Courses

This course studies how literature shapes, narrates, witnesses and intervenes in the experience of gender-based trauma in an East Asian context through a theorized close reading of the Taiwanese author Yihan Lin’s novel Fang Si-qi’s First Love Paradise (2017). Topics to be discussed include conceptions of Chinese femininity and masculinity in relation to letters (wen) and literary lyricism, literature as testimony and healing, as well as literature-inspired contemporary #MeToo movements in East Asia. 

Borderlands tell us a lot about the scopes and limits of different cultures, as well as about the roles that exchanges with geographical neighbors play in shaping cultural identity. Many border sites in Asia have had a profound impact on regional relations and are sources of lasting trauma for the people who live there. Using Inter-Asia as a theoretical framework, this course examines literary and artistic expressions from six Asian borderlands, namely Okinawa (Japan), China's Northeast, the partition between India and Pakistan, the division between the two Koreas, the division between mainland China and Taiwan, and Zomia. Sample syllabus available here.

In modern China, literature has been entrusted with the task of rescuing, rejuvenating, revolutionizing and modernizing the entire nation, and has subsequently played a seminal role in almost all social and political movements in modern and contemporary China, from socialist revolutions to contemporary #MeToo movements. This course will introduce participants to major works in modern Chinese literature and related media forms, highlighting their engagement with the historical development and contemporary dynamics of modern China and Chinese-speaking communities. 

At the moment, the frontier space beyond the Great Wall takes up more than half of the entire Chinese territory. The conceptions of frontier, frontier-heartland relations, unity and territoriality have been crucial to the formation of the Chinese cultural and spatial identity from the ancient times to today. This course will trace the development of these conceptions through a variety of philosophical, cosmological, religious, historical, geographical, and literary texts and images. Sample syllabus available here.

This course explores modern Korean literatures both from the Korean

peninsula and the diasporas. It will introduce participants to canonical works in modern Korean literature, different media forms of the Korean Wave, and well-known works from Korean diaspora communities in Japan, the US, and China. Sample syllabus available here.

This course is an interdisciplinary introduction to Chinese culture through a selection of important cultural productions spanning from the early period (ca. 2000 BCE) to the present.