chinese

 

FALL 2023

Additional Course Offerings: See Core Curriculum


 

GRADUATE Courses


PRO-SEMINAR I: CRITICAL APPROACHES TO EAST ASIAN STUDIES (CR. 3)
16:217:501:01:14782
T, 10:20 - 1:20 PM; SC-232
JESSEY CHOO

This graduate seminar aims to familiarize students with the major paradigms in studying East Asia. It helps students develop a critical understanding of East Asia within a comparative framework. The readings introduce the critical theories that have shaped various sub-fields of East Asian Studies, specifically literature, history, and religion. The seminar focuses on wide-ranging and interrelated academic discussions and issues, such as epistemology, orientalism, colonialism, post-colonialism, globalization, and gender. It also examines some of the enduring cultural and social institutions shared by East Asian cultures, including ancestral worship, filial piety, Buddhism, and Confucianism.


INTERDISCIPLINARY TOPICS IN EAST ASIA: UNDERSTANDING ASIAN COMMUNITY (CR. 3)
16:217:512:01:06429
M, 3:50 - 6:50 PM; SC-232
WEIJIE SONG

This course will explore how to understand Asian community with specific approaches to modern literature, film, history, culture and society in China, Japan, Korea, Singapore, Malaysia, and other areas. A few leading scholars and rising stars from America, Asia, and Europe will deliver a wide range of lectures about Asian Community in terms of literary narrative, cinematic imagination, interdisciplinary and multimedia representation. The course instructor will lead related discussions and provide further introduction to the major topics with regard to the understanding of East Asia and Asian community at large.
The major intermingling and interdisciplinary topics include: East Asian literary modernity; Eco-Writing; Landscape Aesthetics and Environmental Narrative; Social Memory; the Korean War; Cold War Asia and Cosmopolitanism; Literary Urban Studies; Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia, and Asian community; Internet Culture; Race, Transcendence, Cross-Cultural Dialogue; Sustainable Futures; among others.
This course will equip students with the necessary knowledge and critical skills to understand main themes in the large context of Asian community. Weekly short journals (400 words for graduate students, and 300 words for undergraduate students), dynamic dialogue with outside speakers, regular oral presentations, and the product of a final paper (10-15 pages for graduate students, and 7-8 pages for undergraduate students) on a particular aspect of modern Asia and the transregional connections, will allow students to demonstrate their ability to formulate a research question, gather and evaluate relevant information, develop and sustain an argument, and communicate their findings orally and in written form in a mode appropriate to their chosen area of inquiry into the vision and concept of Asian community.


HISTORY OF CHINESE LITERATURE: BEGINNINGS TO 1300 (CR. 3)
16:217:520:01:07017
TTH, 7:30 - 8:50 PM; SC-214
PENG LIU

This seminar examines major Chinese works from the pre-Qin period to the Yuan dynasty (1271–1368). The course will familiarize students with a wide variety of genres and themes as well as their historical contexts and developments. We will pay attention to the concept of “literature,” or wen. Was there a clear-cut definition of “literature” in pre-modern China? What could be considered a literary work at the time? And how do the readings constitute or defy our understanding of “literature” as shaped during the “modern” era? In class, we will tackle these issues. Students are expected to participate actively in class discussions. No background in Chinese language or literature is required. Students with reading ability in classical Chinese can read the texts in the original.


HISTORY OF CHINESE LITERATURE: 1300-1900 (CR. 3)
16:217:521:01:07019
TTH, 5:40 - 7:00 PM; SC-219
PENG LIU

This course follows a chronological order and familiarizes students with major literary genres and works from China’s Ming (1368–1644) and Qing (1644–1912) dynasties. Students will read vernacular short stories, literati plays, anecdotal works, and excerpts from “novels in chapters” (zhanghui xiaoshuo 章回小說). In class, students will discuss primary texts and learn how a wide range of themes and characters form the literary landscape of late imperial China. In addition, students will see how literature interacts with social history, religion, as well as visual and material culture through reading secondary sources. All readings are in English. No knowledge of Chinese language or literature is required. Students with the ability to read Chinese texts are encouraged to read the original.


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