Home to four of the five most populous states and four of the five largest economies, the Asia/Pacific is arguably the most dynamic region in the twenty-first century. At the same time, Cold War remnants (a divided Korea and China) and major geopolitical shifts (the rise of China and India, decline of the US and Japan) contribute significantly to the volatility of our world. This course will examine the political, economic, and geopolitical dynamism of the region through a survey of relations among the great powers in Asia from the sixteenth century to the present. Special emphasis will be given to regional and global developments from the perspective of the three principal East Asian states--China, Japan and Korea. We will explore the many informal, as well as formal, means of intercourse that have made East Asia what it is today. Graduate students should consult graduate syllabus for graduate reading list, special recitation time and graduate requirements.

Home to four of the five most populous states and four of the five largest economies, the Asia/Pacific is arguably the most dynamic region in the twenty-first century. At the same time, Cold War remnants (a divided Korea and China) and major geopolitical shifts (the rise of China and India, decline of the US and Japan) contribute significantly to the volatility of our world. This course will examine the political, economic, and geopolitical dynamism of the region through a survey of relations among the great powers in Asia from the sixteenth century to the present. Special emphasis will be given to regional and global developments from the perspective of the three principal East Asian states--China, Japan and Korea. We will explore the many informal, as well as formal, means of intercourse that have made East Asia what it is today. Graduate students should consult graduate syllabus for graduate reading list, special recitation time and graduate requirements.

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.

Explore the beauty of gardens (and associated buildings) in Japan, China, and Korea from ancient times to the present. Lectures will be illustrated by photographs from dozens of sites in East Asia, and by a field trip to the Japanese House and Garden in Fairmount Park. The main body of the course will be a historical survey of the evolution of East Asian garden art forms from the sixth century to the present. Discussion will touch on geographic and climatic parameters, spiritual and aesthetic principles, practical limitations and creative innovations of East Asian gardens. There will be an additional fee for the Japanese House visit, and possibly for other field trips.

This course examines the interrelationship among "gender," "religion," and "China" as conceptual and historical categories. We ask, for example, how gender plays critical and constitutive roles in Chinese religious traditions, how religion can be used both to reinforce and to challenge gender norms, how religious women impact Chinese society and culture, and what the construction of "China" as a cultural identity and as a nation-state has to do with women, gender, and religion. We will also think about what assumptions we have when speaking of gender, religion, and China, and the infinite possibilities when we strive to think beyond. We will read three kinds of materials: (1) scholarship on gender and religion in historical and contemporary China as well as the Chinese-speaking world, (2) scholarship concerning theories and methodology of gender and religious studies not necessarily focused on China, and (3) historical record of religious women in English translation.

This class is intended for new graduate students and upper-division undergraduates with some prerequisites who wish to get a solid grounding in the study of Inner Asia. The class will introduce Inner Asia as a coherent civilizational network, focusing on: 1) the steppe-imperial tradition; 2) the Tibetan-rite Buddhist commonwealth that developed from the Tibetan and Mongol empires; and 3) the increasing integration of these two Inner Asian civilizational patterns with that of imperial China. There will also be some consideration of the Islamic Turco-Mongolian synthesis that developed in the post-Mongol period. Regionally, the class introduce: 1) core Inner Asia (the Mongolian plateau, the Tarim Basin, the Tibetan plateau, the Manchuria) and 2) the main dynasties of China that formed in the Mongolia and Manchuria (Liao, Jin, Yuan and Qing). There will also be some consideration of historically Inner Asian populations in Hexi (Gansu-Qinghai), and the North China plains and the Shaanxi-Shanxi-Rehe uplands. Chronologically, the class will touch on prehistory and the contemporary period, but will mostly cover the period from the emergence of historical records on the Mongolian plateau and the Tarim basin to roughly 1950. Prehistory and the contemporary period will be give less detailed coverage.

This is a course designed for advanced undergraduate students and graduate students, primarily those majoring in Japanese and East Asian Studies and related disciplines. The main objective of the course is to survey recent and current scholarship on Japan. Each week we will focus on one monograph or a set of chapters or essays, reading them closely not merely to acquire up-to-date knowledge, but to gain new frameworks for approaching the study of Japanese culture, history, and society. Japanese-reading ability is not assumed and discussions will be in English, but optional readings in Japanese will be available.

This course offers a thematic introduction to the history of martial arts in China. Throughout the semester, we will explore the social, political, and cultural contexts of martial arts practice, from the classical period to the 21st century. The course will take an interdisciplinary approach to situating martial arts practices in history through an examination of religious, literary, and visual sources, against the backdrop of theoretical approaches from across gender studies, anthropology, and cultural theory. The course will be divided into three units. The first unit will focus on the cultural background that led to the emergence of martial arts practices in the pre-modern period. We will examine classical discourses on the human body and its cultivation and the role of medical practices and religious institutions, such as the Shaolin Temple, in the development of martial arts regimens. In the second unit, we will discuss the spread and popularization of martial arts practices in late imperial and modern Chinese society through a close reading of literary sources, such as wuxia novels and other works of fiction. In addition, we will explore the modernization and re-invention of martial arts in the late 19th century and early 20th century, when China attempts to re-establish itself as a modern nation. The third and final unit will be devoted to the global impact of Chinese martial arts in contemporary popular culture. Through a discussion and analysis of Kung Fu films, as well as video games, we will explore the role of martial arts narratives and practices in the construction of gender, cultural, and national identity and the various ways in which they are used by the current Chinese regime to assert its influence in the global arena. No knowledge of Chinese is presumed, and all readings will be available in English on the Canvas website in PDF form. Graduate students may take this course as EALC 6926 and should see the instructor to discuss requirements for graduate credit.

This course will introduce students to current scholarship on and analytical approaches to the pre-Mongol Inner Asian conquest dynasties that ruled significant portions of China the Liao, Jin, and Xixia regimes. Core readings will consist of secondary scholarship in English, with an additional section covering primary source documents for students with reading ability in Classical Chinese.

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.