Summer 2016 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 class is designed as a hands-on introduction to classical Chinese poetry, with an eye to developing the student’s ability to read and interpret poems in the original. Through the mutually informative processes of close reading and translation, supported by a selection of secondary writings offering relevant context, students will learn to perceive and articulate the aesthetic, formal, philosophical, and socio-historical features of selected poems thought to be representative of particular poets, periods, movements, and genres. Prerequisite: Chinese 10B or permission of the instructor. Advanced students in Japanese and Korean (with reading knowledge of Chinese characters) are welcome.

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 debates. 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? Prerequisites: None.

Tea has a long and complex history in China and Japan. It has had a role in philosophical, religious, and literary discourse. It influenced, and was influenced by, visual arts, artisan endeavors, architecture, and social practices. This class considers the interaction of tea with arts, philosophy and poetics in premodern China and Japan. Broadly stated, we begin with the early tea origin myths of China then become more earnest in our analysis with events in the Tang and Song dynasties. While we cover briefly Yuan, Ming and Qing dynasties our focus swings towards Japan in the second half of the course where we look at tea practices in the Kamakura, Muromachi and early Edo periods. Comparing how tea was received in these two countries illuminates characteristics of both cultures and provides a unique example of how culture flows between them. Further, there is a dialectic between the ordinariness of brewing and drinking tea with the arts and philosophy and we therefore consider the cross-over of concepts (the movement of cultural “signs”), such as how yin-yang philosophy and the Chinese medical texts based on it created contexts for thinking about tea (Tang China) and how linked-verse poetics informed tea-related social practice (Muromachi Japan). Of necessity, this class devotes a certain amount of time to overview-level historical perspectives (era-specific economies, politics, religions) in both countries, geography, and, to properly situate the tea plant itself, we begin with the basics of tea’s origin and the evolving cultivation and leaf-crafting practices associated with the plant. 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, listening, 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, listening, reading, and writing. This course is the equivalent of Korean 10A-10B offered in the regular academic year. Prerequisites: Korean 1B; or consent of instructor.

Tibetan Language and Literature Courses

This course seeks to develop a critical understanding of contemporary Tibet, characterized as it is by modernity, invasion, Maoism, liberalization, exile, and diaspora. It explores the cultural dynamism of the Tibetans over the last 100 years as expressed in literature, film, music, modern art, and political protest. The core topics include intra-Tibetan arguments regarding the preservation and "modernization" of traditional cultural forms, the development of new aesthetic creations and values, the constraints and opportunities on cultural life under colonialism and in the diaspora, and the religious nationalism of the recent political protests. Prerequisites: None.