51 - 60 of 80 results for: JAPAN

In the early modern period, East Asian societies featured long-established institutions of learning and traditions of knowledge. This course examines the relationship between knowledge and power in East Asia societies prior to 1900. It explores how knowledge production operated in late imperial China (1550-1900), Chos'n Korea (1392-1910), and Tokugawa Japan (1600-1868). Among the themes addressed are: the state's role in patronizing science and knowledge; major intellectual movements; engagement with Western science and religion; East Asian statecraft; and East Asian understandings of space and geography. nTaking a holistic perspective, it places science and technology in 1) a social and cultural context 2) in relation to other bodies and fields of knowledge 3) in comparison to other societies in a similar historical time period. A socially embedded perspective on knowledge and science seeks to appreciate how politics, society, and knowledge are integrated, and in particular how science and knowledge can be both instruments and sites of political power. By exploring these links, the course will also illustrate how our modern disciplinary categories of natural science,social science and the humanities cannot be taken for granted and the areas of knowledge they cover can be deeply intertwined. nnThe course will also address these issues historically and across geographic regions in East Asia and beyond. The comparative lens and frameworks these perspectives can offer will bring an awareness of the diverse traditions of knowledge production in East Asia. Its examination of East Asian encounters with Western paradigms of knowledge throughout the early modern period will also illustrate how communication occurs across cultural, social, and linguistic barriers and how diverse world-views were managed in these encounters. These encounters of knowledge-exchange between Jesuit missionaries, Ming literati, Korean aristocrats, and Japanese doctors also show how cultural identities were constructed, reinforced, and challenged. These identities, expressed through the mastery of knowledge, are essential for understanding how East Asian reckoned with growing pressures to adopt Western industrial technology and military science in the late nineteenth century.

Japan is often depicted as a country where the past and present co-exist; however, many Japanese openly admit that they do not understand classical Japanese literature (i.e. Japanese literature prior to 1868). This presents a disjunction: on the one hand you have the claim of the co-existence of the past and present; on the other you have an actual gap between classical Japanese literature and present-day Japanese. This disjunction allows for a number of questions to be raised particularly of fictional rewritings of classical Japanese literature by modern Japanese authors. How do adaptations of classical Japanese literature by modern authors frame and present the relationship between classical Japanese literature and the society of their time? What challenges to the frame and presentation appear when the adaptations are compared to the original texts? What other possible relationship(s) become apparent when the adaptations and the original texts are considered together?

Prose, poetry, and drama from the 10th-19th centuries. Historical, intellectual, and cultural context. Works vary each year. May be repeated for credit with consent of instructor.

The complex meanings of ghosts in Japanese culture. Representations of the supernatural in images, drama, oral narratives, prose, film, comics and animation at different moments in Japanese history.

Heian through Meiji periods with emphasis on relationships between the social and aesthetic. Works vary each year. This year's genre is the diary. Prerequisites: 246, 247, or equivalent.

Major paradigms of gender in Japanese performance traditions from ancient to modern times, covering Noh, Kabuki, Bunraku, and Takarazuka.

Readings from Heian, Kamakura, Muromachi, and early Edo periods with focus on grammar and reading comprehension. Prerequisite: JAPANLNG 129B or 103, or equivalent.

Edo and Meiji periods with focus on grammar and reading comprehension. May be repeated for credit. Prerequisite: 246 or equivalent.

Readings in Sino-Japanese ( kambun) texts of the Heian, Kamakura, and Muromachi periods, with focus on grammar and reading comprehension. Prerequisite: 246 or equivalent.