Spring 2016 Course Descriptions
Chinese Language and Literature Courses
The course is designed for students who are of non-Chinese origin and were not raised in a Chinese-speaking environment, or who are of Chinese origin but do not speak Chinese and whose parents do not speak Chinese. The course continues to focus on training students in the four language skills--speaking, listening, reading, and writing with a gradually increasing emphasis on developing intercultural and symbolic competence. Prerequisites: Chinese 1A; or consent of instructor.
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. Prerequisites: None.
The course further develops students’ linguistic and cultural competence. In dealing with texts, students are guided to interpret, narrate, describe, and discuss topics ranging from real-life experience and personal memoire to historic events. Intercultural competence is promoted through linguistic and cultural awareness and language use in culturally appropriate contexts. Prerequisites: Chinese 10A; or consent of instructor.
The course continues to develop students’ literacy and communicative competence through vocabulary and structure expansion dealing with topics related to Chinese heritage students’ personal experiences. Students are guided to express themselves on complex issues and to connect their language knowledge with real world experiences. Prerequisites: Chinese 1X; or consent of instructor.
The course helps students further develop their linguistic and cultural competence in Mandarin Chinese. It trains students to use Mandarin more appropriately and confidently in speaking, reading, and writing. With the expanded repertoire of Chinese language use and the increased awareness of the differences between cultures and subcultures, students are equipped to negotiate their way in an intercultural environment. Prerequisites: Chinese 1Y; or consent of instructor.
The course continues the development of critical awareness by emphasizing the link between socio-cultural literacy and a higher level of language competence. While continuing to expand their critical literacy skills, students interpret texts related to Chinese popular culture, social change, cultural traditions, politics and history. Through linguistic and cultural comparisons, students understand more about people in the target society and themselves as well as about the power of language in language use to enhance their competence in operating between languages and associated cultures. Prerequisites: Chinese 100A; or consent of instructor.
Advanced Chinese 100XB is designed for Chinese heritage language learners who have taken Chinese 100XA or an equivalent course. It guides learners to use their Chinese language knowledge and skills to survey portions of Chinese history and society and to comprehend Chinese cultural heritage in economic and socio-political contexts. Students read and analyze texts discussing cross-strait relations, Chinese people’s basic living necessities, and their changing lifestyles and mindsets since the economic reforms in mainland China. They are also introduced to several important historical figures in modern Chinese history and to modern literary works. In addition to the continuous development of reading techniques for communicative purposes, critical reading skills in the heritage language are also developed in order to interpret subtle meanings in texts. Different styles and genres of Chinese discourses in speaking and writing are further explored along with an increasingly sophisticated vocabulary, phrases, and structures. Moreover, students are required to be able to read both simplified and traditional versions of Chinese characters. The development of critical reading and writing skills enables students to understand more about people in the target culture and themselves, about what determines values and actions, and about the power of language. Prerequisites: Chinese 100XA; or consent of instructor.
Advanced Chinese 100YB is designed for Chinese heritage language learners who have taken Chinese 100YA or an equivalent course. It guides learners to use their Chinese language knowledge and skills to survey portions of Chinese history and society and to comprehend Chinese cultural heritage in economic and socio-political contexts. Students read and analyze texts discussing cross-strait relations, Chinese people’s basic living necessities, and their changing lifestyles and mindsets since the economic reforms in mainland China. They are also introduced to several important historical figures in modern Chinese history and to modern literary works. In addition to the continuous development of reading techniques for communicative purposes, critical reading skills in the heritage language are also developed in order to interpret subtle meanings in texts. Different styles and genres of Chinese discourses in speaking and writing are further explored along with an increasingly sophisticated vocabulary, phrases, and structures. Moreover, students are required to be able to read both simplified and traditional versions of Chinese characters. The development of critical reading and writing skills enables students to understand more about people in the target culture and themselves, about what determines values and actions, and about the power of language. Prerequisites: Chinese 100YA; or consent of instructor.
