Binghamton University - Asian and Asian American Studies Program

AAAS 105 INTRODUCTION TO ASIAN PHILOSOPHY - Goodman, Monday/Wednesday/Friday, 1:10-2:10

Covers the basic concepts and teachings of several Asian traditions, including Hinduism, Confucianism and Daoism, with a focus on Buddhism. Readings to include scriptural texts, such as the Bhagavad Gita, the Dao De Jing, and selections from the Pali Canon, as well as the works of Asian philosophers, such as Vasubandhu, Mencius, Zhuang Zi and Shantideva. Examines such issues as the existence of God, the nature of truth, and the difference between right and wrong. Also fulfills comparative culture requirement.

Introduction to the historical experiences of East Asia, particularly China, Korea and Japan. We will consider both the discrete histories of each of these countries from around 1500-1600 to the present as well as the ever-increasing interconnections among them. Specific topics will include: the religious/philosophical traditions of Confucianism, Taoism and Buddhism; perceptions of each other, of the West and by the West; the role of imperialism (including Japanese imperialism) in modern East Asia; the roles of nationalism, revolution, and socialism; and the future of East Asia in the twenty-first century. FORMAT: The class will meet each week for two hours of lecture and one hour of discussion (in discussion sections). The lectures will involve slides and occasional films. Requirements for non-writing students consist of three examinations (two in-class and one final for 25% each) and a 7-8 page book review (25%). Writing C students will be expected to do one in-class and one final examination (25% each), a 4-5 page thematic paper (10%), an 8-9 page paper drawing from readings on Chinese philosophy and religion (20%), and an 8-9 page book review (20%). Fulfills G and N requirements; 106B fulfills C requirement. Also fulfills comparative culture requirement.

AAAS 135 CULTURES OF CHINA, JAPAN, AND KOREA - Stahl - Tuesday/Thursday, 6:00-7:25

This introductory course is designed to provide students with a fundamental knowledge of the diverse cultural heritages and contemporary lifestyles of China, Japan, and Korea. The three cultures, collectively known as ¿East Asia,¿ share a long history of interaction and exchange. In the 21st-century, their expanding influence and power is being felt in economic, political, and cultural spheres around the globe. One basic premise of this course will be that the contemporary global and regional importance of China, Japan, and Korea cannot be grasped without an understanding of the distinct local traits of each. Therefore, after first becoming familiar with the individual (domestic) histories and traditions of each culture, students will then learn how citizens of each country perceive of, construct, and represent various ideas and images of an autonomous cultural heritage, in an effort to negotiate their respective nation¿s integration with the ongoing processes of globalization. Also fulfills comparative culture requirement.

This course examines images, symbols, archetypes, stereotypes, caricatures and other forms of cultural, ethnic and racial representations that are commonly associated with Asians in the U.S. and the diaspora. Using inter- and multidisciplinary approaches as well as various textual and visual sources, this course closely interrogates the origin of Asian and Asian American cultural representations, as well as their socio-political consequences and meanings. Popular cultural images considered include the inscrutable Oriental, the model minority, the Geisha/Butterfly, the Dragon Lady, the martial artist, the guru/yogi, the savage/ heathen, the speaker of pidgin, the computer nerd, the terrorist, among many others. This course fulfills the AAAS major core requirement

Contrasting patterns of socio-economic and political development in East and Southeast Asia during the post-WWII period: emphasis on economic change, the role of the state in development, implications of development for workers, peasants, and middle classes, social class transformations, recent experiences of economic reform and financial crisis. Major focus is on Singapore, Thailand, South Korea, China, and Taiwan. Also fulfills comparative culture requirement.

