Courses

108-109-110. Elementary Modern Chinese I, II, III. This course sequence fulfills the Common Core foreign language requirement. Must be taken for a letter grade. No auditors permitted. This course introduces the fundamentals of modern Chinese. Listening, speaking, reading, and writing are equally emphasized. Accurate pronunciation is also stressed. One section is for "true beginners," and another section is for "partial beginners."("Partial beginners" are those who can speak Mandarin fluently with or without dialectal accent, but do not know how to read and write Chinese.) C. Chao, Staff, Autumn; C. Chao, F. Cai, Winter, Spring.

208-209-210. Intermediate Modern Chinese I, II, III. PQ: Chin 110 or consent of instructor. No P/N or P/F grades are permitted. No auditors permitted. Class sessions, conducted in Chinese, emphasize drills and the discussion of readings in a variety of source materials, including contemporary Chinese short stories, lectures, newspapers, and some original academic articles, supplemented by sessions with video material. Simplified characters and cursive script are also introduced. The class meets for five eighty-minute periods a week. C. Chao, C. Borchert. Autumn, Winter, Spring.

211-212-213. Elementary Literary Chinese I, II, III. PQ: Chin 210 or consent of instructor. This course provides an introduction to the grammatical foundations of the classical language or wenyan. It includes supplementary readings from Mencius, Zhuangzi, Sima Qian's Records of the Historian, and other texts. Staff, Autumn; E. Møllgaard, Winter; Staff, Spring.

223. Archeology of Early China. This course provides a survey of Chinese archeology of the past twenty years, particularly as it pertains to the period from ca. 1500 B.C. to the turn of the common era (i.e., the Xia, Shang, Zhou, Qin, and Han dynasties). The discoveries of this period, generally deriving from its mortuary cult, include both artifacts and texts; equal attention is paid to both of these types. All readings in English. E. Shaughnessy. Spring.

225. The Detective and the Judge: Crime Fiction in English and Chinese (=ComLit 321, Eng 222, Hum 213). The aim of this course is to juxtapose two genes from different traditions (Western detective fiction and Chinese court case fiction) and explore the issues that arise from reading them together. The point is not to try to conflate the two or subsume them in one, larger or universal genre but to help students come to a better understanding of each through attention to the questions raised between them. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and his contemporaries, writing between 1890 and 1914, furnish most of our readings in English. One anonymous collection, the Bao Longtu Pan Baijia Gongan (Bao Longtu Adjudicates 100 Court Cases) and a few other collections from the late Ming (ca. 1590-1640 C.E.) furnish most of the Chinese stories. J. St. André. Winter.

232. Gender and Sexuality in Late Imperial China. PQ: Prior course in China or gender theory helpful but not required. This course examines stories, plays, poetry, medicine, and social history and considers how gender and sexuality were constructed in sixteenth- through eighteenth-century Chinese culture. Topics explored include the body, homosexuality, the writing woman and publishing, and fantasies of the other. All readings in English. J. Zeitlin. Spring.

236. Images of Women and Chinese Modernity (=CMS 245, Hum 236). This course focuses on the production of images of women in twentieth-century Chinese literature and cinema, and its impuedness in the question of modernity. Examining a wide range of texts, including poetry, fiction, autobiography, and silent and sound films), students confront issues such as "the woman question" and the modern vernacular imagination; the imagery of the "New Woman" and the city; and gender performance under socialism and/or market economy. We also explore how different media, genre, space, and gender affect rhetorical and formal strategies and how they help shape or refigure visions of modernity. Z. Zhang. Spring.

241. Understanding Modern Chinese Urban Culture. This course introduces students to literary and visual representations (e.g., posters and films) of Chinese cities and explores the historical and symbolic dimensions of urban culture in twentieth-century China. X. Tang. Spring.

251. Feminine Space in Traditional Chinese Art (=ArtH 294/394). PQ: Any 100-level ArtH or ArtDes course, or consent of instructor. "Feminine space" denotes an architectural or pictorial space that is perceived, imagined, and represented as a woman. Unlike an isolated female portrait or an individual female symbol, a feminine space is a spatial entity--an artificial world composed of landscape, vegetation, architecture, atmosphere, climate, color, fragrance, light, and sound, as well as selected human occupants and their activities. This course traces the construction of this space in traditional Chinese art (from the second to the eighteenth centuries) and the social/political implications of this constructive process. W. Hung. Winter.