The course is designed to assist students to reach the advanced-mid level on language skills and to enhance their intercultural competence. Students read the works of famous Chinese writers. Movie adaptations of these writings are also used. In addition to reading and seeking out information, students experience readings by interpreting and constructing meanings and evaluate the effect of the language form choice. Prerequisites: Chinese 100B or Chinese 100XB; or consent of instructor.
A continuation of Chinese 110A, this course further hones students' grasp of essential sentence patterns, grammar points, and vocabulary through the careful reading and translation of a wide range of genres.These include excerpts from philosophical treatises, historical anecdotes, fictional tales and poetry, covering the period from the Warring States Period through the Tang Dynasty. The use of classical dictionaries will be introduced. By the end of the course, students will have acquired a solid foundation for the further exploration of writings from the premodern period in many of the upper division courses offered in EALC and History. Prerequisites: Chinese 110A; or consent of instructor.
This fast-paced course is designed to help the student reach an advanced-high competence level in all aspects of modern Chinese. It prepares students for research or employment in a variety of China-related fields. Materials are drawn from native-speaker target publications, including modern living philosophies, film, intellectual history, and readings on contemporary issues. Texts are selected according to the students’ interests. Under the instructor’s guidance, students conduct their own research projects based on specialized readings in their own fields of study. Research projects are presented both orally and in written form. Prerequisites: Chinese 101 and Chinese 102; or consent of instructor.
One way of tracing the history of a poetic tradition would be by simply looking for early examples of the sorts of texts we now call “poems.” We might look, for example, for formal features like regular meters or stanza forms, line breaks, and/or rhyme, or we might look for particular sorts of linguistic and expressive features like figurative language, or certain heightened or aestheticized expressive qualities that we think of as characteristically “poetic.” In this class, however, we will take a quite different approach to our readings in early Chinese poetic traditions: rather than use our modern notion of what a poem is as our point of departure, we will instead focus on some of the very specific (and in many cases unexpected or even alien) functions that were carried out by ancient communities through song, hymn, incantation, oracle, revelation—to name just a few of the types of early Chinese verbal compositions that might look to us like “poems” of some kind. The focus on the “religious imagination” in this course is intended to direct our attention in a general way to some basic starting questions regarding the way these texts mediate between living communities of human beings and various types of unseen powers or authorities—which might include ancestors, powers of nature, gods and goddesses of various types, or ancient human beings who have been made into cult heroes after their deaths, or alternatively who have succeeded as living humans in becoming “transcendent,” immortal, or enlightened. Finally as the most abstract and general form of unseen power, we might consider poems that allow communication with or from the generative power of the cosmos as a whole as designated by traditional terms like dao 道. Prerequisites: Chinese 110B; or consent of instructor.
Many late-Ming and Qing fictional texts that were once thought had been penned by a single author from start to finish are now being shown to have drawn from many sources, creating a tremendous shift in our thinking about how to interpret them. This spring we will focus on the novel Jin Ping Mei (Plum in the Golden Vase), one of the Four Masterworks of the Ming novel, as a case in point. We will engage in a semester-long reading of the novel, with particular attention paid to conceptions of literary character and the depiction of late Ming material culture. Most importantly, we will be looking at the novel's masterful suturing of popular songs, plays, and material from encyclopediae of daily life, and asking what it means to interpret the novel as a whole given its heterogeneity. Prerequisites: Chinese 100B, 100XB, or 100XY (may be taken concurrently); or permission of instructor.
Vernacular fiction in late imperial China emerged at the margins of official historiography, traveled through oral storytelling, and reached sophistication in the hands of literati. Covering the major genres and masterpieces of traditional Chinese novels including military, martial arts, libertine, and romantic stories, this course investigates how shifting boundaries brought about significant transformations of Chinese narrative at the levels of both form and content.Prerequisites: None.
