In China, denizens of the imperial court--emperors and entertainers, mighty and low-class, and the ministers who administered the realm in the middle--populated the court praxis of the arts. This course studies the courtly arts, from the rule of the first emperor Qin Shi Huang to the Empress Dowager Cixi in the early 20th century. It will show how these artworks were made and used in changing historical contexts and became an important legacy of Chinese culture. It particularly emphasizes the archaeology of early imperial tombs.

This class explores the relationship between visual and verbal media. How is poetic vision not only given shape in words, but also in painting? Conversely, how is the beauty of women, a staple of portraiture, captured in words? How can a still picture express narrative in a medium that develops over time, and conversely how can words capture the spectacle of a martial arts action scene? We will answer these questions by investigating some of the most famous novels, paintings, poems, and prints, beginning with didactic paintings preaching Confucian values and ending with the birth of modern media such as animation and computer graphics.

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.

What is media's role in shaping the materiality and definition of modern warfare? From image-making machines, drones to algorithms, and satellite mapping to artificial intelligence, war is the inventor of new visual and sensory regimes that give shape to the post/human environments we inhabit. This seminar considers classic French and German media theory on war in a new light, by focusing on Asia (Vietnams, Koreas, Chinas) as the primary site of sensory warfare, and the new inventor of experimental technologies of control. We probe the history of militarized aesthetics and unpack the operations of war machines.

Intermediate Vietnamese I will expand your structures and knowledge of the Vietnamese language and multifaceted culture through idioms, proverbs, dialogues, and stories. Classroom activities and practices will help you communicate effectively and absorb meaning through speaking, listening, reading, and writing.

This course is an introductory survey of the cultural history of premodern Korea-from early times until the turn of the twentieth century-focused on the primary sources. We will read various original materials (in English translation): myths, state histories, diaries, travelogues, and works of fiction, among others. Topics covered in this course include the imagination of the origins in myth, the idea of Confucian governance, everyday life and entertainment in Choson (1392-1910), and Korea's opening to the west in the late nineteenth century.

Japan became the first non-Western nation to industrialize and modernize in the late 19th century, determined to fend off colonization. Decades later, Japan challenged Americans to imagine alternative futures through its economic success and later its "soft power." The course will consider change and continuity in Japan and how Japan's current status as a stable, slowly growing economy informs our views of capitalism and society in the current era. Topics include gender, labor, and corporate welfare; youth socialization; marriage and divorce; race, "Japaneseness" and citizenship; diasporic identities; sub-cultures and popular culture.

This course is an introduction to contemporary Chinese cinemas in China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. From postwar musicals and pan-Asian blockbusters, to new wave avant-garde films and experimental documentaries, the diversity of Chinese cinemas reflects cinema's relations to global capitalism, Asia's democratization movements, financial crises, and the arrival of (post)socialism. Creating urban nomads, songstresses, daydreamers, travelers, and terrorists, Chinese cinemas put on full display the forces of globalization in shaping the aesthetics and politics of film. Selections broadly include popular commercial films to rare art house productions.

This course surveys Japan's vibrant media mix cultures spanning the histories of anime, cinema and gaming through the intersections of film and media studies. Charting the emergence of media mix cultures and "new" media technologies from silent film to augmented reality in Japan, this course introduces students to major works of anime (animated feature films, television series, and other formats), cinema, and video games. We will examine the changing contours of work and play, sentiment and sensation, thought and materiality, and the forms of mediation and social relation that defined Japan's modern media mix ecologies and platforms.

In telling histories of East Asia, South Asia, the Middle East, and Europe, various groups of nomadic people often loomed large in the background and served as the foil to the travail of their sedentary neighbors. In this course we put the nomadic peoples of Inner Asia front and center, and ask how the nomadic way of life and mode of state building served as agents of change in pre-modern Eurasia.

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.

The seminar will encourage students to think critically about the documentary as artistic medium and as socio-political practice. Some important questions will focus on the form itself: who has produced and watched these films and through what sorts of technologies? What are the codes through which documentaries make sense of their subjects and how do these change? Other questions will have wider scope: how can filmmaking impact politics and culture? How does it deal with the gap between reality and representation? What are the ethical issues of such work? What, if anything, is distinct about the life of documentary films in East Asia?

