University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill · Courses
ASIA
166 courses with the subject ASIA, each shown exactly as we captured it from the college's catalog, with every element we hold. Where the wording looks broken, that is our reading of the catalog, not the college's text.
ASIA 124Iranian Post-1979 Cinema3
We examine the ways the medium has been used to incorporate political and social perspectives, challenge the government, and document the lives and struggles of Iranian people. Among the topics explored are Iranian culture and society, gender politics, ethnicity, attitudes about religion, role of children, and various schools of realism. Previously offered as ASIA 224.
ASIA 125ITransnational Lives: Culture, Film, and Fiction in the Iranian and Indian Diasporas3
This course explores the lives of Iranian and South Asian diasporic communities with a focus on the cultures of migration, and their representation in cinematic and literary narratives. Engaging with the disciplines of ethnography, film studies, and literary analysis, this course evaluates various research methodologies, giving students tools to approach the diasporic experience from multiple vantage points. Students will examine how migration and transnationalism shape cultural identity, social narratives, and artistic expression, paying special attention to the ways in which diasporic communities negotiate belonging and adaptation in host societies like the United States.
This course introduces students to Persian literature from classical to contemporary writers in translation to help them understand the efforts of the Iranian literati in addressing issues surrounding love, the sacred, human diversity, inclusiveness, and the rise of the modern nation-state in Iran through the use of literature.
This course introduces students to Iranian women's issues through their literary works. To contextualize, we will read articles and essays on the historical, cultural, social, political, and economic backgrounds. In order to approach these literary works in a more effective manner, we will also be reading various secondary materials.
ASIA 131Southeast Asia before 1800 through Digital History3
This course will cover the history of the territories and peoples of Southeast Asia (comprising the modern-day countries of Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Thailand, Timor-Leste, Singapore and Vietnam), from earliest times to 1800. The course will also delve into debates about the past, who is engaged in such debates, and how to navigate these debates to find reliable historical sources and communicate analysis of those sources for a wide audience.
The history of Southeast Asia from the 19th century to the present. Long-term political, economic, social, and intellectual questions, including the impact of imperialism, the rise of nationalism, the transformation of the economy, the Cold War, and the coherence of Southeast Asia as a region.
Comparative and interdisciplinary introduction to China, Korea, and Japan in the 19th and 20th centuries, focusing on impact of the West, nation building, industrialization, and evolution of mass society.
ASIA 135History of the Indian Subcontinent to 17503
An introduction to major political, religious, social, and cultural events from 3500 BCE to 1750 CE with a focus on Hindu, Muslim, and Buddhist groups before British colonial rule.
ASIA 136History of India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh: South Asia since 17503
This course is an introduction to modern India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. We will investigate major political, social, economic, and cultural issues from 1750 to the present.
A broad, comprehensive, and interdisciplinary introduction to the traditional civilization of the Muslim world. Students may not receive credit for both HIST 138/ASIA 138 and ASIA 180/RELI 180.
A broad interdisciplinary survey of the later Islamic empires since the 15th century and their successor societies in the modern Muslim world. Students may not receive credit for both ASIA 139/HIST 139 and ASIA 181/RELI 181.
The course introduces Asia's historical, cultural, and political diversity by examining some of the global forces that have shaped Asian societies (e.g., colonialism, orientalism, and neoliberalism).
Readings from diverse disciplines illuminate the broad features of South Asia throughout history. Topics include political history and social thought, including gender and caste, and religious and imaginative literature.
ASIA 158Introduction to East Asian Art and Architecture3
This course traces the history of art and architecture in premodern East Asia, emphasizing ideas and ways of seeing and representing that were common or different across East Asia.
This course examines the connection between poetry and performance in the context of Hindi-Urdu literature, particularly the genres of Sufi poetry (qawwali), Bhakti poetry, and the Ghazal.
This course provides a comprehensive overview of the music of South Asia, focusing on India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. The entire spectrum of musical genres will be covered.
ASIA 167Gender, Sexuality, and Social Justice in South Asia3
This course explores questions of ethics, justice, and inequality with respect to gender in modern South Asia. Each unit will probe a different aspect of social justice in order to understand the histories, politics, and expressive cultures of various disempowered communities. Intersections between gender and ethics, politics, sexuality, caste, class, and the environment will be studied in depth.
A broad and comprehensive introduction to Islam from its beginnings to the end of the 15th century, with a focus on Muslim experiences, discourses, and practices. Students may not receive credit for both RELI 180/ASIA 180 and ASIA 138/HIST 138.
A broad and comprehensive introduction to Islam and important developments in Muslim experiences, discourses, and practices since the 16th century and up to the present. Topics include Muslim experiences with modernity, colonialism, and nationalism, Muslim reform movements and social justice activism, and shifts in Qur'an interpretation, Islamic law, and religious practice. Students may not receive credit for both RELI 181/ASIA 181 and ASIA 139/HIST 139.
ASIA 211The Silk Road: Markets, Metaphysics, and Music3
This course examines interactions across the Eurasian continent between Russians, Chinese, Mongolian nomads, Arabs, and Europeans during the last millennium and a half as empires rose and religions, trade, and cultures flowed across this vast space. While we will treat the Silk Road as one entity, there were actually three distinct Silk Roads.
ASIA 228Contested Souls: Literature, the Arts, and Religious Identity in Modern India3
An analysis of how historical interactions between Hinduism and Islam have inspired the creation of philosophies and great works of literature and art that continue to inform Indian society today.