Li Shangyin 李商隱 (~813–858) is best known as perhaps the most important writer of classical poetry (shi 詩) of the ninth century. His work in this form (or constellation of forms) covers a wide range of stylistic types, and is embedded in a rich and fascinating web of interrelations, both in terms of how he made use of his favored poetic predecessors and contemporaries, and in terms of his lasting impact on work in shi (and ci詞) forms throughout later tradition. In this seminar, however, we will attempt to decenter the shi as the predominant frame for our understanding of Li Shangyin and his work, in the interest of pursuing questions about the function and nature of literary writing and literary value during the late medieval period. To do this means also to place literary writing into context among various sorts of communication spaces, networks, and media that would have shaped the lived world as well as the literary practice of a writer like Li Shangyin. To attempt this is not merely a perverse whim—documentary and bibliographical evidence tells us, for example, that both for Li Shangyin and for his contemporaries and early imitators, the core of his literary legacy lay not in his classical poetry, but rather in his two very popular anthologies of “parallel prose”—a genre of formal administrative writing that hardly seems “literary” at all by modern sensibilities. Our procedure in this seminar will be to treat such seemingly discordant features of the documentary evidence for this writer and his period not as extraneous oddities, but rather as clues toward an enriched and more deeply historicist picture of Li Shangyin’s literary practice, and of the early reception of his work up to the turn of the eleventh century, as part of a distinctively late medieval “media landscape.” Prerequisites: Primarily for graduate students. Good reading command of literary Chinese as well as advanced skills in writing and research will be essential.
Recent comparative studies highlight how “precocious” Chinese aesthetic criticism of novels was compared to the Western counterpart. It has also been pointed out that the intense attention this kind of criticism pays to the textual “patterning” in novels implies a different cultural understanding of what counts as “action” or “event” than what is found in Western narratology. But it is seldom asked: what counts as “pattern”? How does a critic discover “pattern” in a story and a piece of writing? What does this tell us about the formation of resemblance in a certain culture? How does this rhythmic echoing of resemblance—that is, repetition—cast a light on the issue of temporality, which has been found at the core of narrative? And yet as a particular kind of medium, how do novels in print differ from other verbal or visual narrative arts concerning the form of repetition? And what kind of literary and cultural history could we write by following through a genealogy of repetition in Chinese novels from the late fifteenth to eighteenth centuries? These are the questions to be explored in this seminar by putting together masterpieces of Chinese novels, traditional fiction criticism, contemporary theories, and comparative perspectives. Prerequisites: graduate standing.
East Asian Languages and Cultures Courses
Through the analysis of the "love"-related aspects of specific East Asian narratives (premodern literary texts and modern cinema), students sharpen their understanding of traditional East Asian values and, in the process, consider the status of such values in contemporary East Asia. Students develop interpretive skills while exploring the traditional role of Confucianism, Buddhism and Daoism in "love" narratives, on the one hand, and sharing diverse opinions on definitions of love in contemporary China, Korea and Japan on the other. No prerequisites. Open to all.
This class examines the global dynamics and local distinction of literary writings from contemporary East Asia. Beginning with the colonial connections among Tokyo, Shanghai and Seoul during the 1920s-1940s, and moving on to texts composed since 2000 in Manila, Hong Kong, India and elsewhere, the course considers how literary writers have grappled with an increasingly integrated global marketplace in which culture, ideas and people circulate alongside (and as) capital. Discussions will reflect on the confluence of culture and politics in literary writings that treat race tension, ecological crisis, capitalist catastrophe and other themes. Over the course of the semester, we will examine writings by Yokomitsu Riichi, Mu Shiying, Eileen Chang, Amitav Ghosh, V.S. Naipaul, and others. Primary readings will be supplemented by iconic works of cultural criticism, cinema and music. Prerequisites: None.
This semester the course will focus on the impact of modernity on Buddhist Asia, beginning in the late 19th century, with a special focus on Japan where the impact of Western culture was transformative far more quickly than elsewhere in the traditional Buddhist world. We will look at the effect of Japan sending scholars to Europe to study the new field of “Buddhist Studies” as early as the 1870s, and the subsequent effect of academic programs in universities upon the Buddhist religious community in the form of fundamental changes in how Buddhism in Japan redefined itself in response to new historical knowledge, science, and political pressure from the government. The first half of the course will look at the critical and often disruptive discourse within the Buddhist community between 1870 and 1930 and the changes it brought about, such as clerical marriage, the creation of semi-secular Buddhist universities, attempts to fuse Buddhism and nationalism, and the invention of “Buddhist Philosophy”. The second half of the course will examine new Buddhist groups in the modern period and new forms of Buddhist activism in Japan today, such as Buddhist-inspired ecological activities, hospice care, political parties, psychological counseling, etc. Prerequisites: None.
