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Sample Graduate Courses

Home : Sample Graduate Courses

ALL 5357: Chinese Cinematic Realisms

Professor Jason McGrath

This course surveys important moments in the history of Chinese cinema by exploring the different styles of realism adopted by filmmakers from the early 1930s to the end of the twentieth century. Drawing upon aesthetic theories of literary and cinematic realism as well as psychoanalytic and Marxist conceptions of the real, the course also places each film in the context of its historical moment in an effort to gain insight into China’s often violent negotiation of modernity during the turbulent twentieth century.

ALL 5358: Chinese Revolutionary Cinema

Professor Jason McGrath

This course examines the cinema associated with the Chinese revolutionary forces of the twentieth century, beginning with the left-wing cinema movement in Shanghai in the 1930s, continuing with the "revolutionary realism and revolutionary romanticism" of the Mao era, and ending with the continuing legacy of, and occasional deconstruction of, revolutionary film during the post-Mao reform era.

ALL 5366: The Nation in Modern Chinese Film and Literature

Professor Jason McGrath

This course explores Chinese nationhood as represented and negotiated in film and literature from the early 20th Century to the present. It examines how China was re-imagined as a modern nation in culture from the Republican era to the Mao era to the reform era, and how alternative national visions of nationhood arose in Hong Kong and Taiwan.

ALL 5374W. Representing the Past: Chinese Myth, Legend, & Ideology

Professor Joe Allen

This course explores the role of early Chinese myths, legends, and historical narratives in the cultural construction of China. We consider how such materials have been incorporated into different cultural formations of later periods, including contemporary popular culture. We are particularly concerned with how this material has figured into the construction of "China" and "Chineseness" in the 20th century. Each of these different textual/cultural settings will be viewed in the interaction between the formation of the story and the formation of its meaning in the social cultural environment. We will analyze texts that contain early Chinese myths, legends, and historical narratives. These include early myths and Lu Xun's rewriting of them in Old Tales Retold, the early historical narrative of Sima Qian's Shiji and its appearance in contemporary film, and various versions of the legend of Mulan, Woman Warrior.

ALL 5682: Romanticism and Empire: Britain and India

Professor G.S. Sahota

Blake wrote, "The Foundation of Empire is Art and Science. Remove them or Degrade them and the Empire is No more. Empire follows Art and not vice versa as Englishmen suppose." How exactly did modern imperialism follow upon Romanticism and why should it not go the other way around? What kind of insight can be had on empire by looking at it from the perspective of art, and what insight on art from the perspective of empire? We will aim to understand what frameworks may exist for interpreting romantic forms and think of ways to elaborate approaches beyond the confines established by Romanticism itself. We will survey the intellectual history of the British Empire from the late 18th to the early twentieth centuries. We will examine literary works and political tracts produced in the Indian world to understand the manner in which Romanticism was articulated in the colonial context and what political projects it made possible or abetted, both there and abroad. How do aesthetic ideologies and intellectual currents travel within the imperial system? What sorts of transformations do they undergo and what kinds of political repercussions do they have in different situations? Is any special perspective provided by examining Romanticism in the colonial context and in languages that are generally non-canonical in the general discourse of Romanticism? To answer these questions, attention will be placed almost exclusively on primary texts.

ALL 5900/Hindi 5710: National Identity in Hindi/Urdu Literature

Professor Simona Sawhney

While questions regarding religious and national identity occupied many South Asian writers of the mid-twentieth century, such questions acquired particular urgency for Hindi/Urdu writers partly because their languages became perniciously associated with different religious communities. In this course we will read Hindi/Urdu texts of the nationalist and post-independence period; our focus will be on works which engage with the partition of the subcontinent and the creation of the new states of India and Pakistan. These works attempt to represent a period of horrific trauma and bewilderment; many of them are colossal in their scope and vision; and yet they constitute a historical legacy often overlooked in postcolonial studies today. We will read the literary texts in conjunction with some of the major political texts of the nationalist period, focusing on selected writings by Gandhi, Iqbal, Jinnah, and Nehru. Paying attention to recurring strains in the readings, we will attempt to understand the strategic and metaphorical burden of terms such as "culture," "religion," and "nation" in these texts. We will also study how the development of Hindi and Urdu as modern Indian languages became closely intertwined with the politics of nationalism.