Study of contemporary Japan through major works of film, photography, and visual culture. The course will explore defining transformations in urban and media ecologies, experiences of development and disaster, and the contentious environmental histories that inform contemporary Japan. The course will foster critical skills in interdisciplinary methods and transnational approaches to the study of film and visual media from Japan in regional and global contexts.

This course will examine modern Japanese fiction and film that engaged with Japan's shift from "empire" to "nation" (roughly from 1930s to 1960s) with a specific focus on identity formation via race, ethnicity, and nationalism.

This course introduces students to twenty-first-century Asian women writers (Japan, Korea, China) whose works achieved global popularity through translation in the past two decades. Written by writers living in East Asian countries dealing with capitalist developments, financial crises, and neoliberal free trade agreements, the texts collectively suggest the global interest and transmission of women's rights and LGBTQ movements in Asia and beyond. We explore, firstly, the meaning of "capitalism" as seen by the author in each text, and secondly, a commodified urban-based cosmopolitan culture that depends on the continued orientalism of Asia.

Critical consideration of a selection of monumental contributions to early Chinese thought, and the uses to which they were put by later Chinese thinkers. Readings will be from English translations such as: [Analects],[ Lao-tzu], [Chuang-tzu], [Mencius],[ I-ching] and secondary works.

This course provides an introduction to the written sources of Japanese history from 800-1600. Instruction focuses on reading and translating a variety of documentary genres, although court chronicles and some visual sources are introduced in class as well. Each week entails the translation of several short documents. Some research resources are also introduced. Weekly assignments include documents which are published on Princeton's komonjo website. In a presentation of the final translation project and analysis is required during the final class and a 12-15 page paper is due on Dean's Day.

Through close readings of the original poetry and historical sources, we analyze the anthology of the Verses of Chu (Chuci) in its aesthetic, historical, and hermeneutic dimensions, with particular attention to the formation and the nature of early Chinese textuality. Drawing on a wider range of early historical, literary, and philosophical texts, and using traditional as well as modern commentaries, we contextualize the songs in late Warring States and Han literary and intellectual culture.

This course focuses on theories of literature, literary production, and reading from the early Tang through the Southern Song. Primary sources include prefaces to literary collections, letters and essays on literature, debates over wen and the Classics, and poetry on writing and reading. Key writers l include Du Fu, Han Yu, Liu Zongyuan, Ouyang Xiu, Su Shi, the Cheng brothers, Zhu Xi, Lu You, and Liu Kezhuang. We consider changes in underlying definitions of literature amid significant social, political, and aesthetic shifts from Tang to Song. Secondary scholarship includes works in Chinese, Japanese, and English.

This course focuses on the first vernacular novel, Outlaws of the Marsh, some of its central themes, and its long history of remediation. We read a good part of the novel, investigate the histories and operas that preceded it, and look at the films, manga, and video games that based on it. We compare editions, illustrations, and commentaries, and trace multi-media adaptations across national boundaries. In addition, we investigate concepts crucial to Ming dynasty literature: the space of the jianghu, the history of collecting, the politics of (wild) history, the role of ritual, and the explosion of print culture.

This course introduces students to the location, handling, and interpretation of primary sources in the study of premodern Japanese literature and intellectual history. This semester functions as a crash course in the the analysis of books and other textual artifacts from premodern Japan. We practice asking, what is it? How does it fit into the history of textual culture? Topics covered include bindings, glosses, colophons, fragments, paleography, cataloging, and xylography, making use of materials from Princeton's East Asian Library Rare Books Collection.

A study of selected major authors and literary trends in modern Japan, with an emphasis on the Meiji and Taisho periods.

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

The course concerns Japan studies in the context of theories of capitalism, personhood, democracy, gender, and modernity. We consider the emergence of Japan as a place to think within the American social sciences after World War II and the development of ideas about area studies in the context of the Cold War and post Cold War conjunctures. Additionally the course considers topics in which Japan is relevant to thinking about global issues, including global capitalism, temporary labor, biopolitics, environmental consciousness, media culture and consumer culture, work-life balance, and the demographic crisis related to rapid aging.

