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” selected to represent topics that will be especially valuable when studied comparatively among different Asian countries and globally. The course also focuses on the theme of “imagined communities,” a term originally coined to theorize modern nationalism, but that we will use broadly to consider premodern societies as well, and processes of identity formation. To that end the course will encourage considering historical, political, and cultural connections between the formation of Asian identities within the region and in diasporic communities around the world.