Area Courses

Flad

ANTHRO

 

What are the origins of Chinese civilization? What was society like before the development of the large states that would eventually merge to form the Chinese empire over 2000 years ago, essentially forming the basis of modern China? How does this process of development compare with other early civilizations? This course surveys the archaeology of China from the Paleolithic (ca. 1 million years before present) up to and including the Shang Dynasty (ca. 1050 BC), with an emphasis on great transitions in human history. The class will focus both on specific, detailed discussions of some of the most important archaeological finds from China, as well as more general discussions of various anthropological themes as they relate to data from early Chinese contexts and emerging complex society. The lectures are generally organized in chronological order, starting in Week 2 with the Paleolithic and subsequently focusing on the early and Later Neolithic and the Shang period of the Bronze Age. Students will develop a thorough familiarity with Chinese archaeological sites and cultures over the course of this term and also explore the way that Chinese archaeology relates to general issues in anthropological archaeology. Students of any level, from First Year Undergraduates to Graduate Students, are welcome. Important themes covered in the class include the emergence and migration of modern hominins, the origins of agriculture, animal domestication, and sedentary villages, early urbanism, changes in burial practices and religion, ritual, writing, and production, the development of complex society, and the presentation of archaeological information in modern contexts. The course will provide students with a basic understanding of these topics in relation to early China. Occasional discussions will review the lecture material and focus on clarifying, deconstructing and debating topics in Chinese archaeology about which there is little consensus. We will also explore Chinese materials in museum collections at Harvard and produce a small exhibit using these materials.

Yulghun

EALC

 

This course is intended to develop a basic reading knowledge of Chaghatay, the classical antecedent of modern Uzbek and modern Uyghur, and the common literary language of all Central Asian Turks from the fourteenth to the early twentieth centuries. The course includes a survey of Chaghatay literature as well as a discussion of grammar, the writing system, and lexicographical resources; the class meetings will be devoted to both textbook-based instruction and (particularly in the second half of the semester) the reading of samples from Chaghatay texts drawn from printed sources and manuscript copies. This is a continuation of Chaghatay A.

Wild

EALC

100-level EALC (SF requirement); language course OR area course

Introduction to pre-Qin philosophical texts.

Wild

EALC

100-level EALC (SF requirement); language course OR area course

A continuation of Chinese 107a, introducing more prose styles as well as poetry and lyric.

TBD

EALC

100-level EALC (SF requirement); language course OR area course

Continuation of Chinese 150a. The course seeks to consolidate and hone students’ advanced Chinese ability through in-depth examination of Chinese society and culture.

Liu, Wang

EALC

100-level EALC (SF requirement); language course OR area course

Advanced language practice through the reading and analysis of authentic academic texts in humanities disciplines (e.g., art, literature, cinematic studies). May be offered independently in Chinese, or linked with an English-language content course. Topic: Masterpiecies of Modern Chinese Literature.

Szonyi

EALC

Historical survey; 100-level EALC (SF requirement)

This course is a survey of the social and cultural history of China from the Song to the mid-Qing (roughly from 1000 to 1800). The main topics discussed include urbanization and commerce; gender; family and kinship; education and the examination system, and religion and ritual. The main goal of the course will be to explore the relationship between social and cultural changes and political and intellectual developments.

Szonyi

EALC

Historical survey; 100-level EALC (SF requirement)

It’s only in the last twenty years that China has become known as a place of cities and factories. Before then, the majority of Chinese people lived not in cities but in villages in the countryside, and made their living from agriculture. This lecture/discussion course, intended mainly for undergraduates, will introduce you to the modern history of rural China. We’ll approach that history chronologically, thematically, and historiographically. No background knowledge of China is required, but the course might interest you even if you have some previous background, because it will show you the People’s Republic of China from a very different angle than what you’ve likely encountered before: that of its villages and the people who live in them. You’ll come to appreciate their perspective better through taking their role in two interactive games. You’ll also learn why the fate of China’s countryside matters to the future not only of China but also the whole world.

Puett

EALC

 

Chronological survey of recently-discovered paleographic texts and received materials from the late Shang through the early Warring States period, with discussion of problems of contextualization.

Szonyi, Elliott

EALC

 

Review of historical scholarship on China from roughly 1500 to the early 20th century. This course is designed to aid in preparations for the general examinations and in developing a dissertation topic.

Wang

EALC

***100-level EALC (SF requirement)

This is an intermediate level course (100 level for both undergraduate and graduate students) that seeks to delineate the multivalence of Chinese violence across the modern century and inquire into its ethical and political consequences. Taking into account the campaigns of violence and brutality that have rocked generations of Chinese―often in the name of enlightenment, rationality, and utopian plenitude―this course places its arguments along two related axes: history and representation, modernity and monstrosity.