Almost by definition, the imaginary is unreal. The realm of children, dreamers, poets, artists, religious visionaries, the superstitious, and lunatics, it is often discussed as an epiphenomenal curiosity—a creative byproduct of the mind, but a misleading one. In this seminar, we will take imagination more seriously. Through a series of readings, in combination with several invited guests and lectures, we propose to explore how imagination is in fact fundamental to a wide range of academic disciplines, and even to human existence itself. Readings will therefore be drawn from a broad range of communities, from Indian and Chinese literature to Jewish mysticism and Psychoanalytic theory. In February, the course will join with a stand-alone four-week seminar on “Models of the Mind” being taught by David Shulman of Jerusalem University, Spring 2016 Avenali Chair at the Townsend Center for the Humanities. These weeks will culminate in a series of Townsend Center events on dreaming and the imagination that students will be expected to attend. Note that students may enroll in Shulman’s four-week seminar separately through the Townsend Center. Prerequsites: None.
This seminar brings together faculty and students from the humanities and environmental sciences to develop a theoretical framework for the environmental humanities. It explores the complex meanings of the Anthropocene—the era in which human activities have had a significant impact on the earth’s ecosystems—and investigates how new theories of ethics and justice can be made applicable to resolving large-scale, complex environmental problems. http://townsendcenter.berkeley.edu/programs/fate-nature-anthropocene
Japanese Language and Literature Courses
Japanese 1B is designed to develop basic skills acquired in Japanese 1A further. Students will learn approximately 150 new kanji. At the end of the course students should be able to express regret, positive and negative requirements, chronological order of events, conditions, giving and receiving of objects and favors, and to ask and give advice. Grades will be determined on the basis of attendance, quiz scores, homework and class participation. Prerequisites: Japan 1A; or consent of instructor.
This class examines modern Japanese culture through the lens of literature and film. Our analyses of texts and images from roughly the last century will bring us into contact with the political tensions and cultural connections that have linked the literary and cinematic imaginations of modern Japan to the broader dynamics of a global modernity. Among other things, the course will examine literature of the Japanese diaspora, avant-garde modernism, visual culture, atomic bomb literature, and the continuing disasters of Fukushima. Prerequisites: None.
The goal of this course is for the students to understand the more advanced language and culture required to communicate effectively in Japanese. Some of the cultural aspects covered are; pop-culture, traditional arts, education, convenient stores, haiku, and history. Through the final project, students will learn how to introduce their own cultures and their influences. In order to achieve these goals, students will learn how to integrate the basic structures and vocabulary they acquired in the previous semesters, as well as study new linguistic expressions. An increasing amount of more advanced reading and writing, including approximately 200 new kanji, will also be required. Prerequisites: Japan 10A; or consent of instructor.
This course aims to develop further context-specific skills in speaking, listening, reading and writing. It concentrates on students using acquired grammar and vocabulary with more confidence in order to express functional meanings, while increasing overall linguistic competence. Students will learn approximately 200 new Kanji. There will be a group or individual project. Course materials include the textbook supplemented by newspapers, magazine articles, short stories, essays, and video clips which will provide insight into Japanese culture and society. Prerequisites: Japan 100A; or consent of instructor.
This course helps heritage learners of Japanese who have completed 10X to develop further their linguistic and cultural competencies. More sophisticated linguistic forms are introduced and reinforced while dealing with various socio-cultural topics. Close reading knowledge and skills, formal and informal registers, and different genres of Japanese reading and writing are practiced. The materials covered are equivalent to those of 100A-100B. Prerequisites: Japan 10X; or consent of instructor.
This course provides students an opportunity to develop their reading, writing, speaking, and listening skills in order to express their opinions in argumentative discourse. Students read and discuss a variety of Japanese texts to deepen their understanding of Japanese society and people and to improve their intercultural communicative competence. Prerequisites: Japan 100, Japan 100B, or Japan 100X; or consent of instructor.
