East Asian Studies Sophomore Colloquium

Tradition, Nation, and Global Community: Perspectives on East Asia

Reading and Assignment List

[Introduction] [Japanese Nation] [Writing & Technology] [Capital Controls] [Globalizing Music] [Human Rights Tradition] [Conclusion]

Sources of Readings

All readings are in a coursepack available from Suburban Card and Gift (in Metro Square -- near Destinta, open 9-6 M-F, 9-5 Sat, 11-4 Sun, 347-5076).

Written Assignments

As explained in more detail in the syllabus, two page (500 word) papers will be due every Friday from February 9 through the end of the class: a total of six first drafts and six final drafts. You must do five of these sets. In addition, there will be a synthetic final essay of 5-7 pages, distributed at the final class meeting and due one week later.

Calendar of Assignments
(This color means special, required event)
(This color means Visiting Professor present)

1. Introduction (Angle)
January 19
  • None
January 24

Inventing Traditions and Nations

  • Hobsbawm, "Introduction: Inventing Traditions"
  • Anderson, Imagined Communities, "Introduction" and "Cultural Roots" (1991)
January 26

Perspectives on Globalization and Global Community

  • Douglas Kellner, "Theorizing Globalization" (2002)
  • Banning Garrett, "China Faces, Debates, the Contradictions of Globalization" (2001)
  • Paper One Assigned (Draft due 2/4)
Januray 27, 7pm

Lecture/Screening

  • Chris Berry, "Not Drowning but Waving: South Korean Cinema, Alive in the Bitter Sea of Hollywood."
  • Also, view Take Care of My Cat, immediately following the lecture.
January 31

Critical Perspectives

  • Ivy, "National-Cultural Phantasms and Modernity's Losses," from Discourses of the Vanishing (1995)
  • Chow, "Seeing Modern China," from Women and Chinese Modernity (1991)
February 2

Asian Studies and Asian American Studies

  • Shirley Hune, "Asian American Studies and Asian Studies: Boundaries and Borderlands of Ethnic Studies and Area Studies"
  • Kandice Chuh & Karen Shimakawa, "Introduction," from Orientations: Mapping Studies in the Asian Diaspora (Duke, 2001) [Not in coursepack]

2. Deconstructing Japanese Identity (Johnston)
February 7

Introduction

  • David Howell, "Ethnicity and Culture in Modern Japan" (1996)
  • Gavan McCormack, "Introduction" from Multicultural Japan
February 9, noon

Gallery talk

  • Patrick Dowdey, "Red Rooster: Welcoming the New Year"
February 9

Two Historical Perspectives

  • Derek Massarella, "Some Reflections on Identity Formation in East Asia in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries"
  • Kevin Doak, "What is a Nation and Who Belongs?" (1997)
  • Paper Two Assigned (Draft due 2/18)
February 10, 4:30pm

Lecture

  • Sigrid Schmalzer '94, "Hairy People, Peking Man, Bigfoot, and the Case for a Human Identity in 20th-Century China"
February 14

Creation of the Modern Japanese Family, State, and Culture

  • Ueno Chizuko, "Modern Patriarchy and the Formation of the Japanese Nation State"
  • Nishikawa Yuko, "The Modern Japanese Family System: Unique or Universal?"
  • Selections from Japan: A Documentary History
February 16

A Japanese Historian Challenges "Japaneseness"

  • Nishikawa Nagao, "Two Interpretations of Japanese Culture"

3. Women's Writing and the Evolution of Technology and Identity (Widmer)
February 21

Introduction

  • Dorothy Ko, Teachers of the Inner Chambers, Introduction and Chapter 1
February 23

Late Ming

  • Feng Menglong's "Du Tenth Sinks the Jewel Box in Anger," From Stephen Owen, An Anthology of Chinese Literature, pp. 835-55
  • Ji Xian, "A Record of Past Karma," from Susan Mann and Yu-yin Cheng, eds., Under Confucian Eyes, pp. 134-46.
  • Paper Three Assigned (Draft due 3/4)
February 25-26 CONFERENCE. Traffic and Diaspora: Political, Economic, and Cultural Exchanges between Japan and Asian America.
February 28

Late Qing

  • Cathy Yeh, "Creating Urban Beauty: The Shanghai Courtesan in Late Qing Illustrations" from Writing and Materiality in China (Harvard, 2003)
  • "Introduction" and excerpt of translation of The Money Demon
March 2

Internet

  • Michael Hockx, "Links with the Past: Mainland China's Online Literary Communities and their Antecedents." Journal of Contemporary China 13 (2004): 105-27.
  • Guobin Yang, "Virtual Transgressions into Print Culture: A Sociological Analaysis of the Rise and Impact of Internet Literature in China" (unpublished)

4. East Asia and the Globalization of Capital Markets (Imai)
March 21

Introduction to International Financial Markets

  • Neely, Christopher J. "An Introduction to Capital Controls." Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis Review. Vol. 81 (6). p 13-30. Nov.-Dec. 1999
March 23

Effects of capital control on macroeconomic performance (Angle not present)

  • Rogoff, Kenneth. "International Institutions for Reducing Global Financial Instability." Journal of Economic Perspectives. Vol. 13 (4). p 21-42. Fall 1999.
  • Dornbusch, Rudi. "Malaysia: Was it Different?" National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc, NBER Working Papers: 8325. 2001
  • Paper Four Assigned (Draft due 4/1)
March 28

Effects of capital control on resource allocation

  • Johnson, Simon; Mitton, Todd. "Cronyism and Capital Controls: Evidence from Malaysia." Journal of Financial Economics. Vol. 67 (2). p 351-82. February 2003
  • Forbes, Kristin J. "Capital Controls: Mud in the Wheels of Market Discipline." National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc, NBER Working Papers: 10284. 2004
March 30, noon

Gallery talk

  • Patrick Dowdey, "Faces of Tibet Today: Photographs by Ge Jialin"
March 30

Discussion

  • No reading

5. Globalizing East Asian Music: Gender, Identity, and New Tradition (Zheng)
April 4

Gender and the role of traditional East Asian music in diasporic identification

  • Deborah Wong, "Taiko and the Asian/American Body: Drums, Rising Sun, and the Question of Gender." The World of Music 42:3 (2000):67-78.
  • Paul Jong-Chul Yoon, "'She's Really Become Japanese Now!': Taiko Drumming and Asian American Identifications." American Music 19:4 (2001): 417-38.
April 6

From traditional music to global pop

  • Michael Peluse, "Tsugaru Shamisen as Pop," from Folk Revival or Pop Sensation? The Latest Tsugaru Shamisen Boom (Wesleyan MA thesis, 2002)
  • Paper Five Assigned (Draft due 4/15)
April 11

Gender and identity in globalizing Chinese pop

  • Nimrod Baranovitch, "Negotiating Gender in Post-Revolutionary Popular Music Culture: Reconstructing Manhood, Womanhood, and Sexuality. From China's New Voices: Popular Music, Ethnicity, Gender, and Politics, 1978-1997 (University of California Press, 2003)
April 13

Discussion

  • No reading

6. China's Human Rights Tradition (Angle)
April 18

A "tradition" of human rights in China?

  • Stephen C. Angle & Marina Svensson, "General Introduction," from The Chinese Human Rights Reader (M.E. Sharpe, 2001)
  • Liang Qichao, "On Rights Conciousness"
April 20

Recent Debates

  • Wei Jingsheng, "Prison Letter"
  • Liu Huaqiu, "Vienna Conference Statement"
  • Paper Six Assigned (Draft due 4/29)
April 25

Relevance of an earlier tradition: Confucianism

  • Joseph Chan, "A Confucian Perspective on Human Rights for Contemporary China," from The East Asian Challenge for Human Rights (Cambridge, 1999)
  • Roger Ames, "Continuing the Conversation on Chinese Human Rights," Ethics and International Affairs, vol. 11 (1997)
April 27

An alternative framework

  • Lydia S. Bell, "Who Produces Asian Identity? Discourse, Discrimination, and Chinese Peasant Women in the Quest for Human Rights," from Negotiating Culture and Human Rights (Columbia, 2001)

7. Synthesis and Conclusion (Angle)
May 2
  • Take-Home Final Assigned (Due 5 p.m., May ??)