Tian

EALC

 

This semester focuses on a series of canonic poetic and narrative texts from the late eighth and ninth century—the Mid Tang and Late Tang—and explores the changing values in literary, cultural, and intellectual history at this watershed time in the Chinese tradition.

Li, Tian

EALC

 

This course explores Chinese songscapes from ancient times to the twenty-first century with an emphasis on songs, their lyrics, and related commentary and media cultures. Bridging premodern and modern songs and sounds, we will ask: What resonances and dissonances do we hear between past and present? How have cultural politics, identity, gender, ethnicity, and technological change affected the thematic content, aesthetic form, anthologization, interpretation, transmission, and mediation of songs? How can we better draw on the rich Chinese cultural heritage to express our thoughts and feelings as well as to access the experiences of generations before us? Prerequisite: The course is primarily designed for PhD and MA students and is open to qualified undergraduate students with at least three years of Modern Chinese or equivalent.   Knowledge of Literary Sinitic (Classical Chinese) desirable.

Kelly

EALC

 

This seminar investigates literary strategies for depicting and animating things in premodern China. We will trace the development of the principal genres for talking about objects, from yongwu poetry and riddle tales, to inscriptions, colophons, and manuals of taste. How, we will ask, have authors probed and reimagined human attachments to things. How have practices of collecting and connoisseurship transformed Chinese literary culture? How have objects been used to think about what it means to be human in the Chinese literary tradition. Our discussions will engage recent scholarship on materiality from the fields of literary theory and the history of material culture. The course will include viewing sessions in the Harvard Art Museums and Harvard-Yenching Library.

Kolata

EALC

 

What’s the cost of being Buddhist? This graduate seminar examines the entanglements of Buddhism, economy, and ethical life, asking how money, gifts, labor, obligation, and value shape Buddhist practice and institutions. Drawing on religious studies, East Asian history, and economic anthropology, the course challenges the common framing of Buddhism as defined primarily by renunciation or anti-materialism. Buddhist institutions have long operated within systems of material and symbolic circulation, including donation and merit, ritual exchange, monastic labor, landholding, debt, patronage, and markets. Using classical texts, historical sources, ethnography, and critical social theory, the seminar approaches moral economy as a framework for analyzing how value and obligation are produced, justified, circulated, and contested in Buddhist worlds.

Robson

EALC

 

This seminar aims to discuss significant new works in the field of Chinese Religions by focusing on the historical, doctrinal, and philosophical development of the Buddhist tradition in China.

 

EALC

 

This seminar examines the soundscapes of Chinese film and audiovisual media, with musical highlights from the dawn of sound cinema to the present day. We will proceed chronologically from Republican-era Shanghai cinema, through 1950s to 1970s Cold War musicals and post-1980s New Wave auteurs, to contemporary televisual theme songs and KTV music videos. The film and media under discussion include musical comedy and musical horror, adaptations from Hollywood and from traditional opera, historical costume films and teen melodramas punctuated by song-and-dance numbers, martial arts cinema with choreographed fight scenes, revolutionary model operas and ballets, postmodern arthouse musicals, documentaries, and popular television dramas with viral musical interludes. Expanding, transforming, and rejuvenating across time and borders, Chinese musicals provide us with a prism to focus and refract many critical issues such as sound studies, genre theories, intermedial relationships, aesthetic traditions, transnational influences, political propaganda, and entertainment industries. Students are encouraged to develop original research papers or to make creative projects such as music videos to contribute to the emerging field of Chinese film and media studies—as well as to sing along at screenings!

Kolata

EALC

100-level EALC (SF requirement)

What can Buddhism teach us about surviving and thriving in the face of ecological crisis? This course examines the challenges and possibilities of life on a changing planet from a Buddhist perspective. Organized thematically around Buddhist concepts such as karma, pollution, suffering, and interdependence, and paired with the material realities of environmental degradation and consumption, the course investigates how Buddhists are responding and contributing to pressing issues such as climate change, extreme weather, biodiversity loss, pollution, waste and wasting, melting glaciers, rising sea levels, and food insecurity. Rather than offering a comprehensive survey, the course draws on selected historical and ethnographic studies from East and Southeast Asia and Asian diasporas. We will explore how Buddhist practitioners and communities understand and respond to environmental change, as well as how Buddhist institutions and practices may themselves contribute to patterns of consumption and ecological harm. The course critically examines Buddhist environmentalism, including the development of “Buddhist ecology” and efforts to “green” Buddhism, while asking what possibilities and limitations Buddhism offers for imagining life on a damaged planet.

Robson

EALC

Historical survey; 100-level EALC (SF requirement)

This course provides an introduction to the study of East Asian religions. It covers the development of Buddhism, Daoism, Confucianism and Shinto. It is not a comprehensive survey, but is designed around major conceptual themes, such as ritual, image veneration, mysticism, meditation, death, and category formation in the study of religion. The emphasis throughout the course is on the hermeneutic difficulties attendant upon the study of religion in general, and East Asian religions in particular.

