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EALL 211 -- Japan: Cultur Odyssey

Expanded course description

More than simply providing a broad overview of Japanese cultural history, this course regards Japanese culture as a continually evolving product of negotiation and crisis. Arguing that even today in Japan the question of cultural origins is a political one, we will consider this issue from the standpoint of creation mythology and the archeological record. Moving into the properly "historical" periods, we will investigate how everything from language to religion to architecture to literature has had its inception in negotiations between earlier forms and later arrivals which came in waves over the centuries from the Asian mainland. And, we will consider the effects that periods of relative isolation from Asia-- as during the Heian and Edo periods-- had on the development of what subsequently has been called a "uniquely Japanese" culture.

The latter half of the course will consider the cultural dimensions of Japan's most significant crisis: modernization. Compelled for the sake of its own geopolitical survival to eschew emulation of the East for that of the West, Japan has since the Meiji period found itself positioned ambivalently between the two cultural hemispheres. Modernity will be seen as a global force which has impelled Japan on a restless search for identity. We will discover that this search has taken the form of exercises in cultural reinvention, variously as "Asian," as "Western" and as sui generis. Through lectures, readings and films, we will discover that such exercises in reinvention have had profound effects on the cultural sensibilities of Japanese, as well as on the lives of other, non-Japanese.

Group: A&L

Offered 200604.

Syllabus

Although syllabi can change from term to term, a syllabus may provide further information about typical instances of this course.

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