We read in the original Japanese Edo period hokku (haiku) by Matsuo Bashō, Yosa Buson and Kobayashi Issa (17th c. – 19th c). We consider some of their works in the context of haiga (paintings with hokku written on them). The course approach is to enhance a literary appreciation of premodern hokku through considering the authors and their specific ways of working with the special demands of the hokku/haiku form. By the end of the course the student will be much more comfortable with reading and appreciating premodern hokku and be knowledgeable about three excellent haiku and some of the best of their poems. Prerequisite: J120; or permission of instructor.
This course examines how the Japanese language has been used as a medium for making modern art by reading three writers under the rubric of literary modernism. We will begin with excerpts from Kawabata Yasunari’s novel Yukiguni (Snow Country, 1935-1948) that refract the appeals of classical aesthetics, avant-garde ambitions, and cinematic vision. We will then move on to short stories by Murakami Haruki from the early 1980s, and analyze their Anglicized style and relationships to jazz. We will conclude by reading the Twitter poetry of Wagō Ryōichi, which appeared in the wake of the 2011 earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disaster in Tōhoku, and articulated some of the literary possibilities that are afforded by the serial forms of social media today. Over the course of the semester, these writers will guide our reflections on how the feelings of liberation and disinheritance have animated the aesthetics of literary modernism in Japan. All readings will be done in Japanese. Prerequisites: Japanese 100B (on concurrent enrollment).
This course deals with issues of the usage of the Japanese language and how they have been treated in the field of linguistics. It concentrates on pragmatics, modality/evidentiality, deixis, speech varieties (politeness, gender, written vs. spoken), conversation management, and rhetorical structure. Students are required to have intermediate knowledge of Japanese. No previous linguistics training is required. Prerequisites: Japan 10, Japan 10B, or Japan 10X; or consent of instructor.
Urami (rancor, resentment) has an enduring presence in Japanese literature. Figures overburdened with urami become demons, vengeful ghosts or other transformed, dangerous, scheming characters. They appear in many different genre and eras. The course's topic enables discussion on concepts important for understanding Japanese literary works such as hyper-attentiveness to shifting social status, the role of groupness in targeting victims, the imperatives of shame, secrets, the circumscribed agency of women, and the reach of Buddhist teachings into behavioral norms. For those interested in comparative literature, the course offers an opportunity to take a measure of what Japanese narratives offer as legitimate causes of rancor and revenge. Prerequisites: None.
This is an introduction to research tools for the study of Japanese humanities. The course gives primary consideration to literary sources, but it also presents an overview of basic texts dealing with history, biography, geography, lexicography, and religion. We are in a watershed era in bibliography in which older, book-related resources are giving way to web-based ones; our purpose in part will be to determine the extent to which the older resources have been supplanted. For the second half of the course, we will be joined by Prof. Okuda Isao, who will introduce hentaigana, cursive characters, and other paleograpwwwhic and bibliographic methodologies. Prerequisites: Graduate standing; or consent of instructor.
This course will look at the influence of place, especially sacred space, in modern Japanese fiction. We will read and discuss both modern and some premodern Japanese texts in which place figures prominently, and also discuss scholarship about sacred space in Japan. We will explore how these works describe and confront these spaces to suggest diverse ways of thinking about the sacred and its relation to the social. The overall question is why certain places have such strong spiritual impact in Japanese culture and how and why they continue to do so today.
Korean Language and Literature Courses
With an emphasis on speaking, listening, reading and writing, students will learn daily life expressions, common colloquialisms, and speech acts. The course is also intended to introduce certain cultural aspects through media sources and various activities. Prerequisities: Korean 1A; or consent of instructor.
With special emphasis on reading and writing, students will expand common colloquialisms and appropriate speech acts. Prerequisites: Korean 1AX; or consent of instructor.
A survey of modern Korean literature and culture in the 20th century, focusing on the development of nationalist aesthetics in both North and South Korea. Topics include "new woman" narratives, urban culture, colonial modernity, war and trauma, and diaspora. Texts to be examined include works of fiction, poetry, art, and film. All readings are in English. Prerequisites: None.