ASIA 229Breakdancers, Vocaloids, and Gamers: East Asian Youth Cultures3
Youth subcultural practices studied across East Asia. Course examines how young people create meaningful social worlds, from cosplay to skateboarding to video gaming communities. Considers how changes in consumerism, body image, education, and family produce a volatile landscape for youth along the Pacific Rim.
ASIA 233Drugs, Sex, and Sovereignty in East Asia, 1800-19453
East Asia's thousand-year superiority in global trade was lost when Britain began illegally selling massive amounts of opium in the 18th century, causing cultural and political changes in Japan and China. This course will analyze these changes in terms of sexuality and political sovereignty from 1800 until World War II.
ASIA 235Israeli Cinema: Gender, Nation, and Ethnicity3
The course explores major periods and trends in Israeli cinema. Focus is given to issues pertaining to gender, ethnicity, and the construction of national identity. Honors version available.
ASIA 255The Feast in Film, Fiction, and Philosophy3
Comparative and interdisciplinary study of feasting and its philosophical underpinnings, with special attention to the multiple purposes and nuances of food and feasting in literature, film, and the visual arts. Honors version available.
We will examine the binaries of sacred and profane love, transgression and the law, self and the other, human diversity and inclusiveness in classical Persian poetry. We will explore the intersections of class, gender, sexuality, religion, etc. We will explore the poems inside their historical, cultural, and social contexts.
This course explores literature written in prisons, particularly under the Islamic Republic. Students will read documents to understand human rights (and violations thereof) from a historical perspective. Since literature, film, philosophy, and theory offer invaluable perspectives, we will examine their contributions in the reflection on human rights in Iran's prisons.
This course surveys languages spoken in Southeast Asia, an area rich in linguistic diversity, which is home to more than five distinct language families and well over 1,000 individual languages. Students will investigate the languages--in situ and in the diaspora--through the lens of descriptive linguistics, and will explore the social, cultural, and political aspects of languages in the region. This course is appropriate for students with an interest in linguistics or in Southeast Asia.
This course examines the history of Orientalism with respect to India, and in particular, the ways in which the people and cultures of India have been (mis)represented by Europeans and North Americans in fiction, travel writing, TV shows, and films, from the colonial period to the present.
Focus on how modern Indian writers and filmmakers have represented the creation of an Indian national identity through such historical periods as British colonialism, the Rebellion of 1857, the Indian Independence Movement, the Partition, and the eras of national integration and globalization.
Introduces students to the geography of South Asia, including an overview of the physical environment, cultural practices, and economic development. Emphasizes the political geography of South Asia and political and social processes such as nationalism and colonialism that have played a formative role in the region.
This course approaches Chinese migration to the United States as both a historical subject and a methodological challenge. Rather than limiting this history to events and communities only within the borders of the United States, we ask how law, geopolitics, and gendered experiences shaped the transpacific Chinese communities. At the same time, we take up the questions: How do we know what we know about the past? and How can we read against the bias of the archive to recover marginalized voices? Students will work with diplomatic records, petitions, letters, personal essays, memoirs to grapple with these problems of evidence.
Provides students with a critical understanding of the political, economic, and social dynamics of contemporary South Asia. Themes explored include the development (or lack of) democratic structures, continuing relevance of caste and religion, emergence of right wing movements, contesting representations of the past, and the prospects and challenges confronting the region.
Explores the conflict over Palestine during the last 100 years. Surveys the development of competing nationalisms, the contest for resources and political control that led to the partition of the region, the war that established a Jewish state, and the subsequent struggles between conflicting groups for land and independence.
Taiwan, Hong Kong and Xinjiang represent three different challenges to the objective of national unification or unity championed by Xi Jinping, the current President of the People's Republic of China (PRC). In this class we will explore how the past, present and future of these three different cases might affect not only Xi's ''Chinese Dream'' and the trajectory of the People's Republic, but also global affairs and our understanding of political subjectivity, identity, and nation-building.
This course provides an introduction to Islamic law in its connection to religious ethics and diverse ritual practices, both in the premodern and modern periods, and through an analysis of local contexts and global flows of ideas and practices that determine what is considered "Islamic" about laws, ethics, and practices.
This course focuses on how Hindu gods and goddesses are experienced in South Asia through analysis of literature and art, including texts, visual representations, film, comic books, performance, and ethnography. We will also examine key Hindu concepts (dharma, karma, and caste) in Hindu religious narratives. A key component of the course is oral communication. Honors version available.
ASIA 281The Pacific War, 1937-1945: Its Causes and Legacy3
An examination of the origins of the Pacific War, the course of this bitter and momentous conflict, and its complex legacy for both Asia and the United States.
To put the recent transformation of the People's Republic of China in context, the course examines the different facets of Maoism that governed the country in its early years. It highlights Maoism as a global force that paved the way for China's re-integration into the world order. Honors version available.
ASIA 285Monks, Magic, & Meditation: Theravada Buddhism Across Space and Time3
This course explores the Theravada school of Buddhism: its ethical and philosophical teachings, social and civic norms it has chartered in Southeast Asia and Sri Lanka, and the forms and networks it has taken over time and across the globe focusing on the key tropes of monks, magic and meditation.
