Asian Studies Courses

ASIA 056: Writing Women in Modern China, Visser
In “liberating” China from its traditional cultural practices, Chairman Mao denounced the oppression of women by famously declaring that “women hold up half the sky.” One of the Communist Party’s achievements was its elevation of women. As China embraces a new market economy, however, women may be losing ground. This seminar compares the rhetoric of equality between the sexes presented by late Qing, May Fourth, and communist thinkers to perspectives by women writers. We examine how several generations of women reconciled themselves to – and resisted – the expectations of women under Confucianism, Communism, and Capitalism in the twentieth century. The central questions governing this course are what do women wish to liberate themselves from, how do they enact this, and toward what end? How do we define liberation in relation to gender, and how does/do writing women give expression to these desires for freedom? [LA, BN]

ASIA/CMPL 151: Literature and Society in Southeast Asia, Aragon
This course is an introduction to the societies of Southeast Asia through literature. Background materials and films will supplement the comparative study of traditional works, novels, short stories, and poems. [LA, BN]

ASIA 333: The Mahabharata: Remembered, Reimagined, Performed, Lothspeich
This course starts from the premise that India’s great epic, The Mahabharata, is a living text, or more appropriately, a network of living texts, which are still read, witnessed, and experienced today in South Asia and beyond. We will begin with the classical tradition, engaging with the Sanskrit critical edition of the Mahabharata as well as several classical Sanskrit plays based on the epic—all in English translation, of course. Reading a convenient English abridgement of the Mahabharata will help students navigate these classical sources. In the latter half of the course, we will consider the legacy of the epic in modern India—in folk performances, on television and in film, and in twentieth-century literature by Indian writers. Some of the topics to be considered in the course include the meaning of dharma, the ethics of war, Krishna’s battlefield sermon (The Bhagavad-Gita), epic heroines, epic loss and suffering, destiny and free will, and the significance of the Mahabharata to the contemporary world. [LA, WB, BN]

ASIA/FREN/INTS 451: Orientalist Fantasies and Discourses on the Other, Rulon
This interdisciplinary course (literature, film, painting, music) examines the Eastern and Western encounters with and discourses on the other from the 18th century to the present. [LA, NA, GL]

ASIA 490-001: Elementary Turkish II, Zulfikar
Merhaba, Türkçe 102’ye hoşgeldiniz! Welcome to Turkish 102, a beginning course in Turkish. Turkish 102 is the second in a series of Turkish language courses offered at UNC. The prerequisite for the course is Turkish 101 or its equivalent. Any student who has not completed Turkish 101 should contact the instructor immediately for taking the placement exam. Just like Turkish 101, this course will be proficiency based, covering all four language skills (speaking, listening, reading, and writing). I will place considerable emphasis on active use of the language both in class and in daily homework assignments. By the end of the semester, students can expect to know how to read simple texts using a range of vocabulary and structures, to deliver an address about oneself in Turkish, and to engage in limited conversations with classmates, instructor and sympathetic native speakers. Students will also develop an acquaintance with many aspects of Turkish culture.

ASIA 490-002: Language, Exile, and Homeland in Zionist Thought and Discourse, Shemer
Territorial-political Zionism, which dominated the Zionist enterprise already at the beginning of the 20th century, heralded the renewed settlement of the Jews in the Land of Israel. Zionism endeavored to rectify the perceived anomaly of the Jewish people, one aspect of which is the condition of being a nation without a common language. The return to the Promised Land and to the language the land’s forefathers spoke in the Biblical era were therefore inseparable and the spread of the Hebrew language became, to an extent, the litmus test for the success of the Zionist enterprise.
Methodologically, class discussions will be informed by a post-colonial framework and perspectives offered by Cultural Studies. Employing Zionist, post- and anti-Zionist documents, treatises, and literary and cinematic texts, this class will focus on the relation between language, Jewish-Israeli identity, and the notion of homeland. This course will attend to the permutations this relation has undergone from the early Zionist period to the present, namely, from the Zionist creed calling on the new Jews to eradicate their diasporic culture and languages and the reification of Hebrew as an icon of national Israeli-Jewish identity to the undertaking by some writers and scholars to de-judaize Israeli Hebrew.

