East Asian Studies
Japanese literature and art from the 1920s through the 1940s. The avant-garde and mass culture; popular genre fiction; the advent of new media technologies and techniques; effects of Japanese imperialism, militarism, and fascism on cultural production; experimental writers and artists and their resistance to, or complicity with, the state.
The holdings of the Yale Univerity Library include numerous collections of invaluable pre-modern Japanese documents, including many, such as the “Kyoto Komonjo” collection, which make it possible to delve deep into the history of Tokugawa period (1600–1868) Japan. In the last two years, moreover, the Council on East Asian Studies has been able to acquire a variety of fascinating new collections of Tokugawa period documents to augment the library’s existing holdings. As a result, students at Yale now have the opportunty to use unpublished primary sources to study various aspects of Tokugawa...
An introduction to modern Chinese history spanning from the fall of the Qing Empire to the present. Examines the factors that led to the end of China’s dynastic system, the political and social divisions that emerged after the Qing Dynasty’s collapse, and the various alternative visions for China’s future that have arisen from the late nineteenth century onward. Focuses on aspects of political, economic, and social history.
News headlines and geopolitical debates alike focus on China’s policies towards Taiwan, Tibet, Xinjiang, and other areas on its periphery. But how did these areas come to be regarded as borderlands in the first place? Why does the government of the People’s Republic of China see these areas as core to its national interests? How does PRC policy continue or break away from the precedents set by the Qing Empire and the Republic of China? This seminar course explores these questions. Throughout the semester, students engage with a variety of primary and secondary sources as they produce a major...
This course examines how music is transmitted by various factors and how its styles and meanings can change in a new context. Through various scholarly approaches, this class aims to enhance your understanding of the mobility of music and its meanings. We will examine the processes and conditions in which music is exchanged and blended and consider how such “mashups” function as cultural indicators and symbols for emergent and migrant communities. We will also examine the impact of technology on musical globalization, localization, and glocalization. In doing so, this class explores issues of...
Food is a central aspect of a culture, and culinary traditions often become tokens of identity. There are complex historical and social factors behind culinary choices. The Chili peppers now widely used in Chinese cooking were introduced in the region only in the 16th century. What socio-economic changes made this new spice so prevalent in Chinese cuisine so quickly? This seminar uses food as a lens to study major developments in Chinese history. We will think of food particularly in three ways; as a material actor, whose presence or absence affected historical events; as a metaphor, used by...
This course delves into Tibet’s modern history, covering the late nineteenth century to the present. It situates Tibet’s history within the emerging ideological and political landscape shaped by the globalizing force of colonial modernity. By examining pivotal moments in twentieth-century Tibetan history, this course discusses the gradual transformation of the Tibetan world as it encountered new ideas, institutions, and practices from the modern West, often mediated through modern China and colonial and post-colonial India. Emphasizing that the present state of Tibet’s future was...
Where and when are the origins of Japanese culture? In this seminar we will examine the archaeology of the Japanese archipelago from the introduction of paddy rice agriculture through the end of the 8th century with an eye toward this question. Examining excavated materials and early textual accounts, we will confront myths—both ancient and modern—of Japanese origins, and interrogate the framing of these time periods. Students will explore the interplay between event and process; and between local developments and outside influence through topics including the arrival of immigrant populations...
This course combines the methods of history with those of linguistics and translation studies to promote an innovative interdisciplinary analysis of the processes of cultural (mis)communication and (mis)translation among communities across the Iberian Empires and Royal Patronages between 1500 and 1700. This course has three main objectives: 1) mapping the emergence of multilingual communities in early modernity involving cultures and languages that were previously unknown in Europe; (2) drawing up a comprehensive typological catalogue of overlooked, dispersed metalinguistic and multilingual...
This seminar uses the visual and material cultures of China to examine the notion of “modernity” and the relations among the “medieval,” “early modern,” and “modern” periods. By comparing these concepts with the historiographical frameworks of “Song-Yuan-Ming transition” and “late imperial China,” we will become familiar with the methodological concerns and contradictions that complicate these relativized temporal frameworks. Works by Craig Clunas, Jonathan Hay, and Wu Hung, along with the insights from historians, inform our discussions of Chinese prints, paintings, ceramics, and other...