With equal attention given to speaking, listening, reading, writing, and cultural aspects of the language, students will learn vocabulary, expressions, and varieties of speech styles beyond the basic level. Prerequisites: Korean 10A; or consent of instructor.
This intermediate course will emphasize reading and writing so that students can reach a comparable proficiency with their already high speaking and listening skills. Prerequisites: Korean 10AX; or consent of instructor.
Students will learn more advanced expressions and use them in reading and writing. Small group discussions will enhance speaking and listening skills. Prerequisites: Korean 100A; or consent of instructor.
Students will be introduced to advanced-level Korean by reading authentic texts and writing short compositions, summaries, essays, and critical reviews. Students will be encouraged to speak using advanced vocabulary and expressions. Prerequisites: Korean 100AX; or consent of instructor.
This is an advanced course of reading and textual analysis in various areas including politics, economics, society, and history. Both fluency and accuracy will also be emphasized in speaking and writing with the goal of preparing students to conduct independent research in Korean. Prerequisites: Korean 100B or Korean 100BX; or consent of instructor.
This course aims to prepare students for research or employment in a Korea-related field. Authentic materials will be used to discuss various issues in Korea. Students will write a research paper on the topic of their interests. Prerequisites: Korean 101 and Korean 102; or consent of instructor.
This course will examine the works of major poets in the first half of the 20th century and will consider the formation of modern Korean poetry. Particular attention will be given to the ideas of lyricism, modernism, and the identity of a poet in the context of the colonial occupation of Korea. Prerequisite: Korean 100A or Korean 100AX.
This course aims to facilitate critical understanding of persistent themes and diverse styles of modern Korean literature through close readings of canonical works from the colonial period (1910-1945). It encourages students to develop broad comprehension of “post-colonial” characteristics of Korean literature. Concurrently, it explores how Korean literature aspired to the expression of the universal aesthetic values and judgment against the particularistic historical condition of colonialism. Prerequisite: Korean 100A or Korean 100AX.
This course surveys modern Korean fiction in the second half of the twentieth century. Beginning with liberation from Japanese colonial rule in 1945, this period in Korea was characterized by a highly charged political atmosphere, due to events such as the US occupation, the Korean War, the division, and the military dictatorship. In response, diverse and intense forms of activism emerged. This course will examine how modern Korean literature has been engaged with shaping historical memories by producing counter-narratives of critical historical and political events. Readings include major works in the genres of the novel, short fiction, and literary criticism. Various visual materials, including Korean films produced since the 1990s, will constitute significant component of course materials. All readings are in English. Prerequisites: None.
This course offers a historical overview of Korean cinema from its colonial development to its present renaissance. It covers Korean film aesthetics, major directors, film movements, genre, censorship issues, and industrial transformation as well as global circulation and transnational reception. In an effort to read film as sociocultural texts, various topics will be discussed. All readings are in English.
This undergraduate course examines aesthetic features and thematic preoccupation of major Korean film authors. It begins with a brief survey of historical development and theoretical underpinnings of concept of “auteur” and advances an inquiry into the application of such theoretical tool in area of film criticism and culture in Korea. In addition to analyzing filmmaker's distinct style and thematic consistency, the course also situates and explores film authorship in relation to larger contexts and dynamics of Korean cinema: industrial structure, government censorship, social changes and cultural phenomena, intellectual development, technological shifts, and discourse of national cinema. Prerequisites: None.
Mongolian Language and Literature Courses
A continuation of Mongolian 1A, This course furthers students' study in listening, speaking, reading and writing Khalkha Mongolian. Prerequisites: Mongoln 1A; or consent of instructor.
Tibetan Language and Literature Courses
This is a beginning course in colloquial Tibetan. Students will develop basic listening, speaking, reading, and writing skills in standard Tibetan (Lhasa dialect). Cultural competency is also stressed in this class. Prerequisites: Tibetan 1A; or consent of instructor.
This course is designed to further develop the student's skills in modern standard Tibetan. The emphasis is on communication skills in vernacular Tibetan, as well as grammar, reading, and writing. Cultural competency is also stressed in this class. Prerequisites: Tibetan 10A; or consent of instructor.
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.