Tang

EALC

100-level EALC (SF requirement)

This course is designed for students in East Asian Humanities who are interested in adopting digital methods in their research with basic Python coding. It will introduce fundamental programming concepts, SQL and relational databases, popular Python libraries in data cleaning, text analysis, and supervised and unsupervised machine learning. Students completing the course will be able to integrate and apply the Python libraries taught in class into their research and to explore the rapidly growing newcomers without hurdles.

Nguyen

EALC

***100-level EALC (SF requirement)

This seminar introduces students to the modern histories and cultures of Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia, examining the most consequential episodes in the intertwined and often tumultuous relationships among these three countries from the late nineteenth to the end of the twentieth century. The course pays particular attention to “Indochina” as a colonial and postcolonial framework—one that at times connected, and at other times divided, the region’s peoples and states. Throughout the seminar, students will engage with scholarly texts and films, as well as literary works, memoirs, and oral histories. The course asks a set of guiding questions: Does geographical proximity foster cultural similarity? Does forced inclusion in a colonial union such as French Indochina unite or divide colonized societies? Does shared political ideology necessarily lead to collaboration and mutual support?

Koss

EALC

Junior Tutorial; 100-level EALC (SF requirement)

How does the historical past shape politics in the present? East Asia and its recent political developments provide a most striking universe of cases, where legacies of the past influence both domestic politics and international relations. Located at the intersection of history and political science, this course is grounded in theories of institutional development, introducing concepts such as path dependence, critical junctures, and unintended consequences. Beginning with China, the course discusses explanations of development successes grounded in grand narratives going far back in time; the impact of cultural norms, imperial techniques of statecraft, revolutionary practices; the uses and abuses of history in the service of the party state; and the long-term impact of Christian missionaries, Japanese colonizers, and a decade of warfare. Through the case of Japanese domestic politics, we explore how tradition is transmitted through habits and memories of individuals; through institutions such as the perennial ruling party; and through a broadly defined civil society. As examples of critical junctures, we will discuss North Korea’s early postwar history and South Korea’s democratization process, discovering their enduring influences on both political systems. Turning to international relations, this course asks whether foreign and security policy is the result of a deeply rooted strategic culture, how diplomats maneuver the divisions over historical guilt of World War II, and what narratives such as the “century of humiliation” reveal about actors’ strategic thinking. Throughout the course, we will pay attention to regional linkages.

Koss

EALC

Junior Tutorial; 100-level EALC (SF requirement)

This course introduces a cataclysmic movement that brought the People’s Republic of China to the brink of anarchy: The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (1966-1976). The first part looks at historical precursors, including rebellion in the imperial era, political movements in the Republican Era, Communist campaigns and purges, as well as the Great Leap Forward famine that cost tens of millions of lives. Paying equal attention to elite politics at Mao Zedong’s “court” and the lived experiences of ordinary citizens, the second part focuses on the evolution of the turmoil, once Mao had called for “bombarding the headquarters” of his own party state, discussing the “Gang of Four,” the “attempted coup” by Lin Biao, the Red Guards and the worker rebels in Shanghai, local power seizures and factional warfare, military crackdowns, and the return to order. The third part begins with the reception of the movement abroad, and focuses on its afterlives, including the quasi- pluralist lessons drawn in the immediate aftermath, the role of Cultural Revolution legacies in decisions such as the violent crackdown on the Tiananmen protesters in 1989, and memory politics under Xi Jinping. No language requirement.

Abe

EALC

 

New This Year: I am offering EASTD 260 in spring 2027 as a PROSEMINAR: All the readings for the seminar will be in English; Therefore, undergraduate students, and those graduate students who are interested in Buddhism but not a student of Buddhist studies are welcome, too. Why new interpretations of the sutra are needed: The Lotus Sutra is arguably the most popular sutra (Buddhist scripture) in the history of Buddhism in East Asia. Its richness in metaphors and parables makes the sutra extremely important in understanding the influence of Buddhist scriptural texts on the development of East Asian literary traditions. Responding to its significance in East Asia, various translations are produced in Western languages. Yet, even students at Harvard typically find the most “readable” English translation, such as the one by Leon Hurvitz and Burton Watson, not understandable. A large part of the problem in English versions of the sutra is that they fail to bring to the fore the most seminal strands for the development the sutra’s narratives that run throughout the sutra’s chapters. Unfortunately, existing secondary scholarly writings on the sutra do not help students much because they more often than not uncritically rely on Hurvitz’ and Watson’s translations (which, in my opinion, are very poor translations) and repeat the errors there. New approaches taken by this seminar: In order to bring remedy to this problem and enable us to read the sutra more meaningfully, this seminar takes two new approaches. 1. To place the Lotus Sutra in the context of its original formation in ancient India of about 1st and 2nd centuries AD, the period that coincides the first rise of Mahayana scriptural texts including the Lotus. 2. Our reading of the Lotus Sutra places it in the intertextual context with other early Mahayana sutras, such as Śrangama-samādhi, Vimalakirti, and Prajñā-pāramitā sutras. Such reading reveals the Mahayana sutra’s poetic innovations that challenges the legitimacy of Hīnayāna scriptures: such as the inseparability of great compassion from enlightenment experience; and the identity of all the Buddhas of past, present, and future in all the directions of the universe/multiverses. Goal of the seminar: In the end, the seminar aims at making the reading of the Lotus Sutra more enjoyable. It does so by illustrating how the Lotus’s major narrative develops throughout the sutra chapter texts. That will show us how the major narrative arc brings together its main characters (such as the Bodhisattva Guanyin/Kannon, Bodhisattva Mañjuśrī, and Dragon Princess) as well as its famous episodes, anecdotes and parables. I intend to offer this seminar as an effective introduction to Mahayana Buddhism in general. The course is capped at 11 students. Please send your enrollment requests at my.harvard website and write in the box there your brief self-introduction and the reason why you want to take the seminar. One or two short paragraphs will do.

