Each semester, Duke, NCSU, and UNC offer a wide variety of courses focusing on Japan, with subject matter ranging from Japanese cinema and anime to tea culture and Japanese history. Thanks to the inter-institutional agreement between the three universities, these courses are open to all students, allowing them to gain new perspectives in their areas of expertise and study subjects that may not be available at their home institution.

Each university also offers beginner to advanced level Japanese language courses. For information on these programs, please visit our Japanese Language page.

 

Fsll 2012 Courses:

Ancient and Early Modern Japan
 Instructor: Jacques Fasan, Duke
Summary: Japan from earliest settlement to 1868; the Heian Court, rise of the samurai, feudal society and culture, the Tokugawa age, and the Meiji Restoration.

Anime: Forms and Mutations
 Instructor: Eileen Chow, Duke
Summary: Historical origins of Japanese anime, as well as its status as art, narrative, genre. Ways in which anime mutates: formally (literature, manga, live action), culturally (fashion, otaku, fan communities), geographically.

Buddhist Meditation: Cultivation Practices and Psychology
Instructor: Richard Jaffe, Duke
Summary: Buddhist paths and techniques of self-transformation in premodern and modern Buddhist cultures. Conceptions of the psychophysical person and goals of Buddhist practice assumed by these meditative techniques. Reinterpretation and modification of traditional meditation practices in contemporary Buddhist society.

First Year Seminar: Chasing Madame Butterfly
 Instructor: Staff, UNC
Summary: One of the most famous operas in the world, Puccini¿s Madama Butterfly (1904), a tragic tale of love betrayed, has its roots in novels, a play, and the history of relations between Japanese and foreigners in the city of Nagasaki. Why have the stories of Madame Butterfly captured this attention, inspired such diverse interpretations, and incited debate? Students explore these questions by learning the history of Nagasaki and about tourism to the city, by reading the early stories of Madame Butterfly, and by considering the newer stage productions, M. Butterfly and Miss Saigon, that reinterpret the story.

First Year Seminar: From Dragons to Pokemon: Animals in Japanese Myth, Folklore, and Religion
 Instructor: Barbara Ambros, UNC
Summary: This course examines the cultural construction of animals in Japanese myth, folklore, and religion.

Imaging a Nation: Japanese Visual Culture, 1868-1945
 Instructor: Gennifer Weisenfeld, Duke
Summary: Focusing on various visual representations of Japanese national identity at home and abroad during the empire; contending interpretations of “Japaneseness” and changing discourses on Japanese aesthetics in relation to broader historical developments; examining cultural production, exhibition practices, patronage, nationalism, neo-traditionalism, Pan-Asianism, and the role of visual culture under imperialism.

Japanese Art, 1600 to the Present
Instructor: Gennifer Weisenfeld, Duke
Summary: Japanese visual culture from the end of the sixteenth century to the contemporary period encompassing the country’s unification under Tokugawa rule and later emergence on the world stage through painting, sculpture, architecture, ceramics, decorative arts, photography, and print media. The relationship between artistic production and Japanese sociopolitical development seen through the critical issues of religion, region, gender, class, and nationalism. Ethical questions surrounding the establishment of the Japanese colonial empire in Asia, the Pacific War, the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the internment of Japanese-Americans in the United States, and the American Occupation of Japan.

Japanese Religions
 Instructor: Levi McLaughlin, NCSU
Summary: Survey of various strands of