This course surveys Shinto, Buddhism, Shugendo, and Christianity in premodern Japan, tracing their development from early kami worship through the early modern period. Students will examine themes such as the relationship between religion and the state, gender, material and visual culture, and cross-cultural exchange through historical texts, visual narratives, and ritual practices. Creative projects reimagine religious traditions and sacred spaces, using artistic expression alongside cultural and historical analysis to illuminate the role of religion in premodern Japanese society.
This course surveys Shinto, Buddhism, Christianity, and the New Religions in modern and contemporary Japan, tracing their transformations from the Meiji period to the present. Students will examine themes such as nationalism, gender, popular culture, and everyday practice through historical texts, ethnographies, and visual media. Creative projects reimagine religious practices and narratives, using artistic expression alongside cultural and historical analysis to illuminate the role of religion in modern Japanese society.
ASIA 300The Buddhist Tradition: India, Nepal, and Tibet3
Examines the diverse beliefs, practices, and cultures associated with Buddhism in the Himalayan regions of India, Nepal, and Tibet. Topics include Buddhism's development and spread, the cultural dynamics of Himalayan societies, monasticism, folk religion, revivalism, tourism, gender, globalization, and the role of the state in shaping Buddhist life and culture.
ASIA 320Chinese Landscape Representation in the Second Millennium3
This course delves into the theme of landscape, or "mountains and waters" (shanshui), which has been a central subject of artistic expression in China since the tenth century. We will explore a selection of landscape paintings from the tenth century through to the early eighteenth century. Students will be introduced to key interpretive approaches for understanding and examining landscapes as both artistic and social entities in pre-modern China.
ASIA 321Conflicts and Their Afterlives: The Long 20th Century in Southeast Asia4
Southeast Asia in the 20th century was the site of intense struggles for independence, ideological supremacy, and survival. This course surveys the history of these conflicts and reckons with their legacies and the ways in which Southeast Asians today remember and memorialize these events. After three weeks of in-class learning, students will travel to Laos to explore historical and memorial sites.
ASIA 324Vietnamese Foodways: History, Identity, and Globalization3
Vietnamese cuisine is one of the world's most celebrated culinary traditions. This course explores Vietnamese foodways as a lens for understanding history, culture, migration, and globalization. Students examine how geography, dynasties, colonialism, war, and diaspora shaped Vietnamese cuisine, from rice agriculture and ritual foods to iconic dishes such as pho and banh mi. Through readings, films, and experiential learning - including cooking labs, restaurant ethnography, food memory interviews, and digital mapping - students investigate how food expresses identity, power, and cultural exchange. Vietnamese cuisine serves as a case study for exploring broader questions about culture, globalization, and everyday life.
We examine works written by Middle Eastern women. We will begin with reading speeches and short stories in the 1860s. We will focus on topics such as Middle Eastern women and feminism and the West; women and nationalism; women and colonialism; women and patriarchy; women, sexuality, and religion.
ASIA 330Melancholy Japan: Myth, Memory, and Everyday Life3
Ethnographic study of the profound social and cultural transformations that accompanied the capitalist modernization of Japan. Considers the emergence of native ethnology and state interventions into everyday life.
ASIA 331Cracking India: Partition and Its Legacy in South Asia3
What happened when the British carved Pakistan out of the predominately Muslim corners of India? Readings and films focus on the causes and consequences of this event, the Partition of India. Honors version available.
Explores Valmiki's Ramayana, alternate versions of the story, its performance in theater, and its role in politics. Students may not receive credit for both ASIA 332/RELI 378 and ASIA/RELI 382.
ASIA 333The Mahabharata: Remembered and Reimagined3
Explores Vyasa's Mahabharata as well as adaptations of the story in literature, theater, and film, with a focus on ethics and moral dilemmas in the story. Students may not receive credit for both ASIA 333/RELI 379 and ASIA/RELI 383.
This course introduces cultural productions of East Asia since the 20th century. We will learn about literature, film, food, philosophy, and political struggles of the nations that are grouped in the geographical category of East Asia. This course investigates those cultural productions within the frameworks of colonialism, globalization, gender relations as well as nationalism.
ASIA 350Transpacific Narratives: Oral Histories of Asian America3
This course explores the diverse and complex identities of Asian Americans in the U.S., addressing the historical and contemporary issues shaping their experiences. Beginning with an overview of Asian American history and demographics, students will examine topics like social positionality, political struggles, identity formation, gender, sexuality, and family dynamics. A unique aspect of the course is an oral history project focused on Asian Americans in the U.S. South. Through critical analysis and personal narratives, students will engage with the multifaceted nature of Asian American identities and their communities.
Drawing from Asian American Studies and Asian Studies, the course explores the political histories and lived experiences of Southeast Asians and Southeast Asian Americans in North Carolina. Students will consider issues relevant to NC Southeast Asian communities such as food justice, labor organizing, mental health support, anti-racism work, transnational connections, etc. Course materials will include both written academic works and first-person narrative accounts from local community members.
ASIA 358Religion and Tradition in Israeli Cinema, TV, and Literature3
This research-intensive course focuses on the ways religion and religious practices are represented in Israeli literature and media. The greater part of the semester will explore the variety of religious traditions in Israel within the framework of Zionist thought, gender and sexuality issues, and ethnic differences.
Analyzing the relationship between the diaspora communities and their new surroundings by drawing on theories of migration, narration, and identity, we will examine the literature born out of this discourse. We will shed light on the historical, cultural, and aesthetic value of this literary production in the Middle East.