272. Art in Context: Writing as Artifact in Chinese Civilization (=ArtH 179). The ideographic writing system has been central to Chinese civilization not only in its role as a discursive medium but also in its pictographic form and intricate texture that conflate words and images. This course looks at the Chinese writing system in different media, including inscriptions in durable materials and ink on paper and silk. Rather than a traditional historical survey of the art of calligraphy, the course focuses on the calligraphic/inscriptive form as a special means of signification and the ways in which Chinese have attached meanings to it in different circumstances. E. Wang. Winter.

279. Civilization and Peasant Society. PQ: Chin 108-109-110, or equivalent, or consent of instructor. We think of the cultured elites of imperial China and peasants as inhabiting separate worlds. Yet the peasants who sustained the superstructure came into contact with the elites in a myriad of ways. In this course, we try to create a dialogue between the two worlds and to problematize the issue of "the unity of Chinese culture." We study elite and popular understandings of such phenomena as the state, commerce, religion, kinship, nation, and the "people" in late traditional and revolutionary China. P. Duara. Winter.

282. Experiments with the Past: Chinese Avant-Garde Fiction. W. Schaefer. Winter.
290-291. History of Modern China, 1600 to the Present (=Hist 245-246/345-346). This two-quarter lecture course presents the main intellectual, political, economic, and social trends in China from 1600 to the present. It includes study of the ideological and organizational structures, and the social movements that define a process variously described in Western literature as modernization, reform and revolution, or political development. The emphasis is on the twentieth century. Some attention is paid to historiographic analysis and criticism. All readings in English. G. Alitto. Autumn, Winter.

308-309-310. Advanced Modern Chinese I, II, III. PQ: Chin 210 or consent of instructor. This course emphasizes drills for more advanced sentence structures and requires discussions in Chinese on academic and scholarly subject matter. It provides exercises designed to increase reading comprehension and the ability to translate accurately original Chinese source materials, ranging over various topics, authors, and styles; to broaden students' experience; and to enhance their capacity for independent study. F. Cai. Autumn, Winter, Spring.

314-315-316. Readings in Literary Chinese I, II, III (Chin 316=Hist 248/348). PQ: Chin 213 or equivalent. A sequence of reading courses designed to introduce the student to examples of literary Chinese from different periods and different genres. This year's texts include selections from the historical novel Sanguo zhi yanyi. D. Roy, Autumn, Winter; Staff, Spring.

322. Thick Description: Face and Effacement in Modern China (=ArtH 287/387). PQ: Any 100-level ArtH or ArtDes course, or consent of instructor. Modern Chinese visual culture has betrayed a preoccupation with faces, represented as head-on portraits or portraits within pictures, and extreme close-ups shot en-face with a stationary camera in films. From the eighteenth century to the present, we cover ancestral icons, advertisements, Beijing-opera masks, allegorical/satirical portraits, and the stationary close-ups on films. Issues explored include revelation, masquerade, and masking; visual moods and verbal categories; physiognomy and identities; icons, iconoclasm, and the aniconic; memory, commemoration, and remembrances; and static portraiture and narrative undercurrents. E. Wang. Spring.

333. Confucianism. This course considers the Confucian tradition from the formation of Classical Confucianism to the continued influence of Confucianism in modern East Asian societies. We discuss Confucian ethics and philosophy, as well as Confucian social and spiritual practices. E. Møllgaard. Winter.

351. Self-Representation and Autobiography in Premodern Chinese Literature. PQ: Two years of classical Chinese or consent of instructor. This course considers the problem of autobiographical self-presentation and self-fashioning in a tradition not dominated by first-person narrative models. We survey a wide range of forms, including poetry, letters, memoirs, autonecrologies, year-by-year chronicles, plays, and visual materials, as well as contemporary Western theories of autobiography. Questions explored include public vs. private selves, imagining death, nostalgia and place, fictional doubles and self-portraiture, and new paradigms of modernity. J. Zeitlin. Winter.

369. The Yijing. PQ: Chin 213 or equivalent. This course introduces students to the Yijing or Book of Changes, the first of China's classics. The first half of the course focuses on how the text first came to be composed towards the end of the Western Zhou dynasty, while the second half of the course surveys the later commentarial tradition. E. Shaughnessy. Winter, Spring.

408-409-410. Fourth-Year Rapid Readings and Discussion I, II, III. PQ: Chin 310, or equivalent, and consent of instructor. C. Borchert. Autumn, Winter, Spring.