This introductory course explores the art of India, China, Japan, and Korea from prehistory to the present. We consider major works and monuments from all four regions. Themes include the representation of nature and the body, the intersection of art with spirituality and politics, and everything from elite to consumer culture. All students welcome, including those who have no previous experience with either art history or the study of Asian art. This class makes frequent visits to Yale University Art Gallery.
This course explores ethical action in a range of Buddhist traditions, with an emphasis on Mahayana Buddhism in India and Tibet. Rather than starting with the categories of Western philosophy, we seek to develop an account that emerges from Buddhist sources. We begin by establishing a working model of karmic acts—describing the status of agents and patients, the mechanics of karma, and the cosmological and soteriological contexts for action. We then examine the paradigmatic ethical act of giving as embodied by two great virtuous exemplars: the Buddha (archetypal renunciate) and Vessantara (...
“Grant me chastity and strength of will—but not yet!” In this infamous prayer, Augustine wrestles with a perennial problem for human agency: the apparent gap between knowing that we should do something and actually wanting to do it. How wide is the gap? How can we bridge it? How pervasive is the problem? This course introduces first-year students to writing in the discipline of philosophy by tracing the contours of these questions and exploring their answers in ancient China, ancient Greece, and modern analytic philosophy. We begin by considering the traditional account of weakness of will as...
Methods such as participant observation, interviews, surveys, and ethnography are based on the assumption of access to a field. This course looks at whether and how one can understand a society if access is restricted and dangerous for local participants. We study the cluster of concepts known as “remote ethnography”—studying on-the-ground conditions from a distance—through the case of Xinjiang, China. It looks critically at methods used by journalists, social scientists, governments, corporations and others in situations where access is not possible, including open-source research, close...
Is monastic life relevant in contemporary society, where religion is increasingly considered less significant in our secular lives? Can we find valuable aspects of a monastic lifestyle that can be integrated into our daily lives? If so, what are these aspects, and how can we incorporate them? This seminar represents a collaborative effort to gain insight into one of the major monastic traditions: Buddhist monasticism. Throughout this seminar, we delve into various facets of Buddhist monastic life, examining its origins, historical development, monastic identity, rules and regulations,...
This course offers an interdisciplinary introduction to the study of the complex cultural and political paradigms of late socialism from a transnational perspective by focusing on the literature, cinema, and popular culture of the Soviet Union and China in 1980s. How were intellectual and everyday life in the Soviet Union and China distinct from and similar to that of the West of the same era? How do we parse “the cultural logic of late socialism?” What can today’s America learn from it? Examining two major socialist cultures together in a global context, this course queries the ethnographic...
This class offers an overview of modern Japanese literature with a focus on detective fiction. Through detective fiction we can examine key concepts in literature such as narrative voice, point of view, genre, modernism and postmodernism, and learn about debates in Japanese literature, the distinction between highbrow and popular fiction, and the relation between Japanese literature and translated fiction. Detective fiction also allows for the exploration of key issues in Japanese history and society such as consumerism, colonialism, class, gender, and sexuality. Readings include a wide range...
This course offers an interdisciplinary introduction to the study of the complex cultural and political paradigms of late socialism from a transnational perspective by focusing on the literature, cinema, and popular culture of the Soviet Union and China in 1980s. How were intellectual and everyday life in the Soviet Union and China distinct from and similar to that of the West of the same era? How do we parse “the cultural logic of late socialism?” What can today’s America learn from it? Examining two major socialist cultures together in a global context, this course queries the ethnographic...
This course explores the role of memory as a social, cultural, and political force in contemporary society. How societies remember difficult pasts has become a contested site for negotiating the present. Through the lens of memory, we examine complex roles that our relationships to difficult pasts play in navigating issues we face today. This course explores this politics of memory that takes place in the realm of popular culture and public space. The class asks such questions as: How do you represent difficult and contested pasts? What does it mean to enable long-silenced victims’ voices to...
This course introduces students to contemporary Japan, examining how its defeat in the Second World War and loss of empire in 1945 continue to shape Japanese culture and society. Looking especially at the sphere of cultural production, it focuses on the question of what it means to be modern as expressed through the tension between resurgent neonationalism and the aspiration to internationalize. The course charts how the legacy of Japan’s imperial failure plays a significant role in its search for renewal and identity since 1945. How, it asks, does the experience of catastrophic failure—and...
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