131 - 140 of 201 results for: all courses

This class introduces key literary texts from Japan's modern era (1868-present), locating these works in the larger political, social, and cultural trends of the period. Primary texts include: Futabatei Shimei's Floating Clouds, Higuchi Ichiyô's Child's Play, Natsume Sôseki's Kokoro, Kobayashi Takiji's Cannery Boat, Ôe Kenzaburô's The Catch, and Yoshimoto Banana's Kitchen. Examination of these literary works will be contextualized within larger political trends (e.g., the modernization program of the Meiji regime, the policies of Japan's wartime government, and postwar Japanese responses to the cold war), social developments (e.g., changing notions of social class, the women's rights movement, and the social effects of the postwar economic expansion), and cultural movements (e.g., literary reform movement of the 1890s, modernism of the 1920s and 30s, and postmodernism of the 1980s). The goal of the class is to use literary texts as a point of entry to understand the grand narrative of Japan's journey from its tentative re-entry into the international community in the 1850s, through the cataclysm of the Pacific War, to the remarkable prosperity of the bubble years in the 1980s.

Central issues in modern Japanese visual and written narrative. Focus is on competing views of modernity, war, and crises of individual and collective identity and responsibility. Directors and authors include Kurosawa, Mizoguchi, Ozu, Ogai, Akutagawa, Tanizaki, Abe, and Oe.

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.

Narratives of conflict, pacification, orthodoxy, nostalgia, and novelty through visual culture during the change of episteme from late medieval to early modern, 16th through early 19th centuries. The rhetorical messages of castles, teahouses, gardens, ceramics, paintings, and prints; the influence of Dutch and Chinese visuality; transformation in the roles of art and artist; tensions between the old and the new leading to the modernization of Japan.

An introduction to major monuments, themes, styles, and media of East and South Asian visual arts, in their social, literary, religious, and political contexts. Through close study of primary monuments of architectural, pictorial, and sculptural arts and related texts, this course will explore ritual and mortuary arts; Buddhist arts across Asia; narrative and landscape images; and courtly, urban, monastic, and studio environments for art from Bronze Age to modern eras.

Required Japanese majors. Introduction to Japanese culture in historical context. Previous topics include:shifting paradigms of gender relations and performance, ancient mythology, court poetry and romance, medieval war tales, and the theaters of Noh, Bunraku, and Kabuki.

Interdisciplinary and comparative. Historical, political, sociological, and religious studies approaches. The relationship between religion and politics as understood in the U.S. and Europe. How this relationship has become tense both because of the rise of Islam as a public religion in Europe and the rising influence of religious groups in public culture. Different understandings and definitions of the separation of church and state in Western democratic cultures, and differing notions of the public sphere. Case studies to investigate the nature of public conflicts, what issues lead to conflict, and why. Why has the head covering of Muslim women become politicized in Europe? What are the arguments surrounding the Cordoba House, known as the Ground Zero Mosque, and how does this conflict compare to controversies about recent constructions of mosques in Europe? Resources include media, documentaries, and scholarly literature.

How literary works outside the realm of Western culture struggle with questions such as identity, minority, and the issue of the Other. How the Arab is viewed in Hebrew literature, film and music and how the Jew is viewed in Palestinian works in Hebrew or Arabic (in translation to English). Historical, political, and sociological forces that have contributed to the shaping of these writers' views.nnGuest lectures about the Jew in Palestinian literature and music.

(Same as HISTORY 85B.) This course explores the full expanse of Jewish life today and in the recent past. The inner workings of religious faith, the content of Jewish identify shorn of belief, the interplay between Jewish powerlessness and influence, the myth and reality of Jewish genius, the continued pertinence of antisemitism, the rhythms of Jewish economic life ¿ all these will be examined in weekly lectures, classroom discussion, and with the use of a widely diverse range of readings, films, and other material. Explored in depth will the ideas and practices of Zionism, the content of contemporary secularism and religious Orthodoxy, the impact Holocaust, the continued crisis facing Israel and the Palestinians. Who is to be considered Jewish, in any event, especially since so many of the best known (Spinoza, Freud, Marx) have had little if anything to do with Jewish life with their relationships to it indifferent, even hostile?