CHIN 354: Chinese Culture Through Calligraphy, Li
Prerequisite: CHIN 102, CHIN 111, or JAPN 102
This course is an introduction to Chinese culture through the learning of Chinese calligraphy. Course content includes (1) cultural, historical and linguistic knowledge related to Chinese calligraphy, (2) basic skills of brush writing, and (3) artistic value and aesthetics in Chinese calligraphy. A hands-on approach is adopted in teaching the use of writing instruments, the structure and composition of Chinese characters, and the method of composing a piece of calligraphy artwork. Class procedure is lecture followed by a studio session of writing practice. The course is taught in English. There is weekly brush writing homework, reading assignments, one class presentation and paper, a final brush writing project, a midterm and a final exam. [VP, BN]

CHIN 562: Chinese Contemporary Urban Culture and Arts, Visser
China has maintained a rural population of nearly ninety percent for millennia, its poets rhapsodizing on glad retirements to rural abodes, its culture characterized by an “attachment to the soil,” yet both the soil and the values associated with it are rapidly transforming. This course examines contemporary art, architecture, fiction, film, and city planning documents to consider how three decades of market-based, post-revolutionary urban transformation is shaping a traditionally rural-based, agricultural civilization. We consider the following questions: How does culture change when those in a historically agricultural civilization identify with urban lifestyles and values? How do economic and political factors shape urban environments? How do changes in the built environment impact subjectivity? Do new urban spaces create social conflict or new civil possibilities? How has urban development in mainland China altered traditional urban designs, architectural styles and cultural aesthetics? [SS, BN]

CHIN 590: Advanced Topics in Chinese Language & Literature, Henry
This course is an introduction to the language, content, and ideas of Zuozhuan, China’s earliest collection of narrative writing, compiled around 320 BCE. The narratives in Zuozhuan all concern historical figures who lived in the Spring and Autumn era (722 – 481 BCE). It is generally admired for its unsurpassed conciseness and vividness of style, and moreover serves as an excellent introduction to all writing in literary Chinese, which remained the standard medium for all written work in China until the promulgation of vernacular Chinese in the wake of the May Fourth movement in 1919.

JAPN 162: Japanese Popular Culture, Driscoll
This course will examine how and why Tokyo emerged as a dominant locale in global mass culture. Students will be introduced to major figures and genres in Japanese pop culture. [BN, VP]

JAPN 384: Women Writers in Japanese Society, Bardsley
Japanese women writers came into their own as professionals in the late 1800s, and participated in every major literary movement of twentieth century Japan. They wrote for all kinds of women's magazines and newspapers, published novels, plays, essays, and poetry, supported war and anti-war movements, and fiercely debated gender equity, democracy and national identity. Many among them explored the transgressive, experimented with avant-garde abstraction, delved into pulp romance and mysteries, or earned fame as soap opera or comic book writers. This course traces the history of modern Japanese women's writing, dramatizing its most significant, often controversial moments, and introducing students to the diversity of writers, readers and texts involved. The course also acquaints students with critical writing in English that opens new ways of thinking and talking about Japanese women's writing. [LA, BN]

VIET 252: Introduction to Vietnamese Culture through Music and Narrative, Henry
This course examines the social history of Vietnamese popular music in the twentieth century starting with the late 1930’s, when Vietnamese song writers first began writing western-influenced songs. Thus the course deals in detail with songwriters, singers, government policies with regard to music, historical events, and, in a broad sense, culture, including proverbs, customs, myths, and historical legends. Students are welcome to concentrate, in writing papers, on those aspects of the course that interest them the most, or that they feel most competent to deal with. [VP, BN]

Crosslisted Courses

ANTH/ASIA 375-001: Memory, Massacres, and Monuments in SE Asia, Wiener
The past in Southeast Asia’s present, focusing on global, national, and local processes; individual and collective memory; and the legacies of violent death.

ANTH/ASIA 429-001: Culture and Power in SE Asia, Aragon
The formation and transformation of values, identities, and expressive forms in Southeast Asia in response to forms of power. Emphasis on the impact of colonialism, the nation-state, and globalization.