Contemporary Korea may be defined by multiple and overlapping "post" conditions: post-colonial, post-Cold War, post-socialist, post-IMF, post-political, post-human, etc. Drawing upon seminal scholarly works in the fields of literature, history, sociology, media studies, art history and gender and sexuality studies published over the past two decades, this seminar tracks the research methods and theoretical architectures through which the present has come to be conceptualized. While seminar discussion is conducted entirely in English, high-level Korean reading proficiency is required.

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 seminar considers the issues of language, writing, and inscription in a broad comparative perspective that brings together critical theory and recent scholarship on Korea and East Asia. It traces the issues of language and inscription against the frameworks of semiology (Derrida, Irigaray), discursive order (Foucault, Kittler), folds of matter and power (Deleuze), and ideological control (Althusser). The class also uses this theoretical framework to build our understanding of Korean (and, when applicable, East Asian) writing systems, from calligraphy, to the development of print and digital culture. All readings available in English.

Covering 1868 to the present, this course emphasizes Japan's dramatic rise as the modern world's first non-Western power, imperialism, industrialization, social change, gender relations, democracy, World War II, the U. S. Occupation, the postwar "economic miracle" followed by slow growth, and the preoccupation with national identity in a Western-dominated world. We will think about post-1945 developments in terms of continuities with prewar Japan. We will also hold Japan up as a "mirror" for America, comparing how the two capitalist societies have dealt with inequality, urbanization, health and welfare, and intervention in the economy.

This course surveys the history of China between 1400 and 1800, tracing the foundation and decline of the Ming dynasty, the consolidation of Manchu rule till the end of the High Qing era. The main aims are 1) to understand the tremendous changes in Chinese society during this period 2) to see the continued relevance of China's recent imperial past in its contemporary existence. Topics discussed include governance, morality, family life, religion, and ethnicity.

Readings in Japanese political, social, and economic history. Topics include transwar continuity and change, political economy, labor, gender issues, culture and state, religion, Japanese expansion and colonialism, the Allied Occupation of Japan and "social management," and transnational-historical approaches to studying Japan. Some readings in Japanese (optional for those who do not specialize in Japanese history).

This seminar introduces students to major historiographical issues and methodological issues in China's twentieth-century history. The content is divided evenly between the Republic period and PRC history, with occasional forays back to the Qing dynasty. Topics reflect theoretical debates and empirical questions, including: nationalism, civil society, urban life, gender and sexuality, war and revolution, science, law.

During the semester, students design an original project and develop a research agenda while pursuing one of two trajectories: 1) Produce a research paper that can become the basis for a published scholarly article or 2) Draft a prospectus for dissertation research. In close consultation with the instructor, students work with each other 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. The course aims to allow students to explore the unique aspects of East Asian civilizations and the connections between them through an interactive web-based platform, in which assignments are integrated with the texts and media on the website. No prior knowledge of East Asia or experience working with digital media is required.

This course is targeted to students whose Japanese proficiency is at an advanced or superior level. Students will (1) discuss various issues using dramas, short novels and editorials, and (2) learn business Japanese. 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.

This course provides an overview of China's political system. We will begin with a brief historical overview of China's political development from 1949 to the present. The remainder of the course will examine the key challenges facing the current generation of CCP leadership, focusing on prospects for democratization and political reform. Among other topics, we will examine: factionalism and political purges; corruption; avenues for political participation; village elections; public opinion; protest movements and dissidents; co-optation of the business class; and media and internet control.

Most people have heard of Zen Buddhism, but what is it? Who gets to define it? This class looks at Zen in China, Korea, Germany, Japan, Vietnam, and the United States through a range of methods from reading classic texts to studying ethnographic accounts. By considering Zen in different times and places, we explore how a religion is shaped by its political and cultural environs. We examine tensions between romanticized ideals and practices on the ground and grapple with how to study complicated and sometimes troubling traditions. Topics include myths, meditation, mindfulness, monastic life, gender, war, and death.

This seminar explores exchange between Japanese and continental (China and Korean) Buddhism. We read primary sources and secondary scholarship including transmission narratives, hagiographies, and pilgrimage records to show how Buddhism in East Asia was facilitated by exchange and to move beyond nation-centered narratives. Significant time is spent on translation, as well as research methods and tools necessary for the study of premodern Japanese Buddhism. Readings require basic familiarity with classical Chinese or kanbun.