Portfolio categories: <span>Asian Studies</span>

Asia in America

This interdisciplinary course introduces the field of Asian American Studies. We will engage with multiple cultural and historical productions of Asia and America, with a specific focus on popular visual culture, art, literature, and film. Critical analysis of topics such as ethnic/cultural identities, citizenship(s), media/pop cultures, body images, sexuality, and adoption will be explored through the practices of different Asian communities in the United States. Students can expect to encounter interactive in-class activities, films, and presentations. Also counts toward Chinese, Japanese, and Race and Ethnic Studies majors and the Race and Ethnic Studies and International Relations concentrations.

Image Credit: Isamu Noguchi is pictured with the plaster model for his 1941 Contoured Playground in the background. Photograph. The Noguchi Museum Archive.

Buddhist Art & Architecture

This upper-division elective class is designed to explore the art and architecture of South, Southeast, and East Asia. We will examine how art and iconography responded to innovations in Buddhism, and how Buddhism itself has changed to accommodate local taste and stylistic preferences. Proceeding both regionally and thematically, we will visit iconographic features, figures, and architectural motifs in order to understand regional and cultural translation. Aside from cultivating a general knowledge base of these features, this class should further a general appreciation for regional specificity in art and major continuities and discontinuities in the Buddhist canon as it moves through Asia. The class will be compromised of lectures, discussion, informal group readings of primary texts, and kinetic/creative activities like ink painting.

Global Japan: Art, Anime, & Visual Culture

This course considers the global trajectory of Japanese art and visual culture from 1945 to 2016. From sushi to karaoke to martial arts, Japanese goods have permeated US markets. This class seeks to understand this phenomenon in the realm of art and visual culture through the analysis of diverse material including advertising, animation, comics, film, graphic design, installation, mascot culture, painting, photography, popular music, and street fashion. Grounded in art historical and visual studies methods, with supplementary readings from anthropology and media studies, this class will investigate issues such as the overlap between comics and contemporary art; Japanese and American approaches to animation; and the influence of Japanese graphic design on product packaging. The course will proceed thematically to address issues of nationalism, race, gender, domesticity, consumer culture, subculture, environment, minority representation, and the post-human through lecture and discussion, individual and group work, and film and video screenings. Our goal will be to critically interpret the role of Japanese art and visual culture in an increasingly interconnected world.

Visual Culture in Modern Japan

Explore Japan through the mass production, distribution, and consumption of Japanese visual and popular culture. Students will learn how to analyze a diverse array of visual materials—architecture, advertising, animation (anime), art, comics (manga), digital idols, film, graphic design, mascot culture, music, and video games. In discovering the popular construction of “Japaneseness,” the course will proceed thematically to address issues of nationalism, race, gender, domesticity, consumer culture, subculture, environment, and Japan’s relationship with its minorities from 1950 to 2015. Using methodologies from visual studies, media studies, art history, film studies, and anthropology, the goal of this course will be to rethink Japan as a site of local and global pop culture flows.

Image Credit: Photograph taken by author.