ASIA 360Contemporary Asian American Literature and Theory3
This course will explore contemporary Asian American literature and theory and will examine how Asian American literature fits into, yet extends beyond, the canon of American literature.
This course is an examination of the histories, social organization, and cultures of the Chinese diaspora in the Asia-Pacific region, focusing on contemporary issues in the cultural politics and identities of "overseas Chinese." Previously offered as ANTH/ASIA 578.
ASIA 375Memory, Massacres, and Monuments in Southeast Asia3
The past in Southeast Asia's present, focusing on global, national, and local processes; individual and collective memory; and the legacies of violent death.
ASIA 379Cowboys, Samurai, and Rebels in Film and Fiction3
Cross-cultural definitions of heroism, individualism, and authority in film and fiction, with emphasis on tales or images that have been translated across cultures. Includes films of Ford, Kurosawa, and Visconti. Honors version available.
ASIA 380Almost Despicable Heroines in Japanese and Western Literature3
Authors' use of narrative techniques to create the separation between heroines and their fictional societies and sometimes also to alienate readers from the heroines. Austen, Flaubert, Ibsen, Arishima, Tanizaki, Abe.
Exploration of the major religious traditions of South Asia. Focuses on the beliefs and practices associated with different traditions, and the ways that these relate to one another and to broader political, historical, and cultural formations. Also addresses questions of modernization, reform, communal violence, and other transformations of religious life. Students will engage with a diverse array of sources, from epic literature and devotional poetry to visual art, architecture, and performance traditions.
ASIA 382The Story of Rama in Indian Culture--Experiential3
Explores Valmiki's Ramayana (story of the Hindu god Rama), alternate versions of the story, its performance in theater, and its role in politics. Students work outside of class to stage scenes from the Ramayana, open to the public. Students may not receive credit for both ASIA 332/RELI 378 and ASIA/RELI 382.
ASIA 383The Mahabharata: Remembered and Reimagined--Experiential3
Introduction to the classical Mahabharata as well as modern retellings of the epic in contemporary literature, film, and theater of India. Students work outside class to stage one or more scenes from the Mahabharata, open to the public. Students may not receive credit for both ASIA 333/RELI 379 and ASIA/RELI 383.
ASIA 384Religion and Globalization in Southeast Asia3
How does globalization affect religious life? How do historical, cultural, and religious traditions mediate the experience of globalization in particular locales? This course analyzes the forces and practices associated with political-economic and cultural globalization in Southeast Asia and explores the religious transformations and innovations that these processes have inspired.
ASIA 387Disciplining the Body and Mind: The Martial Arts of East Asia in Religion, History, and Culture3
This course offers an introduction to the history and practice of East Asian martial arts. We will explore the social, political, and cultural contexts of the martial arts, from the classical period to the present. Integral to this course is a practical component involving embodied experience with martial arts training.
This course introduces Asian and transnational Asian films that engage with themes of gender, family, sexuality and citizenship. The narrative framework of immigration and diaspora between Asia and the West will allow us to explore topics such as transnational family, gender roles and generational differences, and East-West division and intersections, with approaches and theories of cultural studies and ethnography. The films we view in this course include works and directors from various Asian countries with English subtitles, and accompanied by various formats of scholarly and theoretical readings.
ASIA 418Family and Gender in Early Modern China and Korea3
This course explores family and kinship in early modern China and Korea through the lens of gender and sexuality. In particular, it invites students to think beyond the bias that women in premodern East Asia were victims of patriarchy to understand their active participation in their world-making as well as their dynamic imagination and expression through writing, working, learning, loving.
ASIA 420Constructing Femininity: Women in Chinese Painting3
This course examines issues of femininity and sexuality in Chinese painting from the Han Dynasty (206 B.C.-220 A.D.) to the end of dynastic China in the nineteenth century. Course topics include the ways in which pictures of women help to craft the notion of femininity in pre-modern Chinese society and the differing roles of women as painters, patronesses, and collectors.
ASIA 425Beyond Hostilities: Israeli-Palestinian Exchanges and Partnerships in Film, Literature, and Music3
Focuses on the various collaborations, exchanges, and mutual enrichment between Israelis and Palestinians in the realm of culture, particularly literature and cinema. These connections include language (Israeli Jewish authors writing in Arabic and Palestinian writers who choose Hebrew as their language of expression), collaborating in filmmaking, and joint educational initiatives.
ASIA 426IInsurgency Art Emergency: Conflicted Stories, Creative War in Modern Asia and the Middle East3
Course examines the concept and histories of small wars in Asia and the ME since 1945. Focuses on interdisciplinary methods using art, films, and novels as modes of analysis working with material culture, oral history, archival documents, photographs, and maps to produce reinterpreted accounts of asymmetrical warfare in Asia. Uses Malayan Emergency, Indonesian wars, Vietnamese and Lebanese civil wars, ethnic conflicts in Myanmar and Türkiye, and US Occupation of Iraq to problematize the idea of "small wars" and the role of ethnic and religious identities across wider Asian conflicts and the various artistic approaches to making sense of these wars.
ASIA 427Cold War Culture in East Asia: Transnational and Intermedial Connections3
This course introduces students to the specific contours that the Cold War accrued in East Asia. Focusing on literature and film, it explores what the fall of the Japanese Empire and the emergence of the post-1945 world meant across the region.