This seminar undertakes a multidisciplinary investigation into the profound impact and problematic legacies of modern warfare in Asia. The central aim of the course is to facilitate informed, critical thinking and nuanced understanding of modern and contemporary Asian and Asian American experience by cultivating appreciation of the diverse ways individuals and collectives have responded to, and represented the extreme experiences and burdens of their traumatic pasts, the forces affecting the extent to which they have acknowledged, confronted and worked through their violent histories, and the significance of their efforts to individual/national identity, behavior and international relations. Seminal theoretical works on the politics of public memory, perpetrator/victim/survivor psychology and the experience and effects of trauma will be considered and applied to three representative "unresolved issues" from the Asia Pacific War (1931-1945): the ¿Rape of Nanking,¿ the military exploitation of ¿comfort women¿ and the atomic bombing of Hiroshima/Nagasaki. Artistic representations of these controversial historical events will be engaged to determine what novel insights they might afford into the psychodynamics, costs in human terms, and enduring legacies of ideological manipulation, the shift from "sensory" to "mythic" reality, objectification/dehumanization of the enemy/other, and mass violence and victimization. Toward the end of the seminar, students will present to the class the results of their individualized research into the Nanjing Massacre, military sex slaves, the atomic bombing of Hiroshima/Nagaski or another unresolved issue of their choosing (e.g., internment of Japanese Americans, Korean War, Vietnam War, Pol Pot).

AAAS 280A SURVEY IN ASIAN AMERICAN LITERATURE AND CULTURE - Monday/Wednesday/Friday, 2:20-3:20

This course is an exploratory survey of Asian American literature and culture, encompassing the cultural productions of a wide and disparate array of ethnic, linguistic, and national identities, including those of East Asians, South Asians, Southeast Asians, and West Asians in the U.S. Subject matters traverse three centuries, from the 19th century to the present, and cover multiple themes, traditions, debates, and disputes. The primary course materials are literary (e.g., novels, short stories, poetry, critical essays, and autobiographical writings); also considered, however, are other cultural elements of Asian America, including film, television, visual arts, music, sports, and cuisine.

This course examines constructions of racial and ethnic identity in comparative contexts. "Race" has been defined as a social and historical formation, but also has been used as a narrative trope, symbolic device, and as personal and political expression. How has race become a metaphor for forms of social anxieties? How is race positioned and defined through literary means? How does this relate to narratives of nation? What is the role of the diasporic writer and intellectual in the re-creation of culture? The class will survey theories of race and studies of neo/postcoloniality, gender, nationalisms, and labor in local and global economies. The course comparatively examines literary and historical writings of several groups, including Asian Americans, African Americans, U.S. Latinos, Native Hawaiians, and European groups, as linked to global and local politics and economies.

Internship with established institution or agency (pre-screened by AAAS program) that works with Asian communities in the U.S. Involves a theory/praxis workshop with AAAS program faculty before interning, a site supervisor's assessment, a written report by the student and a presentation to the full program faculty and interested members of the larger community.

AAAS 238 SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY IN THE MODERN WORLD - Fan - Tuesday/Thursday, 11:40-12:40

We live in an environment inseparable from science and technology; they are fundamental components of modern society. We drive, watch TV, surf the Internet and use the elevator. We cite scientific concepts: gravity, evolution, virus, ecology, etc., in everyday conversation without thinking twice about them. We assume that science and technology are historically progressive and universally valid. We are convinced that they are among the greatest achievements of the West and are spreading across the world as part of global modernization. Is this understanding of modern science and technology adequate? This course aims to deepen understanding of science and technology by situating them in a world-historical context. Instead of focusing on individual discoveries or inventions, the course examines the social meanings of science and technology in the modern world. We shall investigate issues such as the role of science and technology in European imperialism, the reception and development of science and technology in non-Western societies, the configurations of modernity in different societies and the anxieties toward science and technology reflected in art and literature (from Frankenstein to Japanese animation). We shall also explore the complex reactions to certain developments in science and technology (e.g. Darwin's theory of evolution, nuclear energy, artificial intelligence, genetic engineering). Finally, we will consider the issue of globalization in relation to science and technology.

Broad introduction to geography of East Asia from a global interdependency perspective. Major topics include Eastern Asia location, culture, population, economic miracle, its global influence, relationships with the United States, and contemporary issues Eastern Asia countries confront. For majors and non-majors.

