A selection of our Fall 2019 courses. For a complete listing, go to Courses.
EALC275/CWL 311 Masterpieces of East Asian Literature
What do fierce warriors, holy monks, thieving scoundrels, star-crossed lovers, and shape-shifting monsters have in common? In this course, we will read some of the great classics of Chinese, Korean, and Japanese literature and explore the rich socio-cultural contexts behind these works. You will gain a finer appreciation of these cultures and hone your critical skills. Works covered include the Tale of the Bamboo Cutter, the Journey to the West, Hongxian the Assassin, and Story of the Faithful Wife, Chunhyang, and the Revenge of the 47 Masterless Samurai.
EALC199 - Animated Spirituality: Religion and Japanese Pop Culture
Learn about the role of religion in contemporary Japanese popular culture.
EALC 412 Modern Chinese Literature in Translation
This course will survey Chinese literature in the twentieth century. We will read the works produced by writers from mainland China, Taiwan and Hong Kong, and examine “modernity” as an emerging concept in the struggles between individual and society, present and past, countryside and city, and the two genders over the course of one hundred years when China underwent the republican era, the rise of communism, the Japanese occupation, Mao's Cultural Revolution, and the explosion of capitalism. Special attention will be paid to seven major writers: Lu Xun, Shen Congwen, Xiao Hong, Eileen Chang, Lao She, Yu Hua, and Chu T'ien-hsin.
EALC 398/550 Writers and Sino-Japanese Cultural Interaction 600-1900
What is the East Asian cultural sphere? How did cultural interaction with Sinitic culture shape the literary cultures of East Asian countries? What role did women writers play in the process? How did attitudes toward China and Japan change with modernity? In this course, we will answer these questions and many other while exploring a wide range of literary, philosophical, and religious texts from the earliest stages of Sino-Japanese contact to the 1900s. All reading will be in English. Earlier coursework in East Asian studies desirable. “Graded” workload for graduate and undergraduate students.
EALC 398 Yellow Peril Redux: America’s Cultural Responses to the Economic Rise of Japan and China (1980s-2010s)
The spectacular and rapid expansion, and widespread perception of menace and domination, of the Japanese economy during the 1980s and then the Chinese economy during the first decades of the twenty-first century facilitated a broad cultural, economic, and political unease and fear in the United States. This unease and fear have played a fundamental role in American culture and discourse for several decades.
This undergraduate seminar titled “Yellow Peril Redux: America’s Cultural Responses to the Economic Rise of Japan and China” bridges the disciplinary gap between cultural and economic studies of U.S.-East Asian interactions. It aims to introduce to students an interdisciplinary explanation of the historical roots and cultural idioms beneath the contemporary economic and political debates concerning the U.S.-China “Trade War” and beneath the broader popular and political unease that deeply impacts people’s daily life and perceptions of U.S.-East Asian relations since the 1980s.
Students will be advised to study U.S. experience with East Asia cross the demarcation between humanities, economics, business and society, and between historical and empirical research. Students will examine primary sources from a variety of genres, including legal cases, political cartoons, news reports, films, and governmental documents from the late 19th century to the present. Our cross-disciplinary approach and transnational topics can help to translate academic research to classroom teaching and address real-life concerns faced by people from various walks of life in this era of community reconstruction via cross-border cultural and economic confrontation, controversies, communications and conversations.
Contact: Professor Dan Shao at danshao@illinois.edu
EALC 550 Cultures of Law in China
This cross-disciplinary seminar introduces students to the historical and cultural roots of contemporary problems concerning law and society in China. This course focuses on historical, legal, anthropological, and fictional readings on “law” (C: fa, ling, lü, li, gui, ze) in modern and contemporary Chinese society from the late Qing to the present. Major themes to be covered include: 1) the changes in Chinese conception of law in different historical periods; 2) cultural idioms about law and social consequences of legal codes; 3) import of western legal concepts and codes; 4) methodology of using legal materials in the field of East Asian studies. Course materials include varied genres of publications: academic writings, journalistic reports, governmental documents, archival excerpts, as well as visual materials.
This course aims at training students to develop skills at transnational research, comparative studies of primary sources, critical review of theories, creative application of cross-disciplinary research methods, multi-lingual reading, as well as ability to identify problems and pose interesting questions and to conduct multidisciplinary research in a crucial field that is growing fast.
Every student is to conduct 4 mini-scale projects to practice research skills and to develop problem-solving ability. The projects include the following topics: 1. Law, culture, and society in fictional stories; 2. Legal documents from the Qing Dynasty; 3. Memoirs on social control without law in Maoist communism (1949-1976); 4. News on contemporary problems concerning power/sexual harassment in higher education (1990s-present). If you have any question, please contact the instructor at danshao@illinois.edu