Park

EALC

 

In this graduate seminar, students will explore the ways in which debates and negotiations about languages, writing systems, and linguistic and script diversity in East Asia matter in the formation and dispersal of imagined communities, establishment of and challenge to political power, social reproduction, and more. The course’s wide-ranging readings are culled from diverse fields and disciplines including the history of writing, reading, and the book in East Asia (China, Japan, Korea, and Vietnam); linguistic anthropology; sociolinguistics; and studies of modernity/modernism and of colonialism and post colonialism. Examining the relationships between language, culture, and society in societies of East Asia in the past and the present, students will develop comparative (cross-regional, cross-temporal, and cross linguistic/script) and interdisciplinary approaches to the study of East Asia. This seminar is not a language or linguistics course. All readings are in English.

Abe

EALC

 

This interdisciplinary and team-taught course provides an introduction to several of the approaches and methods through which the societies and cultures of East Asia can be studied at Harvard, including history, philosophy, literary studies, political science, film studies, anthropology and gender studies. We consider both commonalities and differences across the region, and explore how larger processes of imperialism, modernization, and globalization have shaped contemporary East Asian societies and their future trajectories.

Yoda

GENED

100-level EALC (SF requirement)

What can anime’s development in Japan and its global dissemination teach us about the messy world of contemporary media culture where art and commerce, aesthetic and technology, and producers and consumers are inextricably entangled with each other? In this course, students will learn to engage Japanese or Japanese-style animation (sometimes known as anime) through two-pronged approaches. First, the students will learn to evaluate the aesthetic and socio-cultural relevance of anime in relation to the criteria and perspectives developed through the study of more established artistic forms such literature, cinema and visual arts. We will cover topics including, anime’s generic conventions, formal aesthetic, and narrative motifs. Secondly, students will learn to address the cultural value of anime in manners that recognize the specificity of its media ecology, encompassing the modes of production, distribution, and consumption. In particular, we will pay close attention to the ways media technology, industrial production of anime, marketing, and fan culture are integral facets of anime eco-system. In this sense, we will study anime as a node in the global network, involving diverse commercial as well as non-commercial medias such as graphic novels, live-action films, video games, character merchandises, and fanzines and other fan practices. The course as a whole suggests that we need to work between these two approaches in order to understand anime as a medium of global popular culture today.

Puett

GENED

Historical survey; 100-level EALC (SF requirement)

What if many of our assumptions about the self and about how to live fully are limiting and even dangerous, and what other possibilities might we be able to find in classical Chinese philosophy? What is the best way to live a fuller and more ethical life? Concretely what should we do to begin to live in a more flourishing and inspiring way? Questions such as these were at the heart of philosophical debates in China. The answers that classical Chinese thinkers developed in response to these questions are among the most powerful in human history. Regardless of whether one agrees with them or not, they should be studied and taken seriously by anyone who cares about ethics, politics, and the ways to live life more fully.

Davis

EALC/GENED

Historical survey

Must the East Asian Growth Miracle always lead to trade wars or can international law bring cooperation? How do states balance the challenges and opportunities of international markets? Importing ideas and resources while exporting manufactured goods underlies the East Asian growth miracle but also builds conflict with other governments. This course examines the transformative role of trade policy for Japan, Korea, and China. From the “unequal treaties” of the nineteenth century to the World Trade Organization today, trade law binds the interactions between East Asia and the world. Japan grew from an isolated samurai nation to a leading economic power but now confronts stagnating growth. Korea relied on business conglomerates for rapid industrialization and embraced liberalization to steer its way out of financial crisis. China turned to the WTO to anchor domestic economic reforms but now faces U.S. resistance to its export dominance. East Asia offers models of the success and problems that accompany globalization.

