This course is designed for students who have little or no knowledge of Korean. This course aims to develop foundational reading, writing, listening, and speaking skills through meaningful communicative activities and tasks. Upon successful completion of this course, students should be able to comprehend and carry on simple daily conversations and create simple sentences in the past, present, and future tenses. Students will learn how to introduce themselves, describe their surroundings, talk about daily lives, friends and relatives, and talk about past and future events.

Intended for students who have no Japanese background. The major emphasis is on oral communication skills, although some reading and writing instructions are given. Japanese pop-culture will also be incorporated.

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.

This course seeks to be a broad introduction. It introduces students to the diversity of doctrines held and practices performed, and art produced about "the fantastic" from earliest times to the present. The fantastic (the uncanny or supernatural) is a fundamental category in the scholarly study of religion, art, anthropology, and literature. This course fill focus both theoretical approaches to studying supernatural beings from a Religious Studies perspective while drawing examples from Buddhist, Shinto, Christian, Hindu, Jain, Zoroastrian, Egyptian, Central Asian, Native American, and Afro-Caribbean sources from earliest examples to the present including mural, image, manuscript, film, codex, and even comic books. It will also introduce students to related humanistic categories of study: material and visual culture, theodicy, cosmology, shamanism, transcendentalism, soteriology, eschatology, phantasmagoria, spiritualism, mysticism, theophany, and the historical power of rumor. It will serve as a gateway course into the study of Religion among numerous Asian, and East Asian Studies, as well as Visual Culture and Film Studies. It will include guest lectures from professors from several departments, as well as an extensive hands-on use of the collections of the Penn Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology and the manuscripts held in the Schoenberg Collection of Van Pelt Library. It aims to not only introduce students to major, approaches, and terms in the study of religion and the supernatural, but inspire them to take more advanced courses by Ilya Vinitsky, Liliane Weissberg, Projit Mukharji, Talya Fishman, Annette Reed,David Barnes, David Spafford, Frank Chance, Michael Meister, Paul Goldin, Renata Holod, Paul Rozin, among several others.

An independent study in Chinese language for undergraduates

An independent study with the Graduate Chair for PhD students.

This course focuses on further developing comprehensive language abilities and deepening socio-cultural knowledge related to Korea by exploring contentious topics surrounding Korean society. Through a review of Korean materials from various genres and media, students will not only gain knowledge of Korean society and culture, but also advance their language proficiency to the professional level. Special emphasis will be given to the investigation of the dynamic nature of Korean culture and society, as well as the development of students’ debate skills on important issues related to them. Upon completion of the course, students will be able to reach the Advanced High Level (according to the ACTFL’s proficiency guidelines).

This course focuses on further developing comprehensive language abilities and deepening socio-cultural knowledge related to Korea by exploring contentious topics surrounding Korean society. Through a review of Korean materials from various genres and media, students will not only gain knowledge of Korean society and culture, but also advance their language proficiency to the professional level. Special emphasis will be given to the investigation of the dynamic nature of Korean culture and society, as well as the development of students' debate skills on important issues related to them. Upon completion of the course, students will be able to reach the Advanced High Level (according to the ACTFL's proficiency guidelines).

Registration for MA students who have finished coursework and are writing their MA thesis or research papers.

This class is a continuation of Elementary Mongolian I and will build on the lessons learned in that class. Mongolian is the national language of the independent State of Mongolia and the language of the nomadic warriors Genghis Khan (known to the Mongolians themselves as Chinggis Khan). It is also spoken in China and Siberia. Students will learn the basics of modern Mongolian language, as spoken in Ulaanbaatar "Red Hero," the country's capital. They will learn in the phonetic Cyrillic script, which was adapted to Mongolian language from Russian in 1945, with a few additional letters. Basic grammar will be taught through communicative methodology. Students will also have opportunity to experience Mongolian arts, culture, and cooking in and out of class.