This seminar explores some of the key tenets and methodologies of the academic discipline broadly known as 'area studies,' with the aim of further preparing students to pursue their chosen avenues of research as scholars of East Asian Studies at Wesleyan University. It is required of all CEAS majors in their sophomore year, and is also open to CEAS majors in their junior or senior years who may have been unable to take the seminar previously. The specific topics and concerns addressed by the seminar shift from year to year and according to the instructor, but may include questions of geopolitics, Orientalism, modernization and modernity, and productive approaches to grappling with written, musical, and filmic texts in disparate contexts and historical moments. |