Explores themes, topics, and concepts essential to studying the East Asian region in all of its diversity and complexity, and introduces students to a range of methodologies providing tools for critical thinking applicable to all future academic work. The focus is on thinking about and with East Asian cultures on their own terms (foregrounding texts and voices within the region), as a way to de-center Eurocentric notions and narratives and to grapple with persistent stereotypes and generalizations.

The syllabus is organized around a series of “keywords”...

The Tale of Genji, written by the Japanese woman Murasaki Shikibu (ca. 1000), is one of the most sophisticated works of literature in the world. It uncannily anticipates all of the richness and psychological complexity associated with the eighteenth-century novel. And yet to view this premodern Japanese text according to anachronistic categories or presentist viewpoints is to foreclose on its ability to expand interpretive possibilities and to consider alternatives to standard narratives of literary history. 

This course examines the prose and poetry of Genji...

This course surveys artistic production in Japan from the prehistoric period to the twenty-first century. The goal is not to define the national or “Eastern” character of Japanese art, but to interrogate manifestations of human creativity produced in the archipelago on their own terms. Analyze key examples of painting, prints, sculpture, and architecture, while also exploring calligraphy, garden design, ceramics, performance art, and fashion. Essential themes include the relationship between art and sociopolitical development, the complexities of Sino-Japanese cultural exchange, and the...

This is a seminar for advanced graduate students in East Asian art (and adjacent fields) focusing on reading secondary and primary sources in Japanese, as well as recent scholarship and theoretical texts in English. The topic will change each semester to accommodate the research projects, general exam fields, and interests of the participants. In addition to examining the state of the field of East Asian art history, the goal is to provide instruction in practical areas such as deciphering calligraphic texts (kuzushiji), improving bibliographic skills, and mastering specialized...

This undergraduate seminar examines the history, culture, and practice of the Japanese tea ceremony (chanoyu) and its reception in the United States. What began as a ritualized preparation of tea, by the medieval period had developed into a wide-ranging cultural practice the study of which opens onto issues of Japanese aesthetics, political history, and philosophy. Common perceptions of chanoyu today, however, are often filtered through the lens of its first systematic presentation in the United States, Okakura Tenshin’s Book of Tea (1906). With this in mind, the course takes advantage...

An advanced graduate seminar that examines works in the Harvard Art Museums in art historical, literary, and religious context in preparation for publication and future exhibitions. Past seminars have focused on the celebrated thirteenth-century sculpture of Shōtoku Taishi (99.1979.1), the texts, sculptures, and relics, once stored inside the statue, and how the ensemble sheds new light on Kamakura religious history, charismatic monks such as Eison and Ippen, and the meaning behind dedicatory offerings by nuns and...