major debates in the history of the field of Japanese studies. The course also provides basic training in using primary and secondary sources in Japanese, Japanese bibliographic conventions, and other skills necessary for pursuing advanced research or a teaching career in the field. Open to all graduate students and to undergraduates with permission from the instructor. Familiarity with Japanese language is a plus but is not required.

This seminar offers a thematic overview of the academic study of Chinese history from the Neolithic period to the 21st century. Over the course of the semester, students will be introduced to different scholarly approaches to the study of history through a close reading and analysis of the work of leading scholars in the field of Sinology. We will learn about the various subfields in the study of history, such as cultural history, social history, administrative and legal history, intellectual history, history of religion, literary history, history of gender, world history, and historiography, examine their different methodological frameworks and tools, and draw on them in order to problematize and enrich our understanding of Chinese culture. In addition, this seminar will provide incoming students with the relevant tools to produce original graduate-level research on all aspects of Chinese history, society, and culture and present it in a clear and persuasive fashion orally and in written form. While original-language research for the final project is encouraged, all course materials will be in English. Prerequisite: Course intended for first year MA and PhD students. Undergraduates need permission.

In this class students who already know some modern Mongolian in the Cyrillic script will learn how to transfer that knowledge to the reading of first post-classical, and then classical texts written in the vertical or Uyghur-Mongolian script. Topics covered will include the Mongolian alphabetic script, dealing with ambiguous readings, scholarly transcription, vowel harmony and syllable structure, post-classical and classical forms of major declensions, converbs, verbal nouns, and finite verbs, syntax, pronunciation and scribal readings. Readings will be adjusted to interests, but as a rule will include selections from short stories, diaries, chronicles, Buddhist translations, government documents, popular didactic poetry, ritual texts, and traditional narratives. Students will also be introduced to the most important reference works helpful in reading classical and post-classical Mongolian. One year of modern Mongolian or equivalent required to enroll.

This course will be an exploration of premodern Japanese history through the lens of violence. The centuries under consideration (roughly, the eighth thought nineteenth) were characterized by greatly varying levels of violence, both of the state-sanctioned variety (war, punishments for law-breakers and political losers) and of the non-sanctioned variety (piracy, banditry, warrior and peasant rebellions). Examining a wide variety of translated sources, from diaries to chronicles, from legal codes to fiction, we shall examine the changing social, political, economic, and cultural contexts of violence, in order to interrogate not only why certain periods were remarkably peaceful while others were not, but also why violence took different forms in relation to different circumstances. We shall consider how contempories made sense of the violence that surrounded them (or didn't) and how they divided the acceptable use of force from the wanton and society-threatening abuse of it. The course will feature presentations and severl (very short) papers.

This course will provide an overview of the major tropes, themes, and interpretations of contemporary Japanese science fiction and fantasy. As we establish a foundational knowledge of the history and structural formulations of genre fiction in Japan, we will cover topics such as folklore, high fantasy, apocalypse, dystopia, magical realism, posthumanism, video games, and transnational media franchises and cross-cultural marketing. By the end of the semester, students will possess a deeper understanding and appreciation of the role that science fiction and fantasy play in shaping contemporary media cultures in Japan and around the world.

This class is an opportunity to work closely with the Chinese sculpture, paintings, bronzes and other works of art in the collection of the Penn Museum. Some of the objects are well-known and on permanent display. Others have hardly been researched since they were acquired, and rarely leave storage. The class will meet in small groups at the museum. Students will work on research papers and collaborative in-class presentations on objects of their choice. A variety of approaches will be encouraged and students may choose to focus on iconography, historical and religious context, materials and manufacturing techniques, collectors and patronage, or inscriptions. There are no prerequisites for this course.

This seminar explores the major civilizations of Northeast Asia (Beijing, Northern Hebei, Liaoning, Jilin, Heilongjiang, Korea, and Eastern Mongolia; and in the early period, Japan) from the early CE centuries through the seventeenth. The sources of evidence are archaeological sites, palaces, monasteries, tombs, and excavated objects.