ECON/ASIA 469-001: Western & Asian Economic Systems, Rosefielde
Permission of the department. For the student who wishes to create and pursue a project in Asian studies under the supervision of a selected instructor. Course is limited to three credit hours per semester.

HIST/ASIA 136-001: South Asia Since 1750, Saikia
This course is an introduction to modern India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. We will investigate major political, social, economic, and cultural issues from 1750 to the present.

HIST/ASIA 276-001: Modern Middle East, Shields
This course introduces students to the recent history of the Middle East, including a comparison of the Middle East to the United States.

LING/JAPN 563-001: Structure of Japanese, Smith
Prerequisite, JAPN 102 or LING 101. Introductory linguistic description of modern Japanese. For students of linguistics with no knowledge of Japanese and students of Japanese with no knowledge of linguistics.

RELI/ASIA 181-001: Later Islamic Civilization & Modern Muslim Cultures
A broad interdisciplinary survey of the later Islamic empires since the 15th century and their successor societies in the modern Muslim world.

RELI/ASIA 183-001: Asian Religions, Ambros
An introduction to major religions of south Asia and east Asia, such as Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Taoism, and Shintoism.

RELI/ASIA 285-001: The Buddhist Tradition: Southeast Asia and Sri Lanka, Leve
This course explores the Theravada school of Buddhism and themes in the social, cultural, and political lives of the Theravada Buddhist countries of Southeast Asia and Sri Lanka.

Other Courses of Interest

ART 258-001: Chinese Art & Culture: From Han to Tang, Lin

CLAR 241-001: Archaeology of the Ancient Near East, Sams
A survey of the cultures of the ancient Near East, Mesopotamia, Anatolia (modern Turkey) and the Levant, from the first settled villages of the ninth millennium to the Persian conquest of Babylon in 539 BCE.

ECON 056-001: First-Year Seminar: Asia and the West, Rosefielde
This course fits the Carolina Entrepreneurial Initiative (CEI), with the communication intensive, global issues framework.

ENGL 390-002: Modern Arabic Literature, Jawad
This course aims at introducing the student to the trends and movements in modern Arabic literature. Poetry, novel, and short story, among other genres will be examined and analyzed. Nobel prize winner Naguib Mahfouz, Al-Tayyib Salih, M. Darweesh, Nizar Qabbani, as well as prominent women writers will be considered critically. Mahfouz’s novel Palace Walk will be given its due critical notice in the light of “ Post-Colonial” studies.

HIST 292-002: Unity & Difference in 20th Century China, Tsin

HIST 292H-001: Race & Slavery in North Africa, El Shamsy
This course explores the historical record of slavery in North Africa, and analyzes its relationship to changing conceptions of race in North African societies. Between the Muslim conquest of North Africa in the seventh century and the official abolition of slavery in the region in the nineteenth century, millions of men, women, and children lived in or passed through North Africa as slaves. Many served as laborers, servants, concubines, and soldiers; others became artists, scholars, saints, and sultans, even founding dynasties based on slave rule. Today, in spite of official decrees, forms of slavery persist in North Africa, and perceptions of racial and ethnic differences play a role in present-day conflicts from Niger to Darfur. The course investigates the key factors that have shaped the varied institution of slavery in North Africa; these include the principles of Islamic law and prophetic ethics, the values and prejudices of particular cultures, the Roman system of slavery that predated Islam in the region, environmental change and economic stress, and the changing relations between minorities, majorities, and states. An examination of the phenomenon of slavery thus offers a window into the cultural and economic history of North African societies. In addition, it provides a contrast to the very different form of slavery (predicated on distinctive notions of race and racial superiority) that characterized the transatlantic world and that continues to dominate our vision of this major historical phenomenon.

RELI 489-001: Animals in Japanese Myth, Folklore, & Religion, Ambros
Permission of the instructor. A close examination of a selected topic in Asian religions.

SOCI 419-001: Sociology of the Islamic World, Kurzman
Investigates issues such as tradition and social change, religious authority and contestation, and state building and opposition in Muslim societies in the Middle East and around the world.