Summer 2015 Course Descriptions
Chinese Language and Literature Courses
This is a 10-week beginning Chinese class developing listening, speaking, reading, and writing skills in modern standard Chinese using pinyin and traditional characters. This course is the equivalent of Chinese 1A-1B offered in the regular academic year. Prerequisites: None.
The first in a two-semester sequence, introducing students to Chinese literature in translation. In addition to literary sources, a wide range of philosophical and historical texts will be covered, as well as aspects of visual and material culture. 7A covers early China through late medieval China, up to and including the Yuan Dynasty (14th century); the course will also focus on the development of sound writing. Prerequisites: None.
The second of a two-semester sequence introducing students to Chinese literature in translation. In addition to literary sources, a wide range of philosophical and historical texts will be covered, as well as aspects of visual and material culture. 7B focuses on late imperial, modern, and contemporary China. The course will focus on the development of sound writing skills. Please note Chinese 7B can be taken before Chinese 7A. Prerequisites: None.
This 10-week course is designed to develop the student's reading, writing, listening, and speaking abilities in Chinese, and teaches both simplified and traditional characters. This course is equivalent to Chinese 10A-10B offered in the regular academic year. Prerequisites: Chinese 1B; or consent of instructor.
Business Chinese. This course is designed as an intensive six-week immersion course in Business Chinese. The courses will cover intensive instruction in Chinese with an emphasis on communicative skills and understanding language in a authentic environment (mass media, business market, pop culture, Chinese cuisine, etc. In addition to the regularly scheduled classes there will be enrichment courses. Weekly field trips to: porcelain town, tea factory, banks, corporate offices, night market place, industrial parks, National Palace Museum and natural scenic sites. Each week there will be a lecture given by a representative from different trades or corporate enterprises i.e., HP and the American Chamber of Commerce in Taipei. Prior to these special lectures and enrichment courses, students will be given background language and cultural training in the various target topics. Prerequisites: Consent of Travel Study Program.
Please note: Chinese 105 is a Travel Study Program to Taiwan.
This course examines the development of Confucianism in pre-modern China using a dialogical model that emphasizes its interactions with competing viewpoints. Particular attention will be paid to issues of ritual, human nature and morality, stressing the way that varieties of Confucianism were rooted in more general theories of value. Prerequisites: None.
East Asian Languages and Cultures Courses
This course will examine Japanese and Jewish Responses responses to twentieth-century atrocities. We will pay close attention to how catastrophic events are mourned and memorialized through narratives. After being grounded in the historical context, we will analyze eyewitness accounts of the events, memoirs, fiction, feature films and filmed testimonies, museum exhibits, war-crime trials and historical debatespan. We will discuss issues such as the nature of mourning and the process of mourning through art and culture; the memorialization of tragedy; the ethics of the representation of tragedy; revenge and survivor guilt. Throughout, we will be asking about the possibilities, and the difficulties, of comparing responses by different cultures to different types of atrocities. This will require accounting for differences in religious belief, notions of psychology, and literary and artistic form. Is the process of mourning universal? Are the responses to atrocity? Is comparing the Japanese and Jewish cases ethically suspect? How does a nation that has victimized mourn its own victimization? Prerequisities: None.
This course explores the representation of romantic love in East Asian cultures in both premodern and post-modern contexts. Students develop a better understanding of the similarities and differences in traditional values in three East Asian cultures by comparing how canonical texts of premodern China, Japan and Korea represent romantic relationship. They explore how these values might provide a narrative framework or, contrarily, the definition of transgressive acts. This analysis is followed by the study of several contemporary East Asian films, giving the student the opportunity to explore how traditional values persist, change, or become nexus points of resistance in the complicated modern and post-modern milieu of East Asian cultures maintaining a national identity while exercising an international presence. Prerequisites: None.
Japanese Language and Literature Courses
This course is designed to develop basic speaking skills and to introduce hiragana, katakana, and approximately 300 kanji. Emphasis is on both spoken and written Japanese. This course is the equivalent of Japanese 1A-1B offered in the regular academic year. Prerequisites: None.
This course is an overview of Japanese literature and culture, 7th- through 18th-centuries. 7A begins with Japan's early myth-history and its first poetry anthology, which show the transition from a preliterate, communal society to a courtly culture. Noblewomen's diaries, poetry anthologies, and selections from the Tale of Genji offer a window into that culture. We examine how oral culture and high literary art mix in Kamakura period tales and explore representations of heroism in military chronicles and medieval Noh drama. After considering the linked verse of late medieval times, we read vernacular literature from the urban culture of the Edo period. No previous course work in Japanese literature, history, or language is expected. Prerequisites: None.
This course will examine the literary and cultural responses by writers and artists in twentieth-century Japan to the impact of modernity. Attention will be given to the problem of modernity as manifested in attempts to construct identities in conditions of cultural and social upheaval. Topics include the breakdown of tradition and the crisis of individualism; nostalgia and nationalism; war and cultural amnesia; the literature of atrocity; sexuality, power, and the dynamics of cultural influence; cultural authenticity; the postmodern. In addition to works by literary artists, we will examine film, architecture, photography, and dance. Prerequisites: None.
In this course, students will learn how to integrate the basic structures and vocabulary which they learned in Japanese 1A/B in order to express a wider range of ideas in a manner appropriate for many social situations. Students are expected to participate fully in classroom activities and discussions. This course is the equivalent of Japanese 10A-10B offered in the regular academic year. Prerequisites: Japanese 1B; or consent of instructor.
This course aims to develop further communicative skills in speaking, listening, reading and writing in a manner appropriate to the context. It concentrates on enabling students to use acquired grammar and vocabulary with more confidence in order to express functional meanings, while increasing linguistic competence. Course materials include the textbook, supplemented by newspaper and magazine articles and short stories to provide insight into Japanese culture and society. This course is the equivalent of Japanese 100A-100B offered in the regular academic year. Prerequisites: Japanese 10B; or consent of instructor.
Korean Language and Literature Courses
This 10-week course introduces students to beginning level Korean, including the basic structures and hangul (Korean script). Emphasis is on speaking, reading, and writing. This class is for students with minimal or no knowledge of Korean. This course is the equivalent of Korean 1A-1B offered in the regular academic year. Prerequisites: None.
A second-year, 10-week course in modern Korean with about equal attention given to speaking, reading, and writing. Approximately 150 Chinese characters are systematically introduced. This course is the equivalent of Korean 10A-1B offered in the regular academic year. Prerequisites: Korean 1B; or consent of instructor.
Tibetan Language and Literature Courses
This class will explore Tibetan civilization throughout the pre-modern period with an emphasis on literature, the visual arts, ethnography, and the history of Tibet's important cultural exchanges on the broader Inner Asian and Himalayan stages. The overall lesson plan will cover a wide range of Tibetan cultural forms and regions, and highlights the many international links that so animated Tibet itself and were crucial to the politics of Asia for many centuries. Furthermore, the theme of "early modernities" will be prominent in the readings in the second half of the course. Prerequisites: None.