Kelly

EALC/GENED

100-level EALC (SF requirement)

How does writing as art and technology shape the ways in which humans imagine, generate, and use power? This course examines how humans experience, use, and build meaning around the shape of writing, focusing on East Asia across time, place, and media. Centered on a broad, enduring question about writing’s role in society, students engage with materials from literature, art history, history of the book, linguistic anthropology, archaeology, and philosophy. By using materials that are both immediate to, and yet distant from, students’ lives, the course seeks to enhance students’ aesthetic and interpretive understanding of the world, to provide students with an understanding of the social and historical contexts for the development of various technologies related to the production, transmission, and refabrication of the written word in association with power in a variety of ways. By exploring everything from urban graffiti and online protests to ancient tombs and Buddhist temples to petroglyphs and white-paper protests, students will analyze writing’s impact on identity, authority, spirituality, and artistic expression and learn through field works and hands-on experiences such as visits to Harvard’s East Asian collections and workshops on calligraphy and ink-making. The course encourages reflection on how writing mediates power and social change, offering insights into both historical and contemporary practices. All students are invited to think beyond nation-centered and Eurocentric models, developing a nuanced understanding of writing as both art and technology. The course equips students to think critically about the role of writing in an age shaped by generative AI and large language models. No prior knowledge of East Asian languages is required.

Joo

GOV

 

This course provides a historically grounded survey of South Korean politics, from its post-colonial reconstruction to its current status as a leading global democracy. While South Korea is a hallmark case of economic development and democratic transition, its contemporary political landscape is defined by a high-stakes struggle to maintain institutional stability. We will explore how the South Korean state functions—and fails—under pressure, while comparing its history and institutions to those of its neighbors, both within and outside of East Asia.

Cichanowicz

GOV

 

How should democracies respond to rising great-power competition, economic coercion, and demographic change? Japan has confronted each of these challenges earlier and more intensely than almost any other advanced economy. This research seminar explores Japan’s role in world politics since World War II. This course surveys the “normal country” debate, regional territorial disputes, the politics of memory, and ongoing debates over economic security. Students will acquire the analytic tools necessary to understand and explain Japan’s conflict and cooperation in the region while pursuing an individual research project on a topic of their choosing.

McCormick

HAA

 

This graduate course surveys the history and development of the folding-screen format in Japanese painting from the 8th to the 20th centuries. Through a series of case studies, the course explores art historical issues for which the folding screen provides a unique perspective, including the relationships between painting and architectural space, poetic practice, and religious ritual. Functioning simultaneously as furniture and pictorial surface, spatial divide and architectural decor, the folding screen has played an important role in shaping culture and lived experience in the Japanese archipelago for over a millennium. Transportable and displayable in a variety of ways, the folding screen can surround a space and immediately charge it with meaning. Some of the most historically significant Japanese paintings were executed in this format, and its influence around the world can be seen in everything from the painted panels of James McNeil Whistler to the biombo of colonial Latin America. This graduate lecture surveys the history and development of the Japanese folding screen from the 8th to the 20th centuries. Each week will focus on one case study from the screen painting tradition to highlight a historical theme and methodological problem closely linked to the unique properties of this format. These themes offer a range of issues crucial to the reconceptualization of Japanese painting history as a whole: 1) The function of screens in different social spaces (the Nara Imperial Palace, the Heian aristocratic compound, the Buddhist temple hall, the Ashikaga shogunal residence; or the modern reception room); 2) the various text-image relationships embodied by different types of screens (including both the relationship of painting to poetic practice and the pictorialization of narrative texts); 3) the role of screens in religious ritual, including the Esoteric initiation (abisekha) ceremony and mortuary practice; 4) compositional strategies reflected in the adaptations of painting subjects in other formats to the folding-screen surface; 5) the function of screens as representations of different types of topoi, charged with a panoply of political and cultural meanings; and 6) the interpretation of depictions of screens within other paintings.

Wang

HAA

 

Long before the modern internet, Buddhism imagined a cosmic network: Indra’s Net—an infinite canopy of interconnected jewels, each reflecting all others in a continuous, endless loop. In this vision of reality, the boundaries between the “one” and the “many” dissolve. Physical scale ceases to matter: a single particle of dust can contain a trillionfold world, and infinity can unfold within a single thought-instant. This course explores how this cosmos was visualized and staged through art and architecture across Asia. We will examine immersive murals on Silk Road cave walls, the legendary, infinitely reflecting mirror-halls in medieval Chinese monasteries, and monumental, three-dimensional architectural ‘cosmograms’ such as Borobudur. Reading foundational texts—such as the Lotus Sutra and the Flower Ornament Sutra—alongside painting, sculpture, and architecture, we will analyze how texts generate visual worlds and how images and built spaces, in turn, repurpose and reshape textual claims. Ultimately, the course asks how matter and mind, thought and form, interpenetrate—and how cosmos and consciousness may be mutually entangled.