415. Readings in Literary Chinese II. D. Roy. Winter.

416. Readings in Literary Chinese III (=Hist 448). D. Roy. Spring.

418. Seminar: Art and Visualization in Medieval China. PQ: Consent of instructor. Knowledge of Chinese helpful. Visualization--that is, contemplation through "the mind's eyes" on icons by drawing on one's internal resources--was one of the prescribed means of experiencing icons and sutra tableaux in medieval China. Sutras and scriptural commentaries taught devotees procedures of visualization, while visual arts in various ways answered the visualizing impulse. This course explores the art historical implications of the medieval Chinese visual practice. Selected key texts are read in tandem with some related artworks. E. Wang. Spring.

444. Lu Xun's Fiction. PQ: Consent of instructor. Close readings of Lu Xun's two collections of short stories. Primary readings in Chinese. X. Tang. Winter.

455. Dunhuang Sutra Painting. PQ: Reading knowledge of Chinese or Japanese. This course explores one of the richest sources of Chinese Buddhist art and develops a method to study it. Its three major focuses are (1) the iconography of Dunhuang sutra paintings, (2) the representational modes and historical development of Dunhuang sutra painting, and (3) the relationship between Dunhuang sutra paintings and Buddhist literature and performances. This course encourages in-depth research on selected topics and emphasizes group cooperation. H. Wu. Winter.

460. Seminar: Philosophical Daoism. PQ: Consent of instructor. This course considers selected Daoist texts as works of thought. We engage in close reading of the texts in the original language and discuss the interpretive literature and the possibility of a dialogue between Daoist thought and Western philosophy. E. Møllgaard. Spring.

521. Seminar: Chinese Literary Thought (=ComLit 418). PQ: At least two years of classical Chinese and consent of instructor. This course makes use of Stephen Owen's Readings of Chinese Literary Thought, supplemented by selected chapters of the Wenxin diaolong. A. C. Yu. Autumn.

108-109-110. Introduction to the Civilizations of East Asia I, II, III (=Hist 151-152-153, SocSci 235-236-237). PQ: Must be taken in sequence. This course sequence fulfills the Common Core requirement in civilizational studies. This is a three-quarter sequence on the civilizations of China, Japan, and Korea, with emphasis on major transformation in these cultures and societies from the Middle Ages to the present. This year's sequence focuses on Japan from 1600 to the present, China from the eighteenth to the twentieth century, and Korea from the eighteenth to the twentieth century. G. Alitto, Autumn; Staff, Winter; A. Schmid, Spring.

261. Art of the East: China I (=ArtH 161). For non-art history concentrators, this course fulfills the Common Core requirement in the musical and visual arts. Students must attend the first class to confirm enrollment. This course examines Chinese art and architecture from prehistory to the third century A.D. in its social, religious, and cultural contexts. Carved jades, ritual pottery and bronzes, monumental tombs, and funerary shrines are studied in light of religious texts, such as temple hymns, ritual canons, poems, and songs. Students reconstruct the physical and cultural contexts of individual works of art and study original objects in the Art Institute of Chicago. H. Wu. Autumn.

262. Art of the East: China II (=ArtH 162). For non-art history concentrators, this course fulfills the Common Core requirement in the musical and visual arts. Students must attend the first class to confirm enrollment. An introduction to Chinese art from the third century to the recent avant-garde movement. Major subjects include the appearance of individual artist and scroll painting; the introduction and sinification of Buddhist art; the formation of different art genres, schools, and theories; and the influence of Western art in premodern and modern ages. E. Wang. Winter.

297-298-299. Senior Tutorial I, II, III. PQ: Consent of instructor and EALC director of undergraduate studies. Staff. Autumn, Winter, Spring.

111-112-113. Elementary Modern Japanese I, II, III. This course sequence fulfills the Common Core foreign language requirement. Must be taken for a letter grade. No auditors permitted. This is the first year of a three-year program designed to provide students with a thorough grounding in modern Japanese. Grammar, idiomatic expressions, and vocabulary are learned through oral work, reading, and writing in and outside of class. Daily practice in speaking, listening, reading, and writing is crucial. Students should plan to continue their language study through at least the second-year level to make their skills practical. The class meets for five fifty-minute periods a week. Y. Hirata, H. Lory, Y. Uchida, Staff. Autumn, Winter, Spring.

211-212-213. Intermediate Modern Japanese I, II, III. PQ: Japan 113 or equivalent, and consent of instructor. Must be taken for a letter grade. No auditors permitted. The emphasis on spoken language in the first half of the course gradually shifts toward reading and writing in the latter half. Most work in Japanese. The class meets for five fifty-minute periods a week. Staff, Autumn; Y. Uchida, Winter; Staff, Spring.

