Asian Studies

The Course will include a review on Chinese growing technology sector and its ever-changing competitive internet Universe, and the way Chinese entrepreneurs are reshaping traditional industries (i.e.green industries, auto industry, last mile delivery, micro-mobility, retail, finance, entertainment, artificial intelligence). This course will review Chinese modernization policies, including but not limited to China 2025, China Internet, the recently issued Five-year plan, and their implication in the development of China and impact on China’s business environment and society. Review on Artificial Intelligence, its impact in Chinese society, economy and culture will also be covered. Finally, Chinese One Belt One Road initiative and Chinese pivotal role in the international arena. Overall this course provides students with useful insights for students to understand China not only a supplier of goods and commodities, but also, as a business innovative economy with great potential for internationalization.

This course provides a study of how Korean culture works in the global context, focusing on sociology of religion. 

This course examines East Asia cinemas in the framework of transnationality. It focuses on inter/intra-cultural junctures, stylistics, thematics, and socio-political and historical contexts of cinemas of South & North Korea, China, Hong Kong, and Japan. It also discusses the issues of gender, ethnic, and national identity that are raised and contested in these cinemas, questioning the notions of national cinema and nation-bound culture. 

This course aims to cultivate students’ systematic and critical thinking about science, technology, innovation, and society, especially in light of the transition from traditional China to contemporary China. Differing from the usual courses focusing on this subject, this course will take a social and  critical approach, enabling students to understand and analyze the social, political, and cultural preconditions and impacts of scientific and technological development.

This course studies various sport, health, and cultural issues in Korea. It also explores possible solutions to solve the problems and issues for others in society.

This course is about arts and artists in the Nusantara, the archipelagic Malay–Indonesian world. Attention is drawn to the art making and distribution processes which are not only determined by artists but also involves other stakeholders. This includes critics, museum personnel, gallery owners, collectors, art consumers, interest groups as well as the state. The political, social, cultural and economic contexts in the Nusantara at different time periods are considered to explain the kinds of artworks that emerge. Topics include gender and race in the arts, art and activism, censorship and patronage.

This course weaves together social themes and historical processes for introductory acquaintance with the people of South Asia through the lens of musical performance and its allied arts. While the focus is on the Indian Subcontinent, which largely falls into the nation-state of India, the course also thematically explores case studies from Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and Nepal. This course does not aim for coverage of all regions in South Asia, but rather introduces key concepts that can be applied to open up a window to understanding contemporary South Asian society and its diaspora.

Over the twentieth century, the most famous exports of South Asian music for global audiences have been the “classical” music and dance traditions of north and south India, Bollywood movie soundtracks, and ecstatic devotional singing such as qawwali and kirtan. This course engages students in appreciating these performances as sophisticated art forms; familiarizing them with a diverse range of folk and popular genres, but also delving into the historical and social processes that shape them into the way their exponents and audiences understand them today. 

The course examines how contemporary performers reenact theorization from ancient treatises; how colonialism, nationalism, and migration reconfigured people’s engagements with musical performing arts, and how social groupings such as caste, class, religion, gender, and sexuality shape the way people make and listen to music across different localities in South Asia.

 

This course examines the “Rise of China” by both theoretically and practically examining the increasingly important role of China in the international system. It covers the main features of Chinese foreign policy and reviews various factors that drive China’s foreign policy behavior, including its national and international priorities, foreign policy-making process, national security, and strategic culture. The course then looks at China’s relations with other major actors in the world including both developed and developing states. It also studies China’s “maritime” rise by analyzing its expanding maritime ambitions and capabilities as well as its role in global and regional governance. The course concludes by looking at the future prospects for Chinese foreign policy.

This course examines Hong Kong’s history through the narratives of women, a group often made invisible in history writing, as social actors in the fabric of (post-)colonial Hong Kong. From elites’ households to squatter huts, from brothels, textile factories to convents and schools, from public housing estates, government offices to LegCo Chamber, women of different generations and ethnicities have been caregivers, breadwinners, and pioneers, contesting the prescribed gender role and identity in a patriarchal society. By examining their private lives and public voices informed by their (marginalized) positions interweaved in different social and historical contexts, this course seeks to not only explore how they lived, or how their lives are shaped and reshaped by their own unyielding efforts, but also how their stories can make their ways into narratives and representations in the history of Hong Kong. 

This course examines Asian popular culture in a global and cross-cultural context, especially its role in the production of meaning and construction of various forms of identity. It examines music, fashion, Bollywood, manga, K-Pop, food, sports, and the arts in specific ethnographic settings in relation to 'dominant ideology', gender, sexuality, race, and social hierarchy. It focuses on the intricate interrelation of power and politics, and the ways in which popular cultures are produced, circulated, marketed, transformed and consumed by different audiences.