Kuan

ARCH

 

The course will trace the parallel trajectories of two of modern Japan’s most influential schools of architectural thought, represented by Tange Kenzō (1913–2005) on the one hand and Shinohara Kazuo (1925–2006) on the other, and situate their contributions in the broader development of international modernism in the postwar period. Tange and his protégés in the Metabolist group dazzled the world with radical proposals for urban communities built either on the sea or elevated in the sky. Shinohara rejected this techno-rationalist stance through the slogan “A house is a work of art” and turned to the single-family house shunned by the Metabolists. The House of White by Shinohara achieves an almost oceanic spaciousness through abstraction and precision. The course will be structured as a series of discursive narratives and debates, such as tradition, transparency, lightness, and technology, which defined architectural practice and criticism in Japan after 1945. Major figures, notably Itō Toyoo, successfully overcame these differences and established new paradigms. We will also position young Japanese architects today, Ishigami, Fujimoto, and Hasegawa, in terms of these historical genealogies and the evolution of a critical discourse.

Remoquillo

HIST-LIT

 

This course examines Asian American cultural production and the political histories of various Asian American communities. We will place a wide range of primary texts, including fiction, poetry, film, television, and visual art, in conversation with larger political and cultural questions about race, gender, citizenship, imperialism and belonging in the U.S. The course will be organized around four major events in Asian American history: the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 and the subsequent exclusion of Asian immigrants in the decades that followed; the incarceration of Japanese immigrants and Japanese Americans during World War II; Cold War Orientalism after WWII; the racial politics of imperial war and Islamophobia in the post-9/11 United States; and the sharp increase in anti-Asian racial violence during the Covid-19 pandemic. We will also consider the historical movements and migrations of people of Asian descent to North America; U.S. wars in Asia; the conflicts of identity, community, and citizenship; the gender and sexual dynamics of Asian American racialization; and the relationship of Asian Americans to other communities of color. In doing so, this course grapples with what it means for Asian America to have been characterized and circumscribed by a multitude of cultural discourses—legal, geopolitical, and textual—throughout dominant as well as subversive narratives of U.S. history.

Bose

HIST

Historical survey

A lecture survey of the modern history of Burma (Myanmar), Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos and the Philippines from 1800 to the present comparing the experience and aftermath of British, French, Dutch, Spanish and US imperialism in the region.

Ghosh

HIST

Historical survey

This lecture course will provide a survey of some of the major issues in the history of post-imperial China (1912- ). Beginning with the decline of the Qing and the dramatic collapse of China’s imperial system in 1911, the course shall examine how China has sought to redefine itself anew over the past one-hundred years. The revolutionary years of 1911, 1949, and 1978 will serve as our three fulcra, as we investigate how China has tussled with a variety of ‘isms’ (such as republicanism, militarism, nationalism, socialism, and state capitalism) in its pursuit of an appropriate system of governance and social organization. In so doing, we shall also explore the social, economic, cultural, and scientific changes wrought by these varied attempts at state-building.

Various

HUMAN

 

A Humanities Colloquium: from Homer to Joyce: 2,500 years of essential works, taught by six professors. Humanities 10b will tentatively include works by Joyce, John Stuart Mill, Mary Shelley, Austen, Schiller, Augustine, Apuleius, Epictetus, Sophocles, and Homer, as well as the Bible. One 75-minute lecture plus a 75-minute discussion seminar led by the professors every week. Students will receive instruction in critical writing one hour a week, in writing labs and individual conferences. Students also have opportunities to participate in a range of cultural experiences, ranging from plays and musical events to museum and library collections.

Truscott

EALC

100-level EALC (SF requirement); language course OR area course

This course is a continuation of Japan 106A as we further practice reading and translating texts written in classical Japanese. Specifically, we look at works written in the writing style of the vernacular, also known as kana. Such texts include poetry, monogatari tales, and personal diaries. Our schedule will be organized into various units by format and genre as well as students’ interests. As we read, we will situate these texts within their historical and social context, while also exploring what these texts tell us about their historical moment. Students will submit a working English-language translation for a text of their choosing as a final project, thereby demonstrating a nuanced understanding of premodern vernacular Japanese texts along with the societies that produced such works.

Truscott

EALC

100-level EALC (SF requirement); language course OR area course

Educated classes in premodern Japan read and often wrote utilizing both kana (“vernacular”) and kanbun (“Chinese”) writing systems in recording their lives and creating art. Following in their footsteps, students will read and translate texts written in both kana and kanbun from Japan’s early and classical periods (710-1185). We will explore differences in form and content between the two writing styles along with linguistic quirks featured in our readings. We will also consider the conception of gendered writing and cross-cultural comparisons with other East Asian literatures, including poetic treatises and histories. At the end of this course, students will be able to not only read and translate texts written in multiple linguistic forms, but also discuss such texts side-by-side in a comprehensive manner.

