About the Program
The East Asian Humanities major provides students with an understanding of East Asian cultures through an innovative curriculum taught by scholars of East Asian literature, culture, thought, and religion. The major is deliberately and insistently comparative and offers multiple disciplinary perspectives. It provides students with the opportunity to range across the rich diversity of East Asian cultures—Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Tibetan, and Mongolian--through the array of disciplines and specialties represented in the department, including literary, cultural, visual, and sound studies, religion, philosophy, film and media studies, disability studies, and environmental humanities.
Some courses focus on East Asia’s shared cultural heritages, others on humanistic responses to historical and sociological phenomena, others on systems of thought and belief, and yet others on the analysis and appreciation of the artistry of cultural invention.
The major can be completed entirely through courses taught in English, with the option of taking courses in the original language at the advanced level. There are no language prerequisites.
Major Requirements
Lower Division Requirements
Two Lower Division Courses, together covering at least two geographical or cultural spheres (8 Units)
| Code | Title | Units |
|---|---|---|
| EA LANG/BUDDSTD C50 | Introduction to the Study of Buddhism | 4 |
| CHINESE 7A | Introduction to Premodern Chinese Literature and Culture | 4 |
| CHINESE 7B | Introduction to Modern Chinese Literature and Culture | 4 |
| JAPAN 7A | Introduction to Premodern Japanese Literature and Culture | 4 |
| JAPAN 7B | Introduction to Modern Japanese Literature and Culture | 4 |
| KOREAN 7A | Introduction to Premodern Korean Literature and Culture | 4 |
| KOREAN 7B | Introduction to Modern Korean Literature and Culture | 4 |
Upper Division
Two Anchor Courses (8 Units)
| Code | Title | Units |
|---|---|---|
| CHINESE 186 | Confucius and His Interpreters | 4 |
| EA LANG 101 | Catastrophe, Memory, and Narrative: Comparative Responses to Atrocity in the Twentieth Century | 4 |
| EALANG 103 | Course Not Available | |
| EA LANG 106 | Expressing the Ineffable in China and Beyond: The Making of Meaning in Poetic Writing | 4 |
| EA LANG 107 | War, Empire, and Literature in East Asia | 4 |
| EA LANG 110 | Bio-Ethical Issues in East Asian Thought | 4 |
| EA LANG 112 | The East Asian Sixties | 4 |
| EA LANG 119 | The History of Heaven | 4 |
| EA LANG 125 | The Art of Writing: Writing the Limits of Empathy | 4 |
| EA LANG C128 | Buddhism in Contemporary Society | 4 |
| EA LANG 180 | East Asian Film: Directors and their Contexts | 4 |
Electives
Majors will be required to select four electives that span at least two regions across East Asia, rather than focusing on a single geographic, linguistic, or cultural sphere as in the existing Chinese and Japanese majors, or the Korean minor. These courses may include classical languages, and all courses numbered 101 and above, excluding Fourth and Fifth-year Advanced Language and Readings classes. A maximum of one year of upper-division courses in any modern language may count for the major.
Two of the elective courses must focus on the premodern period and two must focus on the modern period.