The formation and transformation of values, identities, and expressive forms in Southeast Asia in response to forms of power. Emphasis on the impact of colonialism, the nation-state, and globalization.
This course aims to explore Persian Sufism, its foundation, Sufi practices and doctrines, and Sufi themes in literature. By looking at its development, we will examine the nature of Sufism, the controversies and debates, and the influence of Sufism on the literary dimension of the Islamic world.
ASIA 435The Cinemas of the Middle East and North Africa3
This course explores the social, cultural, political, and economic contexts in which films are made and exhibited and focuses on shared intra-regional cinematic trends pertaining to discourse, aesthetics, and production.
ASIA 436Language, Exile, and Homeland in Zionist Thought and Practice3
Employing Zionist and post- and anti-Zionist documents, treatises, and mostly literary and cinematic texts, this class will focus on the relations between language, Jewish-Israeli identity, and the notion of homeland. Previously offered as HEBR 436.
An analysis of the roles of women and men in Indian societies from the early to the modern periods. Topics include the cultural construction of gender and sexuality; beauty and bodily practices; gender and religion; gender and politics; race, imperialism, and gender. Previously offered as HIST/ASIA 556.
ASIA 441Religion, Co-existence, and Conflict in Pre-Colonial India3
This course traces the fascinating history of material, cultural, and theological exchanges and conflicts between individuals belonging to two of the world's major religions: Hinduism and Islam. Throughout the course we will also analyze how modern commentators have selectively used the past to inform their understandings of the present. Previously offered as HIST/ASIA 555.
ASIA 442Postcolonial Literature of the Middle East3
This course introduces students to postcolonial literature and theory. The main focus in the course is on literary texts and literary analysis. However, we will use postcolonial theory to engage critically with the primary texts within a postcolonial framework. We will explore language, identity, physical and mental colonization, and decolonization.
ASIA 447IGender, Space, and Place in the Middle East3
Examines gender, space, and place relationships in the modern Middle East. Investigates shifting gender geographies of colonialism, nationalism, modernization, and globalization in this region. (GHA)
ASIA 453Global Shangri-La: Tibet in the Modern World3
An examination of the history, society, and culture of modern Tibet and its imagination in the context of international politics and from a multidisciplinary perspective.
ASIA 462The Arab-Jews: Culture, Community, and Coexistence3
This course is designed to examine Jewish life in Arab lands in the last century by examining culture, language, and the communal life that the Arab-Jews shared with their neighbors.
This course provides an in-depth examination of the behavioral principles and performances of five core Asian economic systems: Japan, China, Taiwan/South Korea, North Korea and Thailand.
ASIA 471Gender and Sexuality in Middle Eastern Literature3
We examine gender and sexuality in literature written by various authors from the Middle East. Our discussions will focus on the significance of sexuality, harems, same-sex desire and homosexuality, construction of female sexuality, masculinity, contraception and abortion, the institution of marriage, gay/lesbian underground subcultures, and social media as sexual outlet.
This course explores "queer" expressions in Chinese literature and visual culture from 1949 through the twenty-first century. It surveys a combination of all-time classics and lesser-known cultural texts featuring non-heteronormative sexual desire and gender-bending performance. We mobilize queer as a broad site of critique beyond Western models of the concept, asking not only how queer challenges normative bodyminds, but also how it negotiates notions of time, space, affect, and the neoliberal order.
This seminar draws on feminist and philosophical theory, including the works of Plato, Butler, and Foucault, as well as postcolonial theory, to explore the categories of sex and gender in South Asian religions. We also analyze the moral cultivation of the self in relation to gender identity in South Asia.
The study of the influence of Western texts upon Japanese authors and the influence of conceptions of "the East" upon Western writers. Goldsmith, Voltaire, Soseki, Sterne, Arishima, Ibsen, Yoshimoto, Ishiguro.
This course approaches constructions of gender and sexuality in Muslim societies in diverse historical and geographical contexts. It focuses on changing interpretations of gender roles and sexual norms. Themes include gender in Islamic law, sexual ethics, masculinity, homosexuality, marriage, and dress.
This course explores Muslim women scholars, activists, and movements that have, over the course of the past 150 years, participated in the debate about the compatibility and relationship of Islam and feminism. It offers an introduction to feminist debates about religion and patriarchy focusing on Islam as 'other' and juxtaposes it critical analysis of contextual expressions of Muslim and Islamic feminist activists, thinkers, and movements that challenge and change gender norms and practices.
ASIA 487Mountains, Pilgrimage, and Sacred Places in Japan3
This course explores the role that mountains and pilgrimage have played in Japanese cosmology and how they relate to methodology of studying place and space.
This course discusses the development of Shinto in Japanese history and covers themes such as myths, syncretism, sacred sites, iconography, nativism, religion and the state, and historiography.
Permission of the department. For the student who wishes to create and pursue a project in Asian studies under the supervision of a selected instructor. Course is limited to three credit hours per semester.
Subject
ASIA
Credits (min)
1
Credits (max)
3
Credit unit
Credits
Type
course
Repeatable
May be repeated for credit; may be repeated in the same term for different topics; 12 total credits.
ASIA 50First-Year Seminar: The Samurai: Gender and Power in Japanese History3
Examines the history of the samurai, the hereditary, elite warrior population that emerged as a new social and political force in Japan in the 12th century and which ruled, largely unchallenged, until the Meiji Restoration of 1868. In the modern era, frequent reinventions situated the samurai as core to understanding ''traditional'' Japan, as well as vague and aphoristic notions of the Japanese spirit and Japanese masculinity.