Higurashi

EALC

100-level EALC (SF requirement); language course OR area course

Continuation of Japanese 150a. Selected readings and discussion in Japanese primarily on contemporary topics in economics, sociology, political science, psychology, and cultural studies, with occasional readings from literature. Readings are supplemented by selections from audiovisual media on current social issues.

Jacobsen

EALC

language course OR area course

Continuation of Japanese 210a

Solís

EALC

Historical survey; 100-level EALC (SF requirement)

This course consists of two parts. During the first half of the course, we will examine Japan’s modernization and industrialization projects after the “opening of Japan” (1853) and the Meiji Restoration, Japan’s early empire, and the Asia-Pacific War (1937-1945). Next, we will learn about contemporary Japanese history, which begins with the Allied Occupation of Japan (1945-1952), and continues until the present day. Many of the themes covered in this course include imperialism, Japanese history within a global context, continuities and discontinuities between the wartime and postwar eras, economic growth and development, the relationship between citizens/subjects and the state, and war memory/trauma.

Howell

EALC

 

This seminar surveys the recent English-language literature on the history of early modern Japan, roughly from the late sixteenth century to around 1875.

Howell

EALC

 

This seminar surveys the recent English-language literature on the history of early modern Japan, roughly from the late sixteenth century to around 1875.

McCormick

EALC

100-level EALC (SF requirement)

Introduces students to The Tale of Genji, often called the world's first novel, authored by the court lady Murasaki Shikibu around the year 1000 CE. In addition to a close reading of the tale, topics for examination include Japanese court culture, women's writing, and the tale's afterlife in painting, prints, drama, manga, and film.

Atherton

EALC

Historical Survey; 100-level EALC (SF requirement)

Poetry written by gods, incestuous aristocratic romances, exorcist theater, samurai fantasy novels, fart literature: traditional Japanese literature has something for everyone, and invites us to rethink our assumptions about what literature is and how creativity works. From the most ancient myths up to the 19th century arrival of Western style modernity, we will explore together the relationships between high art and pulp fiction, the stage and the page, words and illustrations, manuscript and print, language and the sacred. We will probe the literary imagination of beauty, nature, desire, and heroism, and ask—through creative experiments and reflections that connect what we are reading to our own lives—what Japanese literature can tell us about what it is to be human.

Atherton

EALC

 

This course explores the literature of the Edo period, a time that saw the emergence of a dynamic market for popular literature, the rise of new dramatic forms such as kabuki and puppet theater, the heyday of comic linked verse and satirical poetry, striking innovations in travel writing and the essay, and radically new approaches to the literature of Japan’s past. Surveying a diverse range of prose, poetry, and drama, we will explore such relationships as those between text and image, stage and page, orality and literacy, print and manuscript, high and low, literature and politics, and Japan and the continent.

Yoda

EALC

 

This semester, the seminar will explore theories and practices of feminism in Japan and beyond. Specifically, we will examine various forms of radical feminist thoughts and practices, including the women's liberation movement, or 'ribu,' which emerged in Japan in the early 1970s. We will investigate the concept of "radicality" in feminism, articulated against the grain of liberal discourses on women's rights and equality. The course will cover a range of topics, including radical feminism and the New Left, precursors to ribu, feminism's relationship with consumer society, the politics surrounding feminist manifestos, feminism and the politics of pleasure, and the organizational politics of feminism. Please note that advanced Japanese reading ability is required for this course.

Oh

EALC

100-level EALC (SF requirement); language course OR area course

Korean 150b is an advanced Korean language course designed to develop academic writing skills and prepare students for participation in scholarly activities. The course begins with the theme of Korean language change as a shared area of study to establish a foundation for academic reading and writing and then expands to topics connected to students’ own research interests. Emphasis is placed on critical thinking, clear argumentation, effective communication, and mastery of academic writing structures in Korean.

Kim, Sun Joo

EALC

Junior Tutorial (with extended paper); Historical survey; 100-level EALC (SF requirement)

This course is to examine history of premodern Korea through select Korea's contemporary feature films. Films and dramas with historical themes and personages have been very popular in Korea. We will examine the content of the films, and investigate how ``true'' or ``false'' they represent Korea's past, how they imagine and invent Korea's past, in what ways films are useful in better understanding Korean history, people's lives and practices.

Park, Si Nae

EALC

Historical survey; 100-level EALC (SF requirement)

Introduction to the literature and literary culture of the Chosŏn period (1392-1910) through deep, slow, and close reading, creative writing, and an exploration of authentic materials held by the Harvard-Yenching Library, Harvard Map Collections, and Harvard Art Museums. Students will gain a solid understanding of key literary forms, motifs, techniques, works, and modes of textual circulation while critically engaging with questions of history of reading, canon formation, cultural heritage, and world literature. All readings are in English, and no knowledge of Korean culture and history is expected.