| Code | Title | Units |
|---|---|---|
| Premodern Electives | ||
| CHINESE 110A & CHINESE 110B | Introduction to Literary Chinese and Introduction to Literary Chinese | 8 |
| CHINESE C116 | Buddhism in China | 4 |
| CHINESE 120 | Ancient Chinese Prose | 4 |
| CHINESE 122 | Ancient Chinese Poetry | 4 |
| CHINESE 130 | Topics in Daoism | 4 |
| CHINESE 134 | Readings in Classical Chinese Poetry | 4 |
| CHINESE 136 | Readings in Medieval Prose | 4 |
| CHINESE C140 | Readings in Chinese Buddhist Texts | 4 |
| CHINESE 155 | Readings in Vernacular Chinese Literature | 4 |
| CHINESE 176 | Bad Emperors: Fantasies of Sovereignty and Transgression in the Chinese Tradition | 4 |
| CHINESE 178 | Traditional Chinese Drama | 4 |
| CHINESE 179 | Exploring Premodern Chinese Novels | 4 |
| CHINESE 180 | The Story of the Stone | 4 |
| JAPAN C115 | Buddhism and its Culture in Japan | 4 |
| JAPAN 116 | Introduction to the Religions of Japan | 4 |
| JAPAN 120 | Introduction to Classical Japanese | 4 |
| JAPAN 130 | Classical Japanese Poetry | 4 |
| JAPAN 132 | Premodern Japanese Diary (Nikki) Literature | 4 |
| JAPAN 140 | Heian Prose | 4 |
| JAPAN C141 | Introductory Readings in Kanbun | 4 |
| JAPAN 144 | Edo Literature | 4 |
| JAPAN 170 | Classical Japanese Literature in Translation | 4 |
| KOREAN 130 | Genre and Occasion in Traditional Poetry | 4 |
| KOREAN 140 | Narrating Persons and Objects in Traditional Korean Prose | 4 |
| MONGOLN 110 | Literary Mongolian | 4 |
| MONGOLN 116 | The Mongol Empire | 4 |
| MONGOLN C117 | Mongolian Buddhism | 4 |
| TIBETAN 110A & TIBETAN 110B | Intensive Readings in Tibetan and Intensive Readings in Tibetan | 8 |
| TIBETAN C114 & TIBETAN 110B | Tibetan Buddhism and Intensive Readings in Tibetan | 8 |
| TIBETAN 116 | Traditional Tibet | 4 |
| TIBETAN 119 | Tibetan Medicine in History and Society | 4 |
| TIBETAN C154 | Death, Dreams, and Visions in Tibetan Buddhism | 4 |
| Modern Electives | ||
| CHINESE 153 | Reading Taiwan | 4 |
| CHINESE 156 | Modern Chinese Literature | 4 |
| CHINESE 157 | Contemporary Chinese Literature | 4 |
| CHINESE 158 | Reading Chinese Cities | 4 |
| CHINESE 172 | Contemporary Chinese Language Cinema | 4 |
| CHINESE 187 | Literature and Media Culture in Taiwan | 4 |
| CHINESE 188 | Popular Media in Modern China | 4 |
| JAPAN 155 | Modern Japanese Literature | 4 |
| JAPAN 159 | Contemporary Japanese Literature | 4 |
| JAPAN 160 | Introduction to Japanese Linguistics: Grammar | 4 |
| JAPAN 161 | Introduction to Japanese Linguistics: Usage | 4 |
| JAPAN 163 | Translation: Theory and Practice | 4 |
| JAPAN 173 | Modern Japanese Literature in Translation | 4 |
| JAPAN 178 | Murakami Haruki and Miyazaki Hayao: the Politics of Japanese Culture from the Bubble to the Present | 4 |
| JAPAN 180 | Ghosts and the Modern Literary Imagination | 4 |
| JAPAN 181 | Reframing Disasters: Fukushima, Before and After | 4 |
| JAPAN 185 | Introduction to Japanese Cinema | 4 |
| JAPAN 188 | Japanese Visual Culture: Introduction to Anime | 4 |
| JAPAN 189 | Topics in Japanese Film | 4 |
| KOREAN 150 | Modern Korean Poetry | 4 |
| KOREAN 153 | Readings in Modern Korean Literature | 4 |
| KOREAN 155 | Modern Korean Fiction | 4 |
| KOREAN 157 | Contemporary Korean Literature | 4 |
| KOREAN 170 | Intercultural Encounters in Korean Literature | 4 |
| KOREAN 172 | Gender and Korean Literature | 4 |
| KOREAN 174 | Modern Korean Fiction in Translation | 4 |
| KOREAN 180 | Critical Approaches to Modern Korean Literature | 4 |
| KOREAN 185 | Picturing Korea | 4 |
| KOREAN 186 | Introduction to Korean Cinema | 4 |
| KOREAN 187 | History and Memory in Korean Cinema | 4 |
| KOREAN 188 | Cold War Culture in Korea: Literature and Film | 4 |
| KOREAN 189 | Korean Film Authors | 4 |
| MONGOLN 118 | Modern Mongolia | 4 |
| TIBETAN 115 | Contemporary Tibet | 4 |
| TIBETAN 118 | The Politics of Modern Tibet | 4 |
Advising
Contact Information
Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures
3413 Dwinelle Hall
Phone: 510-642-3480
Fax: 510-642-6031