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Course Criteria
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3.00 Credits
Can deeper listening make us better citizens of the natural environment This course explores what composer R. Murray Schafer calls the soundscape "unfolding around us ceaselessly. We are simultaneously its audience, its performers, and its composers." Students discuss key writings about sound, and practice deep listening outdoors, extended through performance and composition-whether in music, words, or visual media. The course includes an introduction to field recording and digital editing techniques, to the spring songs of amphibians and birds, and to some key recordings in the history of soundscape composition. A listening notebook, including responses to readings, and a final project are required. Cross-listed in English, environmental studies, and music. Enrollment limited to 12. J. Skinner.
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3.00 Credits
This course examines major trends in Japanese literature and society from its beginnings to the present. Are there features of Japanese culture that continue unchanging through time How have ideas of what is artistically valuable been linked with ideas of what is Japanese How valid are the claims that Japanese culture is intimately involved with the appreciation of nature and the seasons Students read well-known stories, plays, and novels from the classical, medievel, early modern, and modern periods, placing each text within its unique sociohistorical context. All readings are in English. [W2] Normally offered every year. S. Strong.
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3.00 Credits
This course introduces students to Japanese cinema and criticism. Students consider the aesthetic style and narrative themes of films from the silent era to the present day, focusing on directors such as Ozu Yasujiro, Kurosawa Akira, and Kitano Takeshi. They explore such questions as: Is there a distinctive Japanese film style How do cinematic techniques such as camera movement and editing relate to story How do films relate to their particular historical and cultural moment In addition to viewing films, students read Japanese film history and criticism. No prior familiarity with Japan is required. Conducted in English. Staff.
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3.00 Credits
Scholars of Japan have long portrayed Japan as culturally homogenous. In recent years, however, people in and outside the academy have begun to challenge this assumption. In this course, students examine autobiography, fiction, and films that emphasize Japan's ethnic, regional, and socioeconomic diversity. Readings also may include historical and analytical essays and theoretical works on the relationship of modernity, national identity, and narrative. Conducted in English. Open to first-year students. Staff.
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3.00 Credits
In recent years a new image of Japan has become popular among younger generations around the industrialized world. Japan does no longer conjure images of geisha, samurai, zen monks, and World War II soldiers. To many, Japan now means primarily manga (comic books), anime (animated films), pop music, videogames, karaoke, and sushi. This course examines contemporary Japanese popular culture from its early modern origins, in order to understand how it is consumed and reproduced, therole it plays in the construction of gender, and the place it occupies in the complex relationship between national identity and globalization. Recommended background: previous experience in East Asian culture. Enrollment limited to 30. Staff.
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3.00 Credits
The samurai, the sword-wielding warrior with his strict bushido code of honor, is one of the most enduring images of Japan, both in the West and among the Japanese themselves. This course acquaints students with the decidedly less glamorous reality of the samurai. Students explore the myths surrounding the warrior through medieval war tales, Noh and Kabuki plays, short stories, and intellectual writings. Discussions focus on the shifting meanings invested in the image of the samurai by different writers and audiences over the centuries. Recommended background: one course in Japanese culture, history, or language. Conducted in English. Not open to students who have received credit for Asian Studies/Japanese 310 or Japanese 310. Not open to students who have received credit for AS/JA 310 or Japanese 310. Enrollment limited to 25. Staff.
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3.00 Credits
In its beginnings, Japanese literature was considered a female art: the greatest writers of the classical period were women, while men at times assumed a female persona in order to write. How do Japanese women writers of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries portray the complexities of today's world How do they negotiate the gendered institutions of the society in which they live What values do they assign to being a woman, to being Japanese Students consider issues such as family, power, gender roles, selfhood, and the female body in reading a range of novels, short stories, and poems. Authors may include Enchi Fumiko, Ohba Minako, Kurahashi Yumiko, Tsushima Yuko, Tawara Machi, Yamada Eimi, and Yoshimoto Banana. Readings and discussion are in English. Open to first-year students. [W2] S. Strong.
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3.00 Credits
How have poets and other writers in Japan and China portrayed, valued, and responded to the myriad phenomena that Western tradition calls "nature" What ideas have they used to construct the relationship between human beings and the environment Do their views offer the modern world a possible antidote to its environmental ills This course looks closely at several works from Japanese and Chinese traditions whose authors pay particular attention to the relationship between the self and the physical world the self observes. Specific writers may include Hitomaro, Saigy , Kamo no Chomei, Bash , Li Po, and Wang Wei. Conducted in English. Open to first-year students. S. Strong.
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3.00 Credits
The concise, seventeen-syllable verse form known today as haiku rose to prominence in the popular culture of seventeenth-century Japan. With its emphasis on the experience of the present moment and its use of clear natural imagery, haiku is seen by many as defining the way generations of Japanese have perceived and related to the natural world. This seminar examines the poetics of haiku and linked verse ( renku) and looks at the expression of their aesthetics in recent Japanese literature and culture from architecture to the novel to Zen. Prerequisite(s): at least one course in Japanese or one course in environmental studies. Conducted in English. S. Strong.
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3.00 Credits
This course examines the stereotypes of the cultural category of geisha in film, literature, visual culture, and the performing arts. Students locate the discourse surrounding the geisha in both Japan and the United States, which leads to themes of "orientalism" (differentiating self and other in a way that hierarchizes the self), "self-orientalism," and nihonjinron ( doctrine of a Japanese essence). Students focus on historical contexts in which the category of geisha was formed and developed largely as a projection of male desire and male fantasy, and explore the homogenizing and dichotomizing of racial and sexual identities in the construction of the geisha. Conducted in English. Staff.
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