Japanese woodblock prints have generated seismic shifts in visual perception globally, and images of "Japan" that continue to be avidly consumed today. This class explores the pictorial, technical, and immensely talkative lives of prints from the "floating worlds" of Japan's great cities; the printed books that participated in 18th century information overload; and privately published luxury prints. We will also examine modern and contemporary print making. The class will include study of original works in Princeton's collections. Students will research prints to recommend for purchase for the Princeton University Art Museum's collection.

How can you tell if an image of a person is a portrait? What can a portrait reveal about a person? Is a portrait necessarily of a person? This course focuses on the genre of portraiture in China and examines different types of pictures, sitters, ideologies, and representations. We will question definitions of likeness and individuality, explore formal aspects of portrait making, and analyze how portraits function to create group identity or project power. Through close analysis of images in multiple mediums dating from ancient to contemporary times in China, the course will consider the ongoing meaning and power of portraits.

This course is designed for students who have had advanced training in modern Chinese. The focus of readings is modern Chinese intellectual history. Topics that will be discussed include language reform, women's emancipation, the encounter of western civilization, the rise of communism, etc.

This course focuses on the 16th-century Chinese novel Journey to the West (Monkey), some of its central themes, and its long history of adaptation across media, regional and historical boundaries. We read a good part of the 100-chapter novel, investigate some of the texts that preceded it, and look at the illustrations, comics, rewritings, films, and videogames that it inspired. If Monkey represents the spirit of play and the ability to change at will, how does remediation ask us to think about this in terms of media and philosophy, politics and language? When and how does adaptation turn into appropriation?

In the late 19th-early 20th centuries, Japan became the first non-Western nation to industrialize and modernize. But it did not wholly embrace the American example. More recently, Japan has challenged observers to imagine alternative modernities through its high standard of living, soft power, and gentler forms of capitalism. The course considers the merits of this system, including social equality, mom and pop stores, close communities, investments in youth socialization, universal health care, and public safety. It also considers their trade-offs, including social pressures, gendered labor, low fertility, and restricted immigration.

An introduction to some of the most important texts, writers, and topics of Classical Literature from antiquity through the Song dynasty. All readings are in English, and no previous background in Chinese or Asian culture is required. Topics include: nature of the Chinese language; the beginnings of poetry; development of narrative and historical writing; classical Chinese poetics; literature of protest, dissent, and political satire; love poetry; religious and philosophical ideas in Chinese literature.

This seminar teaches the research and writing skills needed to produce a thesis as an East Asian studies major. Through mini-projects and guest lectures, the class introduces the various disciplines and methodologies used to study East Asia, including history, anthropology, political science, history, literature, and media studies. In addition, the class teaches techniques of research and writing: how to formulate a research question, find and use appropriate sources, write a research proposal, craft a compelling introduction and convincing conclusion.

This class is an introduction to the unusual and strange in late imperial Chinese literature through digital analysis. We will focus on works that engage with the nature of evidence and reality: stories about crime and detection, ghosts, encounters with foxes, and other odd narratives. The stories we read, mostly written in the Ming (1368-1644) and Qing (1644-1911) dynasties, are found across a wide array of textual genres popular in early modern China. Students will also learn to leverage a variety of digital methods to analyze these stories, covering approaches from textual analysis and mapping to network analysis and the public humanities.

This seminar is an introduction to leveraging the processing power of modern computers to study Chinese culture. This course will introduce you to a variety of newly developed digital tools, algorithms, and datasets that allow us to pursue new insights into traditional Chinese literature and culture. You will engage with new scholarship being published in the rapidly expanding field of the digital humanities and learn how to create digital research projects from scratch.

The senior thesis (498-499) is a year-long project in which students complete a substantial piece of research and scholarship under the supervision and advisement of a Princeton faculty member. While a year-long thesis is due in the student's final semester of study, the work requires sustained investment and attention throughout the academic year. Required works-in-progress submissions, their due dates, as well as how students' grades for the semester are calculated will be published on the department's website.

The seminar examines the gradual evolution of early Chinese textuality from the pre-imperial through the early imperial period, with particular emphasis on questions of parallel passages in early texts; authorship, compilation, and circulation; and classification and bibliography. Readings are in classical Chinese and in various languages of modern scholarship. In addition, the seminar introduces the relevant Digital Humanities tools (CText.org) and databases (CHANT) for identifying and analyzing parallel passages in ancient Chinese writings. Languages of instruction: English and Chinese.

Methods, sources, and problems of research in history of Chinese thought.

This course offers an introduction to the artistic, literary, and architectural traditions of building elaborate tombs in China in the ancient and medieval periods. Beginning with the rise of empire in the 1st millennium BCE, we trace the history of imperial and aristocratic tomb-building through the fall of the Han empire, period of disunity, and the flowering of the Silk Road. Finally, we conclude with lively examples of non-aristocratic tombs from Song and Mongol periods. We visit museums and read primary materials in classical and contemporary Chinese. Some English translations are available.