Alford

LAW

 

This course uses the example of China as a springboard for asking fundamental questions about the nature of law, and the ways in which it may (or may not) differ in different societies. Historically, China is said to have developed one of the world's great civilizations while according law a far less prominent role than in virtually any other. This course will test that assertion by commencing with an examination of classic Chinese thinking about the role of law in a well-ordered society and a consideration of the nature of legal institutions, formal and informal, in pre-20th century China-all in a richly comparative setting. It will then examine the history of Sino-Western interaction through law, intriguing and important both in itself and for the broader inquiry into which it opens concerning the transmission of ideas of law cross culturally.

Jacobsen

LING

100-level EALC (SF requirement)

An examination of selected phenomena in Japanese phonology, morphology, and syntax with special attention to difficulties encountered in the acquisition of Japanese by adult native English speakers.

Elliott

EALC

100-level EALC (SF requirement); language course OR area course

Intensive reading in Manchu archival materials, other historical texts and literary texts. Some texts in pre-diacritical form. English to Manchu translation exercises.

Robertson

PHIL

 

Early (Pre-Qin era) China was a hotbed of philosophical activity: scholars developed careful and fascinating ethical views in the context of serious philosophical debates between major schools of thought. This course focuses on some of these ethical debates between Confucian, Mohist, Daoist, and Legalist philosophers in early China. We’ll read both classical texts such as the Analects of Confucius, Mengzi, Xunzi, Mozi, and Zhuangzi and important contemporary scholarship on these texts. Several moral questions will be of particular importance: What is the relationship between etiquette and morality? What are the most important virtues to acquire? Should we think of morality and moral development as something natural or artificial? Are we justified in caring more about some people (our closest friends and family) than others? We will have a special focus on three important interpretive themes for the course: (1) How can understanding the particular contours of the debates each scholar is engaged in help us understand their overall views? (2) How does each philosopher’s view of human psychology and epistemology constrain, guide, and support their moral theorizing? (3) How can an understanding of early Chinese ethical thought, theory, and debate help enrich contemporary discussions in ethics and moral philosophy? No previous experience or coursework in Chinese philosophy is required for this course.

Puett

RELIGION

100-level EALC (SF requirement)

A study of approaches in the philosophical traditions of the West and the East to the conduct of life. Philosophical ethics has often been understood as meta-ethics: the development of a method of moral inquiry or justification. Here we focus instead on what philosophy has to tell us about the first-order question: How should we live our lives? This year a major concern will be the study and contrast of two such orientations to existence. One is the philosophical tradition focused on ideas of self-reliance, self-construction, and nonconformity (exemplified by Emerson and Nietzsche). The other is a way of thinking (notably represented by Confucius) that puts its hope in a dynamic of mutual responsibility, shaped by role and ritual and informed by imaginative empathy. Offered jointly with LAW 2392 and HDS 2313. (Sections meet separately.)

Gyatso

RELIGION

100-level EALC (SF requirement)

This course spotlights the history of women in Buddhism, both their obstacles and their brilliances. It explores a diverse range of gender conceptions that impacted that history, as well as how issues of fairness, access, safety, and freedom were understood in Buddhist contexts. We range from ancient and medieval histories of women’s renunciation and leadership to early modern textual traditions displaying repressive, subversive, and liberative moments of women’s lives. We also study key contemporary cases involving women’s ordination; women’s leadership; sexual violence; and queer Buddhisms. While gender is an important analytic category throughout the course, we are just as much interested in centering women as a category of people whose histories and experiences require telling. Another major aim of this course is to critically examine if feminism is a tool of justice in diverse global contexts, as well as the place of scholarly activism in Buddhist Studies.

van der Kuijp

SAS

100-level EALC (SF requirement); language course OR area course

Continuation of Tibetan 101a

van der Kuijp

SAS

100-level EALC (SF requirement); language course OR area course

Continuation of 102a.

van der Kuijp

SAS

language course OR area course

Zur mkhar ba was not only a famous traditional Tibetan physician, but he was also a poetician, a grammarian, and writer of epistles. In this course, we will examine his writings in various genres of Tibetan literature and examine a corpus of his letters that shed light on his social history. This is a reading course.

van der Kuijp

SAS

language course OR area course

Tibetan sinitic astrology has barely been studied outside of the Tibetan region. As our point of departure, we will examine a short text on its history written by seventeenth century savant Bod mkhas pa. Thereafter, we will examine several of its earliest discussions.

van der Kuijp

SAS

language course OR area course

This course will examine the breadth and depth of one of the most versatile and interesting scholars of Tibetan history. Being one of the most prolific writers of the 13th century, we will be reading a large number select passages from his main writings. This is a full year reading course.