Rosa van Hensbergen
Courses
EALL 253, MUSI 494, THST 218
Remapping Dance
What does it mean to be at home in a body? What does it mean to move freely, and what kinds of bodies are granted that right? How is dance encoded as bodies move between various sites? In this team-taught class, we remap the field of dance through its migratory routes to understand how movement is shaped by the connections and frictions of ever-changing communities. As three dance scholars, bringing specialisms in West Indian dance, South Asian dance, and East Asian dance, we are looking to decenter the ways in which dance is taught, both in what we teach and in the ways we teach. Many of the dancers we follow create art inspired by migration, exile, and displacement (both within and beyond the nation) to write new histories of political belonging. Others trace migratory routes through mediums, ideologies, and technologies. The course is structured around four units designed to invite the remapping of dance through its many spaces of creativity: The Archive, The Studio, The Field, and The Stage. Throughout, we explore how different ideas of virtuosity, risk, precarity, radicalism, community, and solidarity are shaped by space and place. We rethink how local dance economies are governed by world markets and neoliberal funding models and ask how individual bodies can intervene in these global systems.
EALL 265, EAST 253, LITR 251
Japanese Literature after 1970
This course is an introduction to Japanese literature written in the last fifty years, with a focus on women writers. We read poetry and prose featuring mothers, daughters, and lovers, novels that follow convenience and thrift store workers, and poetry about factory girls. Our reading takes us from the daily grind of contemporary Tokyo to dystopian futures, from 1970s suburbia to surreal dreamscapes. We attend carefully to the ways in which different writers craft their works and, in particular, to their representation of feelings and affects. Whether the dull ache of loneliness, the oppression of boredom or the heavy weight of fatigue, it is often something about the mood of a work–rather than its narrative–that leaves a distinct impression. We develop the tools to analyze and discuss this sense of distinctness, as well as discover ways to stage connections and comparisons between the works we read.
EALL 267
Japan's Global Modernisms: 1880-1980
This course is an introduction to Japanese literature from the 1880s to 1980s. Our reading is guided by a different “ism” each week, from 19th-century eroticism and exoticism, through mid-century cosmopolitanism and colonialism, to second-wave feminism and existentialism in the wake of World War II. These distinct moments in the development of Japanese modernism (modanizumu) are shaped by encounters with foreign cultures, and by the importing of foreign ideas and vogues. All the same, we question—along with modernist writer Yu Ryutanji—the “critique that says modanizumu is nothing more than the latest display of imported cosmetics” (1930). We seek to develop a correspondingly nuanced picture of the specific and changing ways in which Japan understood and figured its relationship to the rest of the world through the course of a century.
EALL 565, EAST 553
Japanese Literature after 1970
This course is an introduction to Japanese literature written in the last fifty years, with a focus on women writers. We read poetry and prose featuring mothers, daughters, and lovers, novels that follow convenience and thrift store workers, and poetry about factory girls. Our reading takes us from the daily grind of contemporary Tokyo to dystopian futures, from 1970s suburbia to surreal dreamscapes. We attend carefully to the ways in which different writers craft their works and, in particular, to their representation of feelings and affects. Whether the dull ache of loneliness, the oppression of boredom, or the heavy weight of fatigue, it is often something about the mood of a work—rather than its narrative—that leaves a distinct impression. We develop the tools to analyze and discuss this sense of distinctness, as well as discover ways to stage connections and comparisons between the works we read. Comparative and creative perspectives are especially welcome, and assignments can accommodate a range of media and presentation formats to suit. No knowledge of Japan or Japanese is required, nor is any prior grounding in literature. For those wishing to work with Japanese-language materials, please contact the instructor directly to organize additional Japanese-language workshops.
EALL 567
Japan's Global Modernisms: 1880–1980
This course is an introduction to Japanese literature from the 1880s to 1980s. Our reading is guided by a different “ism” each week, from 19th-century eroticism and exoticism, through mid-century cosmopolitanism and colonialism, to second-wave feminism and existentialism in the wake of World War II. These distinct moments in the development of Japanese modernism (modanizumu) are shaped by encounters with foreign cultures and by the importing of foreign ideas and vogues. All the same, we question—along with modernist writer Yu Ryutanji—the “critique that says modanizumu is nothing more than the latest display of imported cosmetics” (1930). We seek to develop a correspondingly nuanced picture of the specific and changing ways in which Japan understood and figured its relationship to the rest of the world through the course of a century. Creative and comparative perspectives are especially welcome, and assignments can accommodate a range of media and presentation formats to suit.