231 - 240 of 389 results for: HISTORY

Traversing 2,500 years of history, this colloquium begins with conceptions of nature, agricultural time, and agriculture in ancient East Asia, proceeds to look closely at the environmental history of China, Japan, Korea, and Vietnam, and then concludes with environmental issues in East Asia from a contemporary perspective.

This course serves as an introduction to Korean culture, society, and history before the modern period. It begins with a discussion of early Korea and controversies over Korean origins; the bulk of the course will be devoted to the Chos'n period (1392-1910), that from the end of medieval Korea to the modern period. Topics to be covered include: Korean national and ethnic origins, the role of religious and intellectual traditions such as Buddhism and Confucianism, popular and indigenous religious practices, the traditional Korean family and social order, state and society during the Chos'n dynasty, vernacular prose literature, Korean's relations with its neighbors in East Asia, and changing conceptions of Korean identity.nThe course will be conducted through the reading and discussion of primary texts in English translation alongside scholarly research. As such, it will emphasize the interpretation of historical sources, which include personal letters, memoirs, and diaries, traditional histories, diplomatic and political documents, along with religious texts and works of art. Scholarly work will help contextualize these materials, while the class discussions will introduce students to existing scholarly debates about the Korean past. Students will be asked also to examine the premodern past with an eye to contemporary reception. The final project for the class is a film study, where a modern Korean film portraying premodern Korea will be analyzed as a case study of how the past works in public historical memory in contemporary Korea, both North and South. An open-ended research paper is also possible, pending instructor approval.

How Japan and Asia mutually shaped each other in the late 19th and 20th centuries. Focus is on Japanese imperialism in Asia and its postwar legacies. Topics include: pan-Asianism and orientalism; colonial modernization in Korea and Taiwan; collaboration and resistance; popular imperialism in Manchuria; total war and empire; comfort women and the politics of apology; the issue of resident Koreans; and economic and cultural integration of postwar Asia.

This colloquium explores the major themes of Korean history before 1800 and the role of culture and religions in shaping the everyday life of Chosôn-dynasty Koreans. Themes include the aristocracy and military in the Koryô dynasty, Buddhism and Confucianism in the making of Chosôn Korea, kingship and court culture, slavery and women, family and rituals, death and punishment, and the Korean alphabet (Hangûl) and print culture.

Korea and China have long been intertwined in their political, economic, and cultural histories. The depth of this historical relationship has enormous ramifications for East Asia today. This course will investigate the history of Korea-China relations from its deep roots in the ancient past, through its formative periods in the early modern period and the age of imperialism, to the contemporary era. Topics to be covered include formation of Chinese and Korean national identity, Sino-Korean cultural exchange, premodern Chinese empire in East Asia, China and Korea in the wake of Western and Japanese imperialism, communist revolutions in East Asia, the Korean War, and China's relations with a divided Korea in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Particular attention will be paid to how the modern and contemporary ramifications of past historical relations and how contemporary Chinese and Koreans interpret their own and each others' pasts.nThis course will ask students to engage with diverse interpretations of the past and to consider how a common history is interpreted by different audiences and for different purposes. What are the implications of divergent memories of a single historical event for Chinese and Korean political, cultural, and ethnic identities? How are political, cultural, and ethnic identities constructed through engagement with difference? And what is at stake in different constructions of identity?In addressing these issues, students will also engage in social inquiry. They will be asked to understand how political ideology, economic organization, and social forces have shaped the character of Sino-Korean relations. What are the economic and political institutions that influence these relations in each time period? How do ideologies like Confucianism, Communism, or free-market liberalism interface with Chinese and Korean societies and impact their relations?

A series of texts and documents that form the heart of what Marx and Engels called "the colonial question". Discussions center on specific themes relating to each student's research topic and/or interests. The seminar will be organized around a set of core common readings and weekly discussions, supplemented by a designed list of secondary texts and primary materials. Themes include: secularism, religion, state, capital, empire, anticolonialism, gender, democracy, textual and print cultures, cinema, political and legal theory, and history of economic thought. 400-level options allows students to do a two-quarter sequence, with the Spring devoted to writing up the research paper.

This course examines the fundamental role of powerful goddesses in Chinese religion. It covers the entire range of imperial history and down to the present. It will look at, among other questions, what roles goddesses played in the spirit world, how this is related to the roles of human women, and why a civilization that excluded women from the public sphere granted them a dominant place, in the religious sphere. It is based entirely on readings in English.

For four hundred years, the peoples of China and the West have engaged with each other. What happened when worlds and world-views came into contact? In this course, we will explore the experience of encounter and its cultural impact on two largely distinct, but never isolated societies. We will study the history of cross-cultural exchange between China and the West to see how each emerged through dialogue with the other and to understand the roots of our own interconnected world.

Intensive exploration of major issues in the history of race and ethnicity in China, Japan, and Korea from the early modern period to the present day.