Spring 2024

Professor Ethan Harkness

For more information on the course, please see Independent Study.

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.

Professor Ethan Harkness

Instructor: faculty supervisor

For more information on the course, please see Independent Study.

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.

Professor Annmaria Shimabuku | Th: 2:00 PM - 4:30 PM

This graduate seminar examines the interpenetration of the Asia Pacific and US with a focus on the competitive and collaborative nature of Japanese empire and the US. It comparatively reads literature on race, modernity, culturalism, capitalist development, empire building, and US militarism through philosophy, literature, and film..

Professor Thomas Looser | T: 2:00 PM - 4:45 PM

Even before the 2020 shutting down of the world economy, there had long been signs that the landscape of modern everyday life was undergoing fundamental transformation; arguments commonly appear that we are entering an era described as, for example, post-rational, post-political, post-enlightenment, and ultimately, post-human. This course takes up some of the terms, and possibilities, that might arise out of this moment. The starting point is a historical genealogy of the idea of the “public,” comparing traditions in the East (China and Japan, in particular) and the West. More specifically, however, the course will focus on two basic categories of the human which now seem to be particularly relevant to the way changes in our world are currently playing out: labor, and love. Again, the approach will be comparative, looking at everything from new forms of work communities arising in Japan, Korea, and China, to the rhetoric of “love” arising in remarkably diverse contexts (labor, politics, robotics) almost globally. In sketching out the idea of the public human, the course will also look at the boundaries of humanistic and post-humanistic thought. Material will be drawn from anthropology, philosophy, popular culture, and (circumstances permitting) may include field trips.

Professor Lena Scheen | T: 11:00 AM - 1:45 PM

Course descriptions coming soon.

Professor Coderre Laurence | W: 11:00 AM - 1:45 PM

Course descriptions coming soon.

Professor Yoon Jeong Oh | M: 2:00 PM - 4:45 PM

We will focus on psychoanalytic theories in literature and countercultures in Korea. (Full description will be provided later.)