ALL 5920: Topics in Asian Culture: Buddhism and Literature in China and Japan

Professor Paul Rouzer

Is there such a thing as "Buddhist" aesthetics? What was the impact of Buddhist ways of thinking and philosophy on authors in China and Japan? What role does the Buddhist perspective have for literature? This course will explore these issues and others while surveying some of the many literary forms that have felt Buddhist influence over the past fifteen hundred years. Genres include: sutras; Chinese classical poetry; Japanese haiku and tanka; popular saints' tales and miracle tales; Noh drama; monks' dialogues and autobiographies; and modern fiction and film. Course is open to graduate students and advanced undergraduates; some knowledge of premodern Chinese or Japanese culture is preferred.

ALL 5920: Empire and Culture in Japan and the US

Taught by Mark Anderson

The course is explicitly designed to explore the articulation of culture and empire in a comparative context, Japan and the US. We examine historical, literary, and journalistic materials for the purposes of comparatively exploring the articulation of colonial empire and cultural identity in both Japanese and American contexts. Every class period involves explicit comparison of Japanese and US activities in colonization of the Pacific, attitudes toward racial equality and the rule of law, the Second World War, Vietnam, or the centrality of images of the Pacific War in mobilizing Americans in response to 9/11 and in preparation for the latest invasion of Iraq. The course is a combination of military and colonial history, literary study, media studies, and cultural history. The key is the interdisciplinary linking of these diverse disciplines such that they reframe and challenge one another. We explore the national narcissism involved in the frequent denial of colonial oppression and the commission of war crimes by official and academic spokespeople of powerful modern nations such as Japan and the United States. The comparative perspective makes the narcissism more legible and fallible when the two cases are studied concurrently. Given the consistent rivalry of Japanese and US interests in the Pacific and the continent of Asia, each history of national colonial expansion shed important light on the expansion and presentation of its rival. We particularly focus on analogous instances of historical revisionism and historical denial of colonization and war crimes on the part of elements in both countries.

ALL 5920: Topics in Asian Culture Japanese Popular Culture and International Law

Taught by Mark Anderson

In this course we will read novels, listen to songs, and watch film and anime with an eye toward exploring the historical relationship between international law and Japanese society and popular culture. This will involve observing connections between Japan's shifting international position, Japanese military power, and the directions of its popular culture. In addition to literature, song, film, and anime, we will read Japanese discussions of international law in various historical periods and theoretical discussions of international law and imperialism important today including the work of Carl Schmitt, Giorgio Agamben, and Antony Anghie. Course requirements include 1 page weekly position papers, class participation, and a fifteen page final paper. Non-required course reserve readings will include related and competing theoretical approaches you may explore when you write your paper.

ALL 8001: Critical Approaches to Asian Literary and Cultural Studies

Professor Simona Sawhney

This course begins with the premise that we must first determine what would constitute a "critical" approach to literary and cultural studies, before moving on to the question of how the figure of "Asia" may be implicated in, or indeed, crucial to, the constitution of "literary and cultural studies." Since literary and cultural analysis emerges only by way of reading linguistic materials, our focus throughout will be on the activity of reading itself. We will therefore focus on the work of four major figures of the twentieth century who have, in different ways, examined the usual premises that inform acts of reading and interpretation: Freud, Foucault, Derrida, and Said. The work of all these thinkers questions the received logic of communication that underwrites most types of interpretation, and all attempt a rigorous engagement with the textuality and linguisticity of human life. We will focus on understanding how theories of language, whether or not they are explicitly elaborated, shape the analysis of literature, film, and culture. Towards the end of the course, we will read selections from the work of Gayatri Spivak as well as Rey Chow’s recent book, The Age of the World Target, which thoughtfully engages many of the themes and texts we will read through the semester.