311-312-313. Advanced Modern Japanese I, II, III. PQ: Japan 213 or equivalent, or consent of instructor. The third year marks the end of the basic modern language study. The purpose of the course is to help students become able to understand authentic written and spoken materials with reasonable ease. The texts are all authentic materials with some study aids. All work in Japanese. The class meets for three ninety-minute periods a week. H. Lory, Autumn; Y. Uchida, Winter, Spring.

314. Seminar: Gender Pedagogy (=Eng 302, Hist 465). N. Field. Spring.

348-349. Premodern Japanese: Kindai Bungo I and II. PQ: Japan 313 or equivalent or consent of instructor. Readings are from historical materials written in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. H. Noto. Winter, Spring.

360. Early Modern Japan: 1800-1900 (=Hist 241-341). This course covers the late feudal period through the industrial revolution and the establishment of the modern state. T. Najita. Autumn.

405. Twentieth-Century Japan: 1910 to the Present (=Hist 242-342). Staff. Winter.

411-412-413. Fourth-Year Rapid Reading of Modern Texts I, II, III. PQ: Japan 313 or equivalent or consent of instructor. These courses are designed for students who have completed the three-year program of Japanese language training and are prepared to begin the study of texts from various areas of specialized research, as well as literary selections. W. Sibley, Autumn; N. Field, Winter; H. Lory, Spring.

416. Contemporary Japanese Issues. PQ: Three years of Japanese and consent of instructor. This course is a joint course between EALC and the Graduate School of Business School as part of an international business program. The course is intended for students who can speak and read Japanese as nonnative speakers of the language. Y. Uchida, Autumn; H. Noto, Winter; Staff, Spring.

423. Cities and Country in Japanese Culture. PQ: Consent of instructor. This course explores representations of life in the cities (Edo/Tokyo and Osaka-Kyoto) and country life in early modern-contemporary Japanese fiction, poetry, visual art, and film. Theoretical and critical readings include works by Maeda Ai, Karatani Kojin, Raymond Williams, and Roland Barthes. W. Sibley. Autumn.

442. Seminar: Classical Japanese Literature. S. Sibley. Spring.

449. Prewar Japanese Feminist Discourses in Context. PQ: Reading knowledge of Japanese. Students read feminist debates of the late 1920s and 1930s, male-authored debates on modernity, and Soviet and German feminist texts read by Japanese feminists. N. Field. Spring.

522. Koshoku: Of Swords, Singlets, and Missing Fingers. PQ: Advanced reading knowledge of modern Japanese, basic knowledge of pre-modern Japanese, and consent of instructor. This course explores modern re-imaginings of pre-Meiji sexualities in scholarship, fiction, and visual arts. Readings include Izumi Kyoka, the Minakata-Iwata correspondence, and historical studies of Koshuku. W. Sibley. Winter.

111-112-113. Introduction to the Korean Language I, II, III. This course sequence fulfills the Common Core foreign language requirement. The first year is devoted to acquiring the basic skills for speaking and listening comprehension and the beginnings of literacy through reading and writing. In addition to the Korean script, some of the most commonly used Chinese characters are introduced. J. Cho, Staff. Autumn, Winter, Spring.

211-212-213. Intermediate Korean I, II, III. PQ: Korean 113 or equivalent and consent of instructor. The goals of this course include the comprehension and production of more complex spoken constructions and an ability to read somewhat complex materials. Videotapes are used in a supplementary fashion and enough new Chinese characters are introduced for the achievement of basic literacy. J.-H. Shim. Autumn, Winter, Spring.

255. International History of Korea (=Hist 245) A. Schmid. Spring.

311-312-313. Advanced Korean I, II, III. PQ: Korean 213 or equivalent and consent of instructor. Along with continued work on spoken Korean, the emphasis shifts to readings in a wide selection of written styles, including journalistic pieces, college-level textbooks, and literary prose. An effort is made to accommodate the specialized interests of individual students. Also, some audio and videotapes are used. Students are expected to increase their knowledge of Chinese characters to a total of roughly nine hundred. J. Cho. Autumn, Winter, Spring.

408-409-410. Fourth-Year Rapid Reading of Modern Texts I, II, III. PQ: Korean 313, or equivalent, or consent of instructor. These courses are designed for students who have completed the three-year program of Korean language training and are prepared to begin the study of texts from various areas of specialized research, as well as literary selections. J.-H. Shim. Autumn, Winter, Spring.

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