ASIA 52First-Year Seminar: Food in Chinese Culture3
Examines the cultural practice and meanings of food, cooking, eating, and drinking through Chinese literature and cinema. Main themes include food and rituals, gourmandism and poetic taste, cannibalism and the grotesque, and hunger and revolution.
ASIA 522Beauty and Power in the Classical Indian World3
This course combines readings in representative literary cultures in Sanskrit and several other literary languages from India's classical period in translation, emphasizing poetry and related aesthetic theories, with scholarly readings on Sanskrit poetics, and the literary history of the period. Seminar format.
This course will focus on revolutionary change in the Middle East during the last century, emphasizing internal social, economic, and political conditions as well as international contexts.
This course explores changing interactions between the Middle East and the West, including trade, warfare, scientific exchange, and imperialism, and ends with an analysis of contemporary relations in light of the legacy of the past.
ASIA 55First-Year Seminar: Kung-Fu: The Concept of Heroism in Chinese Culture3
Film, history, novels, and theater are used to explore the rich, complex kung-fu tradition in Chinese culture from ancient to modern times, as well as its appropriation in foreign films.
This course examines the histories, representations, and cultural perceptions surrounding bandits and rebels in modern India. The representations of bandits and rebels are studied in the light of the emergence of nationalism, shifting notions of gender and masculinity, race relations, and emergence of capitalist structures.
ASIA 56First-Year Seminar: Writing Women in Modern China3
Compares the rhetoric of equality between the sexes presented by late Qing, May Fourth, and communist thinkers to perspectives on gender and society by 20th-century Chinese women writers. Honors version available.
ASIA 57First-Year Seminar: Dis-Orienting the Orient3
Examines how the East is constructed as the Orient in different historical periods: 19th-century European colonialism, 1950s to 1960s Hollywood films, contemporary Japanese animation, and the global war on terrorism.
A wide-ranging exploration of America's longest war, from 19th-century origins to 1990s legacies, from village battlegrounds to the Cold War context, from national leadership to popular participation and impact.
Permission of the instructor. A survey of Islamic mysticism, its sources in the Qur'an and the Prophet Muhammad, and its literary, cultural, and social deployment in Arab, Persian, Indic, and Turkish regions.
A survey of the formation of Islamic traditions in the subcontinent from the eighth century to the present, with emphasis on religion and politics, the role of Sufism, types of popular religion, and questions of Islamic identity.
ASIA 583Religion and Culture in Iran, 1500-Present3
Iran from the rise of the Safavid empire to the Islamic Republic. Topics include Shi'ism, politics, intellectual and sectarian movements, encounters with colonialism, art and architecture, music, literature.
This course explores sexual norms and practices in Muslim contexts in the premodern and modern periods. It considers theories from sexuality, gender, and queer studies, and focuses on the contextual production of sexual norms, going beyond the sex and gender binary, and reflecting on a diverse range of sexual practices in Muslim communities and societies, analyzing concepts such as power, pleasure, control, as they are mapped onto and lived in diverse Muslim bodies.
This course examines how religious food practices have developed over time in East Asia. By exploring the historical roots and transnational spread of these traditions, we will analyze how religious communities have preserved, transformed, and adapted their foodways over time. Honors version available.
ASIA 59First-Year Seminar: Media Masala: Popular Music, TV, and the Internet in Modern India and Pakistan3
Explores different examples of broadcast and digital media (music videos, soap operas and reality shows, radio, and social media) with respect to history, gender, sexuality, globalization, environment, religion, regionalism, and activism.
ASIA 60First-Year Seminar: Israeli Culture and Society: Collective Memories and Fragmented Identities3
The course explores selected themes and case studies pertinent to culture and society in modern Israel, with emphasis on debates about "Israeliness" in various cultural and social arenas.
ASIA 61First-Year Seminar: A Tour of South Asia's Regional Art Cinemas3
Students watch and analyze art films by filmmakers working in various languages and regions of South Asia. Students are introduced to the aesthetics and themes that have shaped the various regional cinemas of South Asia. Course materials introduce students to some of the formal elements of filmmaking and provide cultural and historical context.
ASIA 65First-Year Seminar: Philosophy on Bamboo: Rethinking Early Chinese Thought3
This course will introduce students to the main works and themes in early Chinese thought from the earliest recorded writings down to the Qin unification in 221 BCE.
Presents recent anthropological research on the People's Republic of China. In addition to social sciences sources, fictional genres are used to explore the particular modernity of Chinese society and culture.
ASIA 69First-Year Seminar: Wars and Veterans: Iran, Iraq, and Afghanistan3
In this seminar, we will explore the various ways that Iran-Iraq, United States-Iraq, and United States-Afghanistan wars have been portrayed in literature, film, and photography. We will deepen and enrich our understanding of war experienced by both veterans and civilians. We will also read articles on war criticism and psychology.
ASIA 71First-Year Seminar: Asia in Iberian Converso Literature, 1500s-1650s3
This course examines how 16th- and 17th-century Iberian authors of Jewish heritage imagined and represented Chinese, Filipinos, Japanese, and Indonesians in their writings (e.g. plays, historical narratives, economic treatises, travel accounts, maps, etc.). We explore how these authors' representations of Asians not only dialogued with various interwoven variables (political, economic, and religious factors), but also revealed the historically complex issue regarding notions of personal identities and nationhood.
