This is an introductory lecture course that adopts a comparative approach for learning about East Asian experiences of modernization. Structured as a broad survey of the sweeping changes that occurred in Japan, China, and Korea throughout the “long twentieth century” (approximately the mid-1800s to today), each week will highlight key themes and concerns shared across the region. From nationalism to the rise of the proletariat, from imperialism to revolution, and from democratization to globalization, we will adopt a bottom-up approach to examine how the major “-isms” and trends of global history have played out and been experienced on the scale of everyday life.

Our primary resource in this class will be literature, with a focus on novels (excerpts), short stories, poetry, and prose essays. Rather than understanding literature as a form of fiction detached from reality, we will practice reading literature as not only a product or snapshot of a particular era, but as actively engaging in cultural and political debates of the time. How a writer navigates changing literary practices, ideological positions, political censorship, and gender politics, among a nearly endless array of considerations, enables us to learn a great deal about a given time and place that otherwise escapes top-down and government approved histories.

The main skills to be practiced and developed in this course are the arts of critical reading and thinking, learning how to engage in responsible comparison, and practicing persuasive writing.  East Asia is perhaps best studied in comparison, as ideas traveled and circulated throughout the region during this time. This does not mean simply saying that one culture or place is or is not like another, but learning how to establish meaningful grounds of comparison and learning from their mutual illumination. Articulating these comparative findings so that other people also see their value as you do is a separate but equally important and transferable skill that we will practice through various assignments throughout the term.

Please be aware: This is a reading intensive course, and you are expected to come having finished the assigned texts to discuss. At the same time, any readings exceeding thirty pages will be exclusively fiction, which can be read much faster than more complex academic writing. In short, although some of the reading may look intimidating, they are actually quite fast reads. So, assuming you’re willing to sit and read for a few hours each week, you should be fine!

There are no prerequisites and there is no expectation that you have any prior knowledge about East Asia. All readings will be made available in English translation (although if you are proficient in an East Asian language, you are welcome and encouraged to read original texts).

The origins of modern Chinese literature can be found in the dreams and aspirations of the Chinese people. Beset by domestic unrest and foreign incursions, China at the turn of the 20^th century faced a range of political, economic, social, and cultural dilemmas. How could the Republic of China (ROC) be strengthened and foreign powers expelled? How could China become “modern,” while retaining those cultural and social customs that make it distinctly Chinese? What might a modern Chinese political and social order look like? Potential solutions to these and other problems consistently found their expression in literature—understood here as not only a form of artistic expression, but as means of political and social critique and commentary—and it is through this medium that one can grasp the zeitgeist of the age.

            The founding of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in 1949 by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the subsequent retreat of the Nationalist Party (KMT) to the island of Taiwan—where they continued to rule in the name of the ROC—only further compounded the complexity of Chinese imaginations. In the PRC, literature was touted as a tool for enlightening the masses and awakening them to the goal of creating a socialist utopia. Across the straits in Taiwan, literature was used to support the war effort to reclaim Mainland China, at the same time that its modernist movement created space for individual expression from under stifling government regulation. Between these two political entities, Hong Kong—governed by the British from as early as 1848—not only bore witness to these tumultuous times, but also struggled to hold onto its disappearing Chinese identity from within its liminal political state.

            The possibilities of modern Chinese literature have been radically expanded by these historical and political contingencies, in turn generating a diverse constellation of styles, forms, and stakes. By developing skills in close-reading and textual analysis, students will learn the major movements of Chinese literature from the turn of the 20^th century to today, and study the texts of major literary figures, such as Lu Xun and Eileen Chang. The first half of the course will cover literature before the Great Divide of 1949, while the second half of the semester will take advantage of the great diversity of Chinese-language literature and discuss works from China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. Altogether, the course will provide students with a comprehensive overview of major Chinese writers and literary movements, as well as hints of its exciting potential for the 21^st century.

All readings will be in English translation; however, if you can read Chinese, you are strongly encouraged to read or consult the original works.

This course investigates the changing meanings and manifestations of ethnicity and ethnic identities in modern “China.”

