Along with Beginning Modern Chinese II, Beginning Chinese III (Non-Intensive) and Beginning Chinese IV, this is the first course of a four-semester sequence. By completing all four semesters, students fulfill the College language requirement. The sequence starts each fall. Students cannot begin their study in the spring. This course is designed primarily for students who have little or no prior exposure to Chinese. The objective of the course is to help students build a solid foundation of the four basic skills--listening, speaking, reading, and writing in an interactive and communicative learning environment. The emphasis is on correct pronunciation, accurate tones, and mastery of basic grammatical structures, laying the foundation needed to be able to manage social situations such as relating one's personal life and experiences, expressing preferences and feelings, ordering meals, purchasing goods, and asking for directions. In order to achieve these goals, students are expected to thoroughly preview and review the materials according to the weekly lesson plan (on course website) prior to attending class. Regular attendance is mandatory and strictly monitored.

Along with Beginning Modern Chinese II, Beginning Chinese III (Non-Intensive) and Beginning Chinese IV, this is the first course of a four-semester sequence. By completing all four semesters, students fulfill the College language requirement. The sequence starts each fall. Students cannot begin their study in the spring. This course is designed primarily for students who have little or no prior exposure to Chinese. The objective of the course is to help students build a solid foundation of the four basic skills--listening, speaking, reading, and writing in an interactive and communicative learning environment. The emphasis is on correct pronunciation, accurate tones, and mastery of basic grammatical structures, laying the foundation needed to be able to manage social situations such as relating one's personal life and experiences, expressing preferences and feelings, ordering meals, purchasing goods, and asking for directions. In order to achieve these goals, students are expected to thoroughly preview and review the materials according to the weekly lesson plan (on course website) prior to attending class. Regular attendance is mandatory and strictly monitored.

This seminar will cover all aspects of the "Secret History of the Mongols" (1264), the classic source on medieval Mongolian history and our most important source on Genghis Khan. The class will be taught through close reading of the text in translation, with full consideration of the parallel passages in the 'Authentic Chronicles,' Rashid al-Din's Compendium of Chronicles, and the Yuan shi. Themes we will cover include:Textual transmissionComposition and contextSources for the 'Secret History'Genealogies and paternal and maternal descentFratricide and empireNarrative and chronotopeSecrecy and public historyAll readings will be in English.

This seminar will feature primary and (recent) secondary readings covering a range of subjects in Japanese history (twelfth through eighteenth centuries). We shall focus on recent scholarly trends and publications, with an eye—thematically—on war, violence, and family. Reading list and schedule to follow.

An accelerated course in scholarly Japanese for Sinologists and others with a knowledge of Chinese characters.

The goal of this class is to learn to read excavated texts from Early China in difficult early orthographies. As well as reading the texts in the usual way for their intellectual, literary or historical content, we will focus on the script in which they are written, and examine critically some of the philological methods that are used to turn an excavated manuscript into a readable "edition". We will also consider how excavated texts relate to each other and to received texts, and how they might have been produced, circulated and consumed. The exact choice of texts for this course has varied each time, and may be modified to suit the interests and prior preparation of students. Typically we will be concentrating on ca. 300 BCE literary and philosophical texts. These present richer and more instructive philological challenges than later Han-period manuscripts, while not being as obscurely difficult as the inscriptions from the Western Zhou and Shang periods. They also present substantial challenges to traditional views of Early China and its literature and thought.

Close reading and interpretation of texts in various styles of classical Chinese drawn from the Han, Wei, Tang, and Song periods. Focus on strengthening students' reading ability in classical Chinese. Attention to questions of style, rhetoric, and syntax.

This graduate course is designed to equip students with the most advanced and up-to-date theoretical knowledge and practical skills of teaching modern Chinese with emphasis on the instruction of beginning and intermediate levels. The theoretical component introduces you to both mainstream and innovative theoretical frameworks in second-language acquisition and sociology of education, including teaching within the National Standards; communication-based audio-lingo approach; backward design; prosodic syntax in Chinese; official knowledge; tracking; ecologies of resources; assessment and testing. The practical component emphasizes everyday classroom situations and discusses diverse teaching concepts and the development of individual teaching strategies and styles. Special attention will be given to concrete teaching and learning strategies within the communication-based audio-lingo approach, including Chinese grammar illustration, corrective feedback, teaching techniques, educational technologies, etc.
Chinese proficiency at the advanced level is required because this course will be taught in both Chinese and English, and many of the reading materials are in Chinese.

Introduction to the classical written language, beginning with Shadick, First Course in Literary Chinese. Students with a background in Japanese, Korean, Cantonese, Taiwanese, and other East Asian languages are welcome; it is not necessary to know Mandarin. The course begins from scratch, and swiftly but rigorously develops the ability to read a wide variety of classical and semi-classical styles. Original texts from the 6th century BC to the 20th century AD are studied. This course is taught in English and there are no prerequisites.

If you have ever wondered about the following questions, then this is the right course for you: Is Japan a hyper-feminine nation of smiling geisha and obedient wives? Is it a hyper-masculine nation of samurai and economic warriors? Is it true that Japanese wives control the household? Is it true that Japanese men suffer from over-dependence on their mothers? What do young Japanese women and young men worry about? What does the government think about the future of Japanese women and men? Assuming that expressions of gender and sexuality are deeply influenced by cultural and social factors, and that they also show profound differences regionally and historically, this course examines a variety of texts--historical, biographical, autobiographical, fictional, non-fictional, visual, cinematic, analytical, theoretical--in order to better understand the complexity of any attempts to answer the above questions.