ASIA 72First-Year Seminar: Transnational Korea: Literature, Film, and Popular Culture3
This first-year seminar introduces students to the history of transnational imaginations in modern Korea. Using literature, film, and television, it explores the ways in which Korean cultural producers have used narratives of transnational travel and exchange to rethink Korea's place in the world and refashion the bounds of Korean identity.
ASIA 720Methods and Themes in Asian and Middle Eastern History3
This graduate-level course introduces recent scholarly publications in the broad field of Asian history. Covered themes include environmental history and space, colonial and urban contexts, daily life, and margins.
ASIA 721Transnational Feminisms of the Middle East and South Asia3
This seminar introduces students to transnational feminisms of the Middle East and South Asia. It examines a diverse range of women's thought and responses to the global and the local in this part of the world, with a focus on theoretical paradigms and tools to better understand women in a global context. Research methods also emphasized in this seminar.
ASIA 722Asia in Motion: TransAsia and Transpacific Approaches to the Study of Asia3
This graduate seminar examines theoretical and research texts related to the mobility of people, languages, ideas, and cultures across Asia and the Pacific. This course aims to critically investigate Asia's past and present with TransAsia and Transpacific perspectives through examining five main themes related to Asian mobilities; 1) Empires, 2) Labor, 3) Transnational Family, 4) Language and Media, and 5) Citizenship.
This course explores sound practices and sensations arising around lives in transnational Asia. Transnational, meaning anything that challenges the notion of rigid boundary of the nation-state and citizenship. Indigeneity, immigration, colonialism, exile, and diaspora are all part of the sonic discourses of this course. The sounds and listening practices found in a wide range of Asia in general (East, South Southeast, West Asia, and Asian America/West) are covered in this course.
ASIA 725Critical Approaches to Asian and Middle Eastern Studies3
This interdisciplinary graduate seminar is a foundational course for the M.A. in Asian and Middle Eastern Studies. The seminar introduces critical theories and disciplinary and interdisciplinary methodologies in studying South Asia, East Asia, and the Middle East. It studies the regions in part and as a whole by applying regional, transnational and global lenses, taking seriously relevant languages, cultural formations, histories, and philosophies. The seminar employs theoretical, ontological and epistemological terrains to critically analyze texts/media.
ASIA 73First-Year Seminar: Popular Culture in the Arab World3
This first-year seminar introduces students to aspects of popular culture in the Arab world, taking it as an entry point for understanding the histories, cultures, and societies of the region. The course relies on anthropological readings alongside direct engagements with examples of popular culture from the Arab world.
ASIA 730The East Asian Anthropocene: Culture, Climate and Colonialism in Japan and China3
This course is intended as a graduate seminar devoted to the new topic of the Anthropocene and the ways in which capitalism and climate change have emerged therein. However, we will focus on the ramifications of the Anthropocene for East Asia (especially Japan and China).
ASIA 731Technologies of Imagination: Science, Cultural Production, East Asia3
Focusing on East Asia, this seminar introduces students to scholarly intersections between science studies and literary and cultural studies. Drawing upon recent scholarship from these fields, it explores the intertwined pasts and presents of scientific, technological, and cultural production. In so doing, it challenges students to think critically about the contingent nature of disciplinary boundaries and the centrality of East Asia's place in global flows of knowledge, objects, and expression.
ASIA 732Making: Technology and Material in Modern East Asia3
This graduate seminar introduces students to the joint methods of material culture studies and the history of science and technology with a focus on early modern and modern East Asia. It interweaves the two fields of study through the framework of "making." The course comprises two components -- reading-based discussion and research. Students will learn, evaluate, and build research methods through discussion and use them to conduct research and write research papers.
This course explores the idea of Palestine as in Palestinian creative works. We will study what Palestine is for Palestinians, how Palestinian relationships to and expectations of Palestine have changed over time; and how Palestinian portrayals of their homeland have affected perceptions of Palestine/Israel and the Arab world. How have art, film, and literature shaped Palestinian identities and aspirations throughout modern Palestinian history? How have they contributed to personal agency?
ASIA 740Chinese Civilization: A Conceptual History3
This seminar will look at how terms for concepts of 'civilization' in different languages (Old Chinese, Modern Mandarin, English, Japanese) and different historical periods have been used to refer to what is now China as a "civilization." This graduate seminar explores the roles played by various notions of 'civilization' in the articulation of different conceptualizations of "Chinese civilization."
This course focuses on the most celebrated novel titled Honglou Meng or The Story of the Stone by Cao Xueqin (1715-1763). This 120-chapter-long novel tells the downfall of a great aristocratic family that is presented as a microcosm of traditional Chinese societies. The novel features all aspects of traditional Chinese cultures including architecture and garden, education, families and interfamilial connections, generational relationships, genders, history, marriages, mythology, philosophies, poetry, etc.
ASIA 742Indigenous Ecologies in Literatures of China and Taiwan3
This seminar applies theories from Postcolonial Ecocriticism and Sinophone Studies to analyze diverse Indigenous ecologies in environmental literature from China and Taiwan. We read poems, philosophy, and fiction featuring the cosmologies of Han and Uyghur farmers, Tibetan, Mongolian, and Kazakh nomads, Indigenous Taiwanese hunters and fishers, and Hmong foragers, analyzing relational ontologies among humans, non-human animals, assemblages, and ecosystems. Knowledge of Chinese language, literature, history, or philosophy recommended but not required.
ASIA 743Age Studies in Chinese and Sinophone Media3
This course examines how old age has been problematized and negotiated in literature and media over the last four decades, when prolonged life expectancy initiated the shift of the PRC, Taiwan, and Hong Kong into aging societies. Engaging with age-themed literary and cinematic materials, spanning memoir and pathography to family melodrama, documentary, and science fiction, students will examine how old age is at once produced and problematized through cultural imaginations.
We all know that love is not easy. But what makes it so complicated? This course examines how the conception of ''love'' in Chinese culture offers a key to understanding emotions, family structure, gender and sexuality, consumer desire, as well as political sentiments. We will probe into these issues through literary and visual materials from the 8th century B.C.E. to the 21st century.
ASIA 76First-Year Seminar: Traveling to China and Traveling from China in the Premodern World3
Reading records written by various travelers - merchants, missionaries, pilgrims, nomads, and diplomats - this course examines cross-cultural and transregional interactions premodern Chinese had with the broader world through the lens of travel. In addition to reading and discussion, students will create digital itinerary maps based on the primary sources.
ASIA 77First-Year Seminar: Women and Performance in Transnational Asia3
This course examines art and activist performances produced by women in transnational and global Asia, which speak of their feminist, post-colonial, and anti-hegemonic agenda. These performances reveal various nations' struggle to globalize and reflect how the category of "Asian," intersected with gender, continues to evolve in the West. This course engages with these performances theoretically and responds to the artists' strong voices with critical analysis.
This graduate seminar investigates competing concepts of modernity in South Asia as imagined in film and television media. We begin by exploring how notions of modernity have emerged in South Asia, and how film and television have imagined a "modern" society. Particular topics covered include social justice, gender, nation, globalization, and cosmopolitanism. We will also engage with critiques of films, television programs, and Internet-based videos with respect to social justice, environment, and technology.
ASIA 771Performance in South Asia: Contexts and Theories3
This seminar examines a range of performance practices in South Asia, and some of the theories and methods scholars have used to research and understand them. It especially focuses on emerging analytical frameworks and approaches currently shaping the field. In this seminar, "performance" is conceptualized broadly to include aesthetic, social and political forms of performance spanning theatre, dance, musical concerts, film, religious events, military rituals, and so forth.
This course enriches students' understanding of the diversity of Middle Eastern countries, exploring histories of intercommunal contact and conflict. We will investigate contemporary representations and lived realities of religious, ethnic, and sexual minorities of the Middle East from diverse political, cultural, historical and aesthetic perspectives. Although the majority of people living in the Middle East converted to Islam after the Arab conquests, there remained important minorities including indigenous Christians, Jews, and in Iran some Zoroastrians.
ASIA 781The Body and Body Politics in the Arab World3
What is political about the body? This seminar introduces students to social scientific and humanistic approaches to the body. Instead of taking the body as simply a biological entity, it places it within a wider network of meanings, practices, institutions, histories, and forms of power. The course explores the operations of different regimes of power on and in the body and, conversely, shows how the body can become a locus of resistance and creativity.
Examines the role of images in the modern ME & how these images shape transnational relationships and conceptions of the region within the global imaginary. How do images "speak"? What role do they play in constructing subjectivities and identities of belonging? What is their relationship to power locally and globally? We will analyze a variety of texts and media (film, photography, video, television, modern art, street art, graphic novels, social media, etc) from the ME.
ASIA 783Critical Postcolonial Perspectives on the Arab-Jew: Promises and Limitations3
This seminar investigates the rise of the radical discourse and literature on the Arab-Jew / Mizrahi in the late 1980s and explores its connection to Israel's "new historians," post-Zionism, and post-nationalism and to Third-worldism. With the increasing presence of the Arab-Jew / Mizrahi in academic discourse and, to an extent, in Israeli (and Arab) media and culture, the original discourse has witnessed various permutations and increasing diversification from its inception to the present.
Study of the concept and manifestation of resistance literature with a focus on Arabic literature. The course includes texts from the mid-20th century to the present. Students are encouraged to apply concepts discussed in this class to resistance literature from other parts of the world in their research projects.
ASIA 785Critical Genealogies of Middle East and North Africa Studies3
This seminar is the core course for the graduate certificate in Middle East studies. It is an introduction to critical issues in the disciplinary, interdisciplinary, and cross-disciplinary study of the Middle East.
ASIA 796Independent Study in Asian and Middle Eastern Studies3
Requires department permission. Student will create and pursue an individual research project in Asian and Middle Eastern studies under the supervision of a selected instructor. Permission of the department.
Subject
ASIA
Credits (min)
3
Credits (max)
3
Credit unit
Credits
Type
course
Repeatable
May be repeated for credit; may be repeated in the same term for different topics; 6 total credits.
ASIA 991Research and Writing in Asian and Middle Eastern Studies3
This seminar guides students through the major stages and mechanics of thesis writing, including focusing your topic and research questions, finding primary and secondary sources, writing a prospectus and a literature review, developing your argument cohesively across chapters, organizing chapters, building a bibliography, proper citation, and formatting the thesis. The seminar serves as a forum for reading and presenting on academic scholarship in the field and as a writing workshop. DAMES MA students only.