What “China” is and has been are not uniform across time, and neither are the ways that Chinese people have understood ethnic identity and difference. Moreover, how the category of ethnicity has participated in the creation of “China” as an intellectual concept and political category in the modern era was not inevitable. Coming to terms with the shifting meanings of both terms and their relationship to one another, therefore, becomes necessary knowledge for anyone wanting to understand modern China and its ethnic politics.

It is important to see how ethnicity and “China” function in different contexts, and so this module makes use of four types of materials: literature, film, historical documents, and academic scholarship. Beginning from the end of the list, academic scholarship is useful for providing context and identifying key points of contention in the study of China and ethnicity; historical documents allow students to engage first-hand with the materials often used in scholarship, and to try their hand at producing their own interpretations; finally, literature and film offer individual, artistic responses and interpretations of these terms, which both create ethnic identities and respond to the distinct historical, cultural, and political contingencies of their times. Take collectively, they offer both top-down and bottom-up views of what ethnicity was, is, and can mean in Chinese contexts.

This seminar is intended to guide seniors in the department through the research process, culminating in a long-form research essay. In the past three years, you have focused on learning the languages, histories, and cultures of East Asia’s largest civilizations—China, Japan, and Korea. Now is your chance to synthesize that information and move from being a “knowledge consumer” to a “knowledge producer.” We want you to start thinking of yourselves not just as “students of” but as “specialists in” East Asian Studies who write about the cultures of East Asian and meaningfully converse with, engage, critique, and build on the knowledge of its various communities. To that end, over the course of the fall semester, you will explore your personal interests in East Asian, Chinese, Japanese, and/or Korean studies, develop a research question, conduct original research in your target language, critically engage with existing scholarship, and generate your own original argument about a topic of your choosing. In service of this project, this class will operate as a research workshop where we will collectively examine and critique a variety of scholarly articles, and where you will share and critique each other’s work at each stage of the research and writing process.

This is a fifth-level Chinese course with a focus on modern Chinese-language literature and designed for students who have completed at least two 3000- or 3100-level Chinese courses or placed into the 3500-level.

It is best to think of this course as a “content course” that happens to be taught in Mandarin Chinese. As such, it is different from other Chinese-language courses at Georgetown: we will not focus on drilling specific vocabulary and grammar structures. Instead, we will focus on honing your existing language foundations to navigate advanced reading, writing, and discussion tasks. You can always learn something new about a language. At some point, though, you must figure out how to use what you have to maximize your comprehension and say what you want to say—that is the linguistic focus of this course. Learning how to “read around” language problems, summarize complex ideas and narratives, and express your own thoughts in both speech and writing are the language goals of this class. This does not mean that we will not talk about language, however, and I encourage you to bring all of your language-based questions—vocabulary, grammar, or otherwise—to class for discussion. Odds are, if you have a question about something, your classmates will too!

As for content, this course provides a general introduction to Chinese-language writings from long twentieth century. You will read and discuss major literary works, primarily of the short-story genre, by a broad range of writers, including Lu Xun, Ding Ling, Zhang Ailing (Eileen Chang), and Yu Hua, among others. Literature is not produced in a vacuum but in conversation with contemporary cultural, social, and political trends. Learning how to read for such knowledge is also another goal of this class. To this end, we will practice close-reading and interpretive skills, bringing attention to themes, styles, structure, and ideology and learn how to use these terms to gain a deeper understanding of the texts and their times.

This course is conducted in Mandarin Chinese.

For students who have completed at least two 3000-level Chinese courses or placed into the 3100 level or above, this course is designed as a fifth-level Chinese course with a focus on modern Chinese-language literature from Taiwan. From the early 20th century works of Lōa Hô (Lai He) and Long Yingzong to late 20th century writings by Pai Hsien-yung (Bai Xianyong) and Chu T’ien-wen (Zhu Tianwen), we will use literature as a lens for understanding some of the most important cultural and historical moments of in modern Taiwan history.

This course will serve as an investigation into global Chinese-language literatures, otherwise known as Sinophone literature, in the contemporary period (1980s to today). It will involve reading stories in the original language, writing analyses that are grounded in the relevant historical and cultural contexts, and discussing these texts and contexts in Mandarin Chinese. [Originally developed as an independent study; open for revision]