Advanced Vietnamese for Health Professions is a content-based course designed for students who have successfully completed the Intermediate Vietnamese course (or have an equivalent level of proficiency) and plan to work in health care professions. This course especially facilitates Penn medical and nursing students who are going to serve the underserved Vietnamese communities in the U.S.

This is the continuation course to Intermediate Vietnamese II. Instruction includes reading, writing, speaking and listening through the use of Conversational Vietnamese textbook, other media, and through students participation in various classroom activities. Insight into Vietnamese culture will be achieved through lesson content and supplementary course materials. Course emphasis is on conversation skills and the ability to read and write short narratives.

A continuation of ALAN 110, the written and spoken language of Vietnam.

VIET 0100/5100 is the first part of a two-semester introductory course for students who have little or no prior knowledge of Vietnamese language. The course aims to develop foundational reading, writing, listening, and speaking skills, including the use of tones, through meaningful communicative activities and tasks. Synchronous and asynchronous activities will include projects, and students are required to work on their own and collaboratively. Upon successful completion of this course, students should be able to comprehend and carry on simple daily conversations and read and write short paragraphs. Students will learn how to introduce themselves, describe their surroundings, talk about daily lives, friends, and relatives, and talk about past and future events. Students will also gain a basic knowledge of Vietnam’s history and culture. Vietnamese is the language of instruction with the exception occasional quick explanation in English.

Introduction to the major artistic traditions of China and Japan and the practices of art history. We will also consider aspects of Korean and Indian artistic traditions as they relate to those of China and Japan. Our approaches will be methodological in addressing how we understand these objects through careful looking; chronological in considering how the arts developed in and through history; and thematic in studying how art and architecture were used for philosophical, religious and material ends. Special attention will be given to the relationship between artistic production and the afterlife; to the impact of Buddhism and its purposes; to painting traditions and their patronages; and to modernist transformations of traditions.

From K-pop and film to fashion, cosmetics, food, and art, South Korean culture seems to be everywhere. In this course, we will discuss how the cadences of Korean culture shifted in tandem with the sheer amount of historical and social change experienced by the Korean people throughout the twentieth century. Specifically, we will look at art and talk to artists, listen to K-pop, and contemplate how these cultural representations activate a sense of belonging and social coalition for marginalized communities in Korea. Addressing topics such as gender and sexuality, modernity and national trauma, xenophobia and racial tensions, queer feminist movements, and cultural transnationalism in the neoliberal era, we will pay particular attention to the structures of power and the role of the “other” in the construction of contemporary South Korea. In so doing, we will also rethink our own positionality in consuming Korean popular culture as North America-based scholars “looking at” Korea from a geographic, cultural, and social distance. All class materials will be in English; no previous knowledge of Korean language is required.

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 course serves as a thematic introduction to modern Chinese literature and cinema in China, Hong Kong, Taiwan and other transnational Chinese communities in the twentieth century. By discussing a wide range of key literary and filmic texts, this class looks into major issues and discourses in China's century of modernization: enlightenment and revolution, politics and aesthetics, sentimental education and nationalism, historical trauma and violence, gender and sexuality, social hygiene and body politics, diaspora and displacement, youth sub-culture and urban imagination.

This seminar focuses on ten very different monuments of Asian art in order to learn how to ask questions about and write about painting, sculpture, and buildings. Following a general introduction to the art of East Asia and South Asia, each class will focus on a major monument and similar examples of it: a Chinese bronze vessel, the Tomb of the First Emperor, Sokkuram, Elephanta, Traveling through Famous Sites of Wu, Tale of Genji, Gold Pavilion, the Forbidden City, Taj Mahal, the city Xi'an. We will discuss why each is important, its religious or philosophical context, and assess how it has been discussed in literature and modern writing. We will then discuss optimal or innovative ways to present it and write about it. Each week students will analyze writing about that week's subject and turn in a short evaluation of writings about the subject of the former week's class. The final paper will be an article of the kind one would submit to a newspaper or magazine. The class will be taught synchronously. However, students will be encouraged to write about an object in a local museum for the final project.