This seminar examines the major writers, movements, and changes in poetry from the High Tang through the end of the Northern Song, with a special focus on the new styles and cultural contexts for composing, collecting, and circulating poetry. Students are introduced to the important collections and scholarship on these periods; strong reading ability in classical and modern Chinese required. Weekly work includes translation and critical analysis of poetry alongside scholarly readings, and there is a mid-semester short paper and a final seminar paper, plus presentation, due at the end of the semester. 

This class explores games and the culture of play in East Asia through a variety of angles, ranging from the aesthetic to the ideological, from the historical to the technological. By doing so, we familiarize ourselves with the increasingly prolific literature on (video) games as well as the longer history of game theory. Though the class serves foremost to explore the theoretical readings within this new discipline, game studies, it also allows the hands-on exploration of particular East Asian games, entertains the question of how to teach games, and encourages students to apply game theory beyond the realm of games studies itself.

A confluence of research in literature, linguistics, and the history of writing has encouraged new approaches to Literary Sinitic (wenyan) as a transregional and interliterate medium. This seminar introduces core debates in this emerging field on vernacularization, influence, glossing, disciplinarity, "extraterritorial" Chinese texts (yuwai Hanji), and the Sinographic cosmopolis. We further read examples of reception, commentary, and local composition in Literary Sinitic from the Japanese context to consider how these theories can be applied or contested.

This course focuses on various types of Japanese kanbun, including waka kanbun (Japanese vernacular kanbun) from Nara to Meiji era.

The two-semester course is designed for students in Chinese studies, who already possess reading fluency in Chinese. Its goal is to train these students in reading the particular style of Japanese academic writing; at the end of the year, students are able to independently read modern Japanese scholarship on China. Students take this course after at least one year of modern Japanese (JPN 101/102). The course does not train all four skills of reading, writing, speaking, and listening; instead it is devoted entirely to rapidly develop the necessary reading skills in Japanese academic style. The course is conducted in English.

This course is an introduction to the history of modern China, from imperial dynasty to Republic, from Red Guards to red capitalists. Through primary sources in translation, we will explore the transition from empire to nation-state, political and social revolutions, transformations in gender relations and intellectual life, and competing explanations for events such as the rise of the Communist Party and the 1989 democracy movement. Major themes include: the impact of imperialism, the rise of nationalism, the political stakes of historical interpretation, and the significance of China's history for its present and future.

This seminar provides a unique angle of studying Chinese history from antiquity to our present moment through the lens of medicine. Using China as method, it also aims at cultivating a pluralistic and historically informed understanding of medicine as evolving science, cultural system, socio-economic enterprises, and increasingly in the modern world a vital component of domestic and global governance. This year, the thematic focus will be doctor-patient relationship and medical ethics.

How do women in Asia become "gendered" in times of war-as caregivers, as refugees, as sex workers, as war brides? This course offers an introductory survey of American wars in Asia from 1899 to the present, taking the perspectives not of Americans but of the historically marginalized. Students will be challenged to rethink and reimagine war histories through voices on the ground across Japan, South Korea, Vietnam, the Philippines, Okinawa, Hawaii, and Guam. foregrounding written testimonies and oral histories of women against the backdrop of war, militarism, and empire, the course will also make broader connections across the Asia pacific.

This research seminar is intended for students working in any period of Chinese history. During the semester, students develop a research agenda for an original project while pursuing one of two trajectories: 1) Produce a short research paper that can become the basis for a published scholarly article or 2) Draft a preliminary prospectus for dissertation research. In close consultation with the instructor, students work on different aspects of the research and writing process, including historiographical interventions, source selection, problems of interpretation, narrative, and argumentation.

An introduction to the literature, art, religion and philosophy of China, Japan and Korea from antiquity to ca. 1600. Readings focus on primary texts in translation and are complemented by museum visits and supplementary materials on the course website; we emphasize close reading and discussion, encouraging students to engage with both the past and present meanings of these texts. The course explores the unique aspects of East Asian civilizations and the connections between them through assignments integrating text with visual and material sources. No prior knowledge of East Asia is required.

This class analyzes how different cultures imagine monsters and how these representations changed over time to perform different social functions. As negative objectifications of fundamental social structures and conceptions, monsters help us understand the culture that engendered them and the ways in which a society constructs the Other, the deviant, the enemy, the minorities, and the repressed. This course has three goals: it familiarizes students with the semiotics of monsters worldwide; it teaches analytical techniques exportable to other topics and fields; it proposes interpretive strategies of reading culture comparatively.

This course is targeted to students whose Japanese proficiency is at an advanced higher level. Students will discuss various issues using short novels, essays, editorials and films. They are also expected to use the Japanese language to communicate people outside of class. Through these activities, students will develop critical thinking skills as well as Japanese language skills.

This sixth-year Korean course is designed to advance students' reading and writing skills to the superior level and to promote a deeper understanding of the Korean language, culture, society, and history. Readings cover various types of authentic materials (e.g., newspaper articles, editorials, think pieces, essays, and contemporary literary short stories). Discussion and presentation skills in formal settings (e.g., academic, professional) are also emphasized. Class discussions are conducted in Korean.