Is 'Asia' a narrative of one's own making? Can it ever be? Contemporary 'Asia', not as simply given but as constantly in formation through complex, multi- layered narratives of continent, nation, diaspora, colonization and globalization, is the focus of the course. How is contemporary 'Asia' produced, if it is, by the poetics and politics of how we know, remember, imagine? by the tensions, the upheavals, and the shifts of power and meaning that these activities engender? Where cultural, economic, and artistic interpretations of 'Asia' offered by new generations produce a plurality of 'Asias', what sorts of differences does that make? The class will emphasize recent transnational feminist, queer, and diasporic theory and cultural interpretation, film, new media technologies, and activist practices by writers and visual artists such as Amitava Kumar, Rey Chow, Trinh T:. Minh-ha, Deepa Mehta, Myung Mi Kim, Kimiko Hahn, Gayatri Spivak, Kim Soo-Ja.

AAAS 414 ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT IN EAST ASIA - Yoon -, Monday/Wednesday/Friday, 1:10-2:10

E Prerequisites - Grades of C or better in ECON 360 and 362; also grade of C or better in college level statistics (A- required from 2-year school). This course studies the fast growing economies of East Asia, especially, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore. The course overviews the performance and history of East Asian economies and analyzes the factors underlying East Asian economic development.

To help juniors, seniors, and graduate students understand the growth of the international community under law, this course examines issues of aggression, political justice, and accountability as presented in the war crimes trials of the 20th and 21st centuries. After closely scrutinizing the Nuremberg and Tokyo international war crimes trials held at the end of World War II, and the national military commission trials, starting in Manila, we chart key moments in the development of international law down to the present. The focus is on cases from World War II, the Vietnam War, and the two major U.S. wars and occupations of the post-cold war era, Afghanistan and Iraq.

Emergent diasporic and feminist narratives, drawn primarily from recent African and Asian productions, literatures, and theorizings, will be the focus of the class. Motile debris, the residue of post-, neo-, and trans- colonial implosions, scatters everywhere, not into a collection of readily identifiable categories, but into a fractious gnawing at the marrow of contemporary life. Ever in relation to memory and vast forgetting, omissions, burials, and denials, the course will examine the critical implications and promise of narratives that persistently erode predictable parameters, that inhabit transborder flows, unstable dimensions, gelatinous intervals and glossy strands. Might such entangled narrative forms render ecologies of survival? In "Water Works," Noriko Ambe cuts tracks, distortions, and lands of emptiness into books of anatomy, geography, and dictionaries. Her aim is not to cut perfect lines, but to stay with the process. Similarly, participants will keep a record, which maybe in any medium,essay, creative writing, film, multimedia, etc., of their reflections and journeys during the course. Drawing from that record, participants will develop individually or in small groups one or two projects.

This course will explore the multiple links among the development of science and medicine and European expansion and colonization. We will examine imperial scientific networks, institutions, and careers and investigate how Western medicine and science facilitated imperial dominance and shaped notions of identity. Botany, surveying, physics, and tropical medicine will be among the topics covered, as will the historiographical and methodological controversies that have shaped this exciting new field.

Race and 20th Century Black British Literature This course attempts a brief survey of what is now categorized as "Black" British writing and cultural production. We will interrogate the use of both "black" and "British" to designate the writings of non-white citizens of the United Kingdom, citizens embedded in diasporic communities from South Asia, the Caribbean islands, and Africa. We will examine how writers and artists categorized as "black" construct British identity. How does their identification as British alter the very nature of national identity in Britain? How do these artists connect their ethnic identities to their British identity? What does it mean to grow up `black¿ (Indian, Pakistani, Jamaican, Nigerian etc.) in Britain? What kind of hybrid cultures and positions emerge when Britishness and ethnic affiliations intersect? By focusing youth and identity at the intersection of race, gender, class, culture and nation, this course seeks to examine the forging of a "black" British identity among the youth as a process with historical and social dimensions that transforms the color and tenor of Britishness. This seminar, then, attempts to chart the changes in "black" Britishness, from Sam Selvon's early immigrant novel, Lonely Londoners (1956)," to Zadie Smith's "New British" novel, White Teeth (2001), as well as films that represent a multicultural, multi-ethnic Britain, such as My Beautiful Laundrette and Bhaji on the Beach.

