Asian Studies

This course examines contemporary Japanese society, focusing on issues such as politics, pop culture, demographic change, and environment. The focus is on post-Cold War Japan, with special emphasis on the period after the earthquake, the tsunami, and the nuclear accident in 2011. Included are also the debate about Japan as an aging society with low fertility and the Japanese position with regard to immigration, gender, and hi-tech robotics.

 

This course examines the relationships between imagery and text from late Tang to Yuan dynasty with emphasis on the rise of genre painting. Various literary traditions associated with the appreciation of Chinese paintings are central to explore the appeal of this new subject matter. The course investigates themes shared between painting and poetry of this period. Modern historians characterize the Song dynasty as a period of profound innovation in both painting and scholarship. With the influx of men of common backgrounds to positions of prestige in the bureaucracy, the Song experienced an intellectual re-evaluation of traditional culture that invigorated the pictorial arts. Genre painting, or images that celebrated the lives of commoners, flourished during this period. Previously figure painting was dominated by the portrayal of beautiful people – those who were in court. Why switch to imagery of those less attractive? The course explores possible motivations for the development of this new type of depiction. Was the acceptance of genre painting as a subject suitable for painting encouraged by the new kind of scholar-officials who claimed to be of the common people? What were Song dynasty attitudes towards the common man? What did it mean for the powerful elite to want to view images of those who were in the lower classes? The course draws upon materials in Chinese, although it is not essential that students read Chinese.

This class examines the history and aesthetics of Asian cinema in a global context. This class considers the similarities and differences of cultures by comparing and reviewing Asian films from various perspectives, using the medium of film as a tool for understanding culture. Through this process, students learn the techniques for understanding interculturalism such as self-culture-centricism, cultural relativism and orientalism, and acquire a view of cross-cultural in a true sense rather than theoretical understanding.

The Greater Bay Area (GBA) has become the world's largest urban area. Consisting of Hong Kong, Macau and the nine cities of the Pearl River Delta, in less than forty years it has transformed from a rural backwater to an economic engine of sophisticated manufacturing and services. It has lifted millions of people out of poverty and provided them with new homes and communities. The GBA has also become an important node in a network of megacity regions responsible for much of the world's economic dynamism. For the most part, the GBA has evolved after its economic potential was unleashed by the opening up to Hong Kong and global trade networks. The twin forces of economic agglomeration and urbanization were the drivers of this growth, but were substantially supported by infrastructure development and policy, particularly from individual cities. Yet, it is thought that the region's further development will require a more sophisticated harnessing of agglomeration forces so that the GBA can compete with other highly developed bay areas. Improvements must also be made to deal with substantial environmental and social costs of the GBA's growth. This course is designed to familiarize students with the GBA. The region is more economically powerful, complex and interesting than all but a few of the world's countries. It is deserving of some appreciation. Moreover, Hong Kong has been crucial to the GBA's development and the prosperity of the GBA remains key to the prosperity Hong Kong. To understand why the region is so successful, interesting and important, we will analyze processes such as agglomeration, clustering, migration, urbanization and sustainable development. These processes led the GBA's development and will determine its future—in terms of continued economic development and more importantly in terms of the wellbeing of the GBA's people. We examine how the GBA can function as a cohesive region, but also how the actions of the cities and the diversity of activities within the cities add vibrancy. We also put the GBA's development in perspective, reflecting on the regional culture of the past and what other megacity regions tell us the GBA can be.

This course studies the reception of Japanese art in Europe from works of art and texts by van Gogh, Edmond de Goncourt, Oscar Wilde, and others. By widening the definition of Japonism to include literary texts from Pierre Loti, Gustave Flaubert, and others, the course discusses how and why the idea of Japan occupied such an important position within the fin de siècle European psyche. The course further looks at the impact this image of Japan crafted in Europe had among Japanese writers and artists, and analyzes how the ways Japan was perceived and appreciated in Europe modified the Japanese sense of identity during the Meiji and Taisho eras.

This course surveys the international scholarship on the history of China from the early twentieth century through the present as it transformed around the major academic centers in North America, Europe, Australia, and Asia. We explore how these new paradigms have transformed China Studies and brought the field into productive engagements with broader intellectual currents and debates. The course examines several prominent narratives that drive debates on China's place in the world. By employing these thematic topics as useful lenses and analytical tools, this course delves into the complex processes of cultural, social, and political change over the modern century and their implications in the contemporary era. It aims to equip students with critical thinking abilities and analytical skills to reflect on current socio-political and cultural issues as the topics under examination recur in contemporary China in a global context.