This team-taught seminar, required of all majors in the College of East Asian Studies (CEAS), is for sophomores who have joined CEAS. It is also open to junior and senior CEAS or EAST majors who were unable to take the course their sophomore year. The course introduces majors to a range of the fields and methodologies that comprise East Asian studies at Wesleyan. The material will be organized into several disciplinary and area modules, each contributing to a central theme. For Spring 2016, the organizing theme is "Asia Imagined: Orientalism and Beyond." The course will explore how various Asian nations have been romanticized and orientalized in both popular and academic imagination, and more important, how Asian authors and works countered this orientalism. The class thus aims to teach how to approach "Asia" without essentializing it. It asks students to draw out the complexities, contradictions, and multiple voices existent within East Asia. By doing so, the course hopes to question the very notion and borders of "Asia" itself, especially in terms of today's globalized market. |