AAAS 480V FROM BOMBAY TO BOLLYWOOD - Mehta - Monday/Wednesday/Friday, 1:10-2:10

The Transformation of the Hindi Film Industry:* Course Description: This course will trace the trajectory of Bombay cinema¿s transformation into Bollywood. The products of the Bombay film industry, Hindi films, have dominated the national imagination. Furthermore, they have been Indian cinema¿s most successful exports. Through readings and screenings, we will examine shifts in Hindi films¿ narratives as well as Bombay¿s industry practices. Some of the topics that we will explore include film exhibition, the development of melodrama, censorship, the emergence of the multi-starrer, the shifts in music and dance, the representation of political events, the construction of family and gender, the relationship between the Bombay film industry and the state, and the rise of new genres in the era of globalization. The discussions on specific films will attend to formal features of Hindi films such as narrative form, darsan, intermission, and song/dance sequences, placing Hindi films in productive dialogue with film theory. *Please note: Weekly screenings will be mandatory for this course. There will be a separate time set aside for the screenings. "Film screenings will take place on Mondays from 7:15pm-10:15pm in LH-006; however, the screenings may not take up the entire 3 hours." Please make sure that it does not conflict with your schedule.***

AAAS 380O MOUNTAINS AND FORESTS: ETHICS/SWELLINGS - Mahoney - Tuesday/Thursday, 4:25-5:50

At the outset of the 21st century, we are on the cusp of major environmental crisis: global warming, peak oil, the rapid industrialization of the “ Third World ”, over population, global capitalism, genetically altered food, etc. Such a crisis demands a necessary response, but it also begs the question of what kind of response. Is the solution simply one of legislation, re-legislation, sanctions, more government oversight and diplomacy, or does it necessitate a reevaluation of the way in which we relate to the nature and a reconsideration of our place/role in the larger ecosystem? This course will follow the second question as it moves toward an ethics of dwelling, with an emphasis on mountains and forests as sites for dwelling. Through a reading of literary and philosophical Eco-critical (broadly construed) writings, this course will raise the following questions: What is the relationship of humans to nature? Can we relate to nature? What would be the nature of that relationship? What is Nature vs. nature? What can nature teach us about ourselves and our ethics? What does it mean to dwell? What does dwelling have to do with ethics? Why mountains and forests? Etc. We will consider authors who ventured forth into the mountains and the forests in search of answers, and more specifically, we will engage the following three literary/philosophical cultures and time periods: American Transcendentalism (and Beats, time permitting), Classical Chinese Taoism (in particular its eco-feminist aspects and poetry) and German Romanticism/Modernism. Authors will include some of, or perhaps all of, the following: Emerson, Thoreau, Emily Dickinson, Annie Dillard, Gary Snyder, Aldo Leopold, Lau Tzu, Li Po, Wang Wei, Chuang Tzu, Hölderlin, Goethe, Martin Heidegger.

Tutorial or seminar study of special problems that meets needs of advanced students.

Overview of the structure of the Korean language, discussing the relevant analyses of a certain structure. Based on readings of the text, students discuss the adequacy of the analyses, including the generalizations, and consider expanded sets of data. Touches on the general areas of Korean linguistics, from Korean language background to socio-linguistics. Each week, students are required to complete the assigned readings specified in the syllabus and encouraged to read the related literature if possible. They are strongly advised to further investigate the issues before class meetings and reach their own conclusions concerning the adequacy of the analyses presented in the books.

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AAAS 242 20TH CENTURY KOREAN LITERATURE IN TRANSLATION - Pettid - Tuesday/Thursday, 2:50-4:15

This course introduces important Korean literature of the 20th century and reveals the social and cultural currents that helped shape these works. Given the many tumultuous events in the 20th century, such as the collapse of the 500-year-old Choson dynasty, colonization, war, division of the peninsula and the headfirst rush towards industrialization, we can rightly expect the literature of the period to illuminate a rich pastiche of themes, emotions and culturally significant landmarks. This class will be an exploration of such literary works.

This course investigates the social, economic, and political history of South Asia, focusing on the Mughal Empire, British colonial rule in India, and the contemporary nation-states of India and Pakistan. Topics include: the composite Mughal polity; European trade and expansion; extension of British colonial rule; deindustrialization; the dynamics of caste, class, religion, race, and gender; the nationalist movement; Gandhi, Nehru, and Jinnah; emergence of new nation-states; and globalization and liberalization. Course materials include introductory history texts, short stories, and films. For majors and non-majors; no prerequisites.

Survey of Post-Mao era PRC, Hong Kong, and Taiwan film. Emphasis on: historical background, prominent directors and films, studying theoretical approaches to Chinese film, and making connections between movies, theoretical approaches, and contemporary cultural and social issues. Taught entirely in English, no knowledge of Chinese language or cultural required. Format: Weekley quizzes, oral and written group analyses and presentations of specific films, lectures, and large and small group discussion and debate.

AAAS 280P CONTEMPORARY CHINESE LITERATURE IN TRANSLATION - Kaldis, Monday/Wednesday, 5:40-6:05

This course introduces important Chinese works of fiction and poetry of the 20th century, tracing the development of modern Chinese literature from the reaction against traditional literature and the classical language in the teens and twenties through the reaction against socialist realism and Maospeak beginning in the late 1970s. In addition to analyzing the relationship between literature and its historical context, students will also be introduced to some theoretical approaches used in the study of Chinese literature and culture. No prior knowledge of Chinese language or culture is required. Format: Reading Chinese fiction and poetry, and theoretical approaches to literary study, emphasis on in-class interpretation and analysis. Evaluation based on quizzes, examinations, written response papers, classroom participation, small group discussions, and periodic homework assignments.

This is a survey of the characteristics of Japanese from contemporary linguistic perspectives. In addition to an overview of its phonology, morphology, syntax, history, and writing system, students explore some sociolinguistic and pragmatic topics. Emphasis on development of oral presentation and listening skills. All lectures in English.

This undergraduate survey course treats Japan's 20th and early 21st century history. The aim is to gain understanding of the political, economic, and social- ideological struggles of the Japanese people, and the choices that they and their leaders made in different periods in order to win a leading place among the nations of the world. A major theme of the course is Japan¿s transformation into a powerful nation-state and empire, capable of competing for wealth and power with much stronger Western rivals. Also carefully assessed are Japan's experiences of rapid industrialization, the rivalry between Japanese, American, and European imperialists for wealth and power in East Asia, issues of war and cold war, and Japan¿s post-1990s adjustment to a world dominated by a militarily aggressive United States and a newly powerful China. Particular attention is given to Japanese-style democracy, the development of the mass media, and current efforts to transform the country into a "normal" (war-waging) state.

This course will introduce various Korean literary works to students in Korean. A range of materials will be used to introduce students to a diverse group of writers, genres, and subject matters covering primarily nineteenth and twentieth century Korea. As all readings will be in Korean students must have a solid command of reading skills in Korean. Accordingly, students must have completed KOR 204 or have an equivalent skill level.

Students will read poems by Li Bai and Du Fu in the original Chinese version. Each poem is followed by a short essay of analysis and appreciation, which discusses the poem's linguistic, historical, literary and philosophical aspects. Thus, this course combines Chinese language and literature, classical and modern Chinese, and poetry and prose. Prerequisites: Three years of Chinese language or equivalent

Close reading of historical, philosophical and literary texts written in the classical Chinese language, including selections from the Analects (Lunyu), Historical Records (Shiji) and Tang poetry. Students develop vocabulary and grammatical structure essential to the reading of classical Chinese texts while improving their understanding of Chinese literary heritage and human experience in the broad context of Chinese history.