Asian Studies

This course examines the configuration of space, place, and identity in relation to languages, gender, and social class in Sinophone literature and culture. Engaging the issues of multiculturalism, linguistic plurality, narrative heteroglossia, and transnational im/mobility. This class probes the concept of the Sinophone and how it relates to, complicates, and challenges China and Chineseness. What is the Sinophone? How does it inform our readings of texts produced outside and on the margin of China and Chineseness? In challenging existing centers of power and hegemony, does the Sinophone form new centers? How does migration during different time periods and across different space shape the cultures of these Sinophone sites? Building on recent scholarship on Sinophone studies, this course draws on postcolonial and postmodern theories to examine a culturally and geographically diverse body of contemporary Sinophone fiction and film.

This course takes a comparative perspective to look into early Chinese and Daoist philosophy. It starts with textual reading, follows with comparative ideas, including freedom and fate, illness and death, disabilities and social exclusion, war and peace, tolerance and toleration, language and social practices, etc. It focuses on group discussions, and research methodology.

Through anthropological and historical approaches, this course delves into religious and spiritual beliefs, ritual practices, and magical material culture in Thailand, offering a nuanced view towards modern Thai society as well as cultivating the appreciation of religious plurality. 

This course examines Chinese leadership. Topics to be covered include the Chinese leadership structure, the characteristics of the party-state, the dynamics between individuals and institutions, the channels of elite recruitment, the educational and occupational characteristics of Chinese officials, the relationship between various elite groups (political, economic, and military), and factional politics. 

This course introduces Asian, European, and American material from the late nineteenth century to nearly the present day, concentrating on social and cultural themes such as industrialization, colonialism, science and race, technology and war, computers and global telecommunications and biotechnology and the human genome project. It is taught as a series of cases illustrating important events and multiple themes. The proposition that modern science and technology have been 'socially constructed', reflecting political and cultural values as well as the state of nature, is examined closely. The course includes theoretical material and an empirical focus.

This course explores an appreciation of the unique aesthetics of fiction and non-fiction film from a holistic perspective.  The course looks at works from author-directors; documentaries, and anthropological films (also known as visual ethnography), which are categorized into different themes; the course them aims to see different expressions of the same theme in different films with a comparative discussion of films from other cultures.

The selected films are all Chinese language films, which means the class will enter the context of Chinese culture through the film text. It is not only the lines told in Chinese and the scenes taken on the ground in China, but the “the Chinese emotional presentation” and "the Chinese way of viewing.” 

The course also discusses a range of possibilities arising from the collision of film as an art form with the Chinese context.

This course provides a general introduction to Chinese archaeology and Chinese history. It explores the origin and development of Chinese civilization through the investigation of material culture and historical texts. Students will learn about the methods and theories of archaeology as applied to the studies of Chinese history and culture.

This course examines various historical networks that flow across the Malay world from the 11th to the 21st centuries. It introduces students to the evolution, characteristics, and impact of commercial, diasporic, political, religious, educational, and media networks on the lives of Malays and other communities in the region. The three themes that recur throughout the course are: how networks are formed and sustained; how they interact with one another; how insights from different disciplines can aid in a more holistic study of these networks.

This course covers contemporary issues of international relations, politics, and political economy in Northeast Asia, with an emphasis on the role of the United States in the international relations, politics, and economy of Northeast Asian countries as an ‘informal empire’. 

This course will use Chalmers Johnson’s Blowback as a textbook to analyze various interpretations of the U.S's roles affecting Korean, Japanese, and Chinese politics, economy, and society. 

Through the study of this course, international students can go from scattered knowledge to targeted "liking" of Chinese films, and even through appreciating representative Chinese film masterpieces, they can have a deeper understanding of the direction and characteristics of Chinese history and culture, and the artistic achievements of Chinese films, thereby gaining a deeper understanding of China, the Chinese people and Chinese culture.