COLLOQUIUM ON MAJOR TEXTS: MIDDLE EAST/I

Readings in translation and discussion of texts of Middle Eastern and Indian origin. Readings may include the Quran, Islamic philosophy, Sufi poetry, the Upanishads, Buddhist sutras, the Bhagavad Gita, Indian epics and drama, and Gandhis Autobiography.

• T 9 a.m.-10:50 a.m.
• R 4:10 p.m.-6 p.m.
• Instructor: Nathanael P Shelley
  CULPA: 6 Info
• Instructor: Rohini S Shukla
  Info
• 4 points

COLLOQUIUM ON MAJOR TEXTS

COLLOQ ON MAJOR TEXTS: E ASIA

This course explores the core classical literature in Chinese, Japanese and Korean Humanities. The main objective of the course is to discover the meanings that these literature offer, not just for the original audience or for the respective cultures, but for us. As such, it is not a survey or a lecture-based course. Rather than being taught what meanings are to be derived from the texts, we explore meanings together, informed by in-depth reading and thorough ongoing discussion.

• W 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
• Instructor: David L Moerman
  CULPA: 18 Info
• 4 points

ETHNICITY, RACE, IDENTITY IN THE PRE-MOD

This seminar investigates the concepts of ethnicity, race, and identity, in both theory and practice,
through a comparative survey of several case studies from the Pre-Modern history of the Middle East.
The course focuses on symbols of identity and difference, interpreting them through a variety of
analytical tools, and evaluating the utility of each as part of an ongoing exploration of the subject. The
survey considers theories of ethnicity and race, as well as their critics, and includes cases from the
Ancient World (c. 1000 BCE) through the Old Regime (c. 1800 CE).

Students in this course will gain a familiarity with major theories of social difference and alterity, and
utilize them to interpret and analyze controversial debates about social politics and identity from the
history of the Middle East, including ancient ethnicity, historical racism, Arab identity, pluralism in the
Islamic Empire, and slavery, among others. In addition, students will spend much of the semester
developing a specialized case study of their own on a historical community of interest. All of the case
studies will be presented in a showcase at the end of the semester.

All assigned readings for the course will be in English. Primary sources will be provided in translation.
The course meets once a week and sessions are two hours long.

• T 4:10 p.m.-6 p.m.
• Instructor: Nathanael P Shelley
  CULPA: 6 Info
• 4 points

CULTURE, MENTAL HEALTH, AND HEALING IN E

CULTURE,MENTAL HEALTH,E A

Why do certain mental illnesses only appear in specific regions of the world? What processes of translation, adaption, and “indigenization” take place when psychiatric diagnostic categories, pharmaceutical regimens, and psychodynamic treatments developed in the West travel to China, Japan and South Korea? How do contemporary East Asian therapeutic modalities destabilize biomedical assumptions about the origins and treatment of mental illness?

This course employs anthropological analysis to explore the paradoxes of “culture-bound syndromes”, examine how biomedical psychiatric practices have been received and transformed, and discuss the ways in which shamanistic rituals and Traditional Chinese Medicine clinical encounters understand their objects of intervention. Focusing on East Asia with a particular emphasis on China, we will employ interpretive and political economic anthropological analyses to explore experiences of people struggling with illness, the practices of health practitioners who treat them, and the broader social and historical contexts that shape these interactions.

• TR 1:10 p.m.-2:25 p.m.
• Instructor: Nicholas A Bartlett
  CULPA: 5 Info
• 4 points

LABOR AND LOVE IN CHINA

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• W 10:10 a.m.-noon
• Instructor: Nicholas A Bartlett
  CULPA: 5 Info
• 3 points

Literati Culture in Pre-Modern China

Literati Cult. Pre-Mod. C

Premodern Chinese literati (wenren 文人) have long been regarded as spokesmen of “This Culture of Ours” (siwen 斯文)—a metonym for civilization in the premodern Sinitic context—
while they also fed from, partook in, and gave shape to popular and foreign cultures. Besides “literary writings” (wenzhang 文章) like poetry and prose, literati also engaged in calligraphy,
painting, and antiquarianism under the umbrella term of “literary or cultural arts” (wenyi 文藝). In turn, creation and appreciation of artwork (“cultural or civil objects,” wenwu 文物) were
intrinsic to the leisurely and aesthetic life of literati community and further established their self-identity.
Covering the long trajectory of imperial China over 3,000 years, this course reveals the birth and growth of literati culture from the beginning, to its full bloom since the Northern Song dynasty (960–1126), to the shifting patterns across the second millennium. In particular, this course takes an interdisciplinary approach to literati culture, introducing intellectual and poetic discourses, socio-historical contexts, literary criticism, visual and material culture, to envision a “common ground” for their civil world. Textual, visual sources plus material objects are meant to have conversations with each other in this course. Important issues include historical transformations of the elite class, cultural geography in different eras, materiality and visuality of elite calligraphy and painting, literati self-expression through aesthetic practice, the roles of the court and literati in producing and preserving art, as well as other relevant issues such as gender studies, vernacular literature, and commodity society.
No background in Chinese language is required in this course, and all reading materials—either translation of primary sources or secondary scholarship—are accessible in English. But students are expected to have a basic familiarity with classical traditions of China. By the end of the semester, students will have grasped a comprehensive insight of literati culture in premodern China, acquired the skills to understand and analyze key textual and visual sources, and kept abreast of up-to-date scholarship in this field. Ideally, this course will help students shed new light on Chinese literary traditions from multi-medial and interdisciplinary perspectives.

• M 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
• Instructor: Lili Xia
  Info
• 4 points

AMEC Majors Seminar

This course is a requirement for AMEC majors and should be taken in the junior year. In this semester
students are introduced to Asian and Middle Eastern studies as academic disciplines and explore
theories and methods of interdisciplinary research. Through a variety of readings and workshops,
students gain experience discussing their area of interest comparatively and practice synthesizing work
from related fields.

• W 4:10 p.m.-6 p.m.
• Instructor: Nathanael P Shelley
  CULPA: 6 Info
• 4 points

INDEPENDENT STUDY

Prerequisites: Open to majors who have fulfilled basic major requirements or written permission of the staff member who will supervise the project. Specialized reading and research projects planned in consultation with members of the Asian and Middle Eastern Cultures teaching staff.

• Instructor: David L Moerman
  CULPA: 18 Info
• Instructor: Nicholas A Bartlett
  CULPA: 5 Info
• Instructor: Lili Xia
  Info
• Instructor: Nathanael P Shelley
  CULPA: 6 Info
• 1-4 points

Religion & Space

Emplacement is often taken as the unspoken background of the study of religious phenomena. This seminar considers how problematizations of space, place, locality, and geography may cast religious phenomena in a new light. Approaches to theorizing space and place from various disciplines such as geography, cultural anthropology, philosophy, literature, art history, and history of cartography will be brought into conversation with questions emerging within the study of specific religion traditions. 

While this seminar is open to interested students from all disciplines, our work in this course specifically falls into the “zone of inquiry” of “space and place” of the Religion Department’s graduate programs. “Zones of inquiry” seek to introduce students to a particular cluster of key concepts and various theoretical elaborations of those concepts, in order to aid students in honing their ability to reflect critically on and develop further the central concepts that they derive from and bring to the specific traditions and phenomena that they study in their own research. A main goal of this course will therefore be to deepen our conceptual and analytical acumen and expand our theoretical resources at the intersection of religious studies and theories of space, place, and geography.

• R 12:10 p.m.-2 p.m.
• Instructor: David L Moerman
  CULPA: 18 Info
• 4 points