This class examines Japanese cinema as an effective medium to communicate various environmental concerns. The focus is on various natural and human disasters from industrial pollution to the effects of earthquakes and nuclear meltdowns. The films cover 1970-2019. The class will look at documentary, live action, monster (kaijū), and animated films, and consider how these different genres visualize environmental themes/messages.
Themes for discussion in class include: rethinking human-nature relationships, toxic environments and activist documentary directors, monster movies as eco-narratives, translating disaster from documentary into fiction films, the importance of landscape for environmental cinema, and culturally specific responses to environmental disaster in Japan that differ from the West. No knowledge of Japanese language or Japanese film is required. All readings, films, and discussions in English.
In this class, we challenge the myth of Japanese homogeneity and listen to the voices of those forging an identity in opposition to dominant ideas about what it means to be Japanese. We will explore this through the lenses of colonialism, national identity, race, language, regionalism, and socio-economics. The class will be a mix of primary sources and critical texts. All readings and disussion in English.
Global warming, rising seas, smog, and plastic pollution are affecting the planet as a whole. What is the role of Asia in contributing and responding to, as well as potentially solving the environmental crisis? In this class we will examine Asian environmental texts and evaluate them as an effective medium to communicate various environmental concerns. The class will look at fiction, films, videos, graphic novels, and art, from China, Japan, Korea, Thailand, and Vietnam. Our main focus is on how these texts rally the humanistic techniques of storytelling to communicate or comment on various types of environmental harm.
Topics for discussion include: water control, mining, industrial pollution, plastic pollution, animals and food, nuclear disaster, climate change, and ecotourism. No knowledge of any Asian language is required. All readings, films, and discussions will be in English
An introduction to Japanese literature written from the end of World War II to the present day. Topics for discussion include: war memory, postwar economic success, regional and minority literature, alternative families and lifestyles, the post-bubble lost decades, alienation, violence, disaster and terrorism. The class presupposes no specialized knowledge of Japanese language, literature or history. Discussion and readings in English.
This graduate seminar will examine the idea of a transpacific or Asia/Pacific Japan as a way to move beyond the national boundaries and identity we commonly associate with Japan. We will examine different voices within Japan and the Japanese diaspora, and how other countries on the Pacific have reacted to Japanese literature, the shared trauma of atomic/nuclear harm, and concerns about environmental degradation. Units include Okinawan literature, Japanese diasporas and diasporic fiction in the US and Brazil, and speculative fiction that considers how a Japanese identity could exist if the Japanese islands disappeared. The class provides the chance to think about Japanese identity and literature in a number of different modern eras and through a range of theoretical frames drawn from recent and cutting-edge scholarship in Japanese and Asian Studies.
This graduate seminar will focus on modern and contemporary Japanese criticism from the Mejii period to the present day. The class will be a mix of readings in Japanese and English with both primary sources and critical texts. It will introduce you to some of the major critics and critical debates in modern Japanese literature and cultural studies.