Professor Laurence Coderre | T: 2:00 PM - 4:45 PM

This class examines the mutually constitutive relationship between media technologies and ways of seeing. In the first half of the course, we will focus on late-Qing and Republican developments in mass publishing, lithography, photography, and cinema. The latter half of the class is dedicated to “screen culture” and its discontents in contemporary China.

Professor Yoon Jeong Oh | R: 12:30 PM - 3:15 PM

Is Korea postcolonial? Despite the crucial importance of Japanese colonialism in Korean history, Korea has not typically been included in postcolonial studies. The field is constructed and dominated by Anglophone and Francophone studies, whereas Korea was not colonized by a Western country but by the Japanese. Even in Korea, postcolonialism is mainly considered an imported Western discourse that has severe limits in Korean contexts. Moreover, because Korea was divided into North and South as soon as it was decolonized, the (post)colonial issues in Korea were immediately subsumed under the discourses of the Cold War. This course examines the links between postcolonialism and Cold War discourses in Korea and puts postcolonial Korea in conversation with Anglophone and Francophone postcolonial studies. Readings will include literary works by Choi In-hun, Park Wan-suh,and Kim Su-yong, and critical theory from Frantz Fanon, Homi Bhabha, Gayatri Spivak, and Heonik Kwon. We will also watch films by Im Kwon-taek and Lee Man-hee among others as well as non-Korean films, such as Death by Hanging, Go, and My Beautiful Laundrettefor comparative discussion.

Professor Tom Looser | W: 2:00 PM - 4:45 PM

This course looks at the various elements that make up and structure the contemporary urban subject in Asia. This includes architecture, art, technology and new media, and political-economic conditions. Attention is paid to the ways in which each of these factors create and organize life—but the aim is also to examine how these elements are being recombined in ways that point to new orders of social life in general. The assumption thus is that there are now fundamentally new conditions emerging, and this is the real focus; at the same time, historical perspective is provided to understand these changes. Course materials include social and urban theory, while also drawing heavily from fiction, film, animation, and fine art. It is meant to provide a comparative perspective on major Asian cities, but because conditions being discussed are global, inevitably examples and topics will be drawn from beyond Asia as well. At stake overall is the changing conditions of life, of culture, and of the social community in Asia and the world.

Professor Annmaria Shimabuku | M: 12:30 PM - 1:45 PM

This seminar will read modern Japanese Thought in a trans-Pacific context. This includes tracing the thought of contemporary authors such as Naoki Sakai and Harry Harootunian through older iterations from Kyoto School Philosophy authors such as Nishida Kitarō, Tanabe Hajime, and Tosaka Jun, while simultaneously positioning them in a global conversation about the human as a racialized subject, sovereignty, capital, gender, and language with authors such as Michel Foucault, Sylvia Wynter, and Hortense Spillers. No prior knowledge of Japan is required.

For more information, please visit our Independent Study page.

An Independent Study course provides students with the opportunity to work one-on-one with an instructor on a particular topic or creative project. Registration for this course requires approval of the Director of Graduate Studies. You will be asked to submit a proposal, that must include a project abstract (200-250 words) and a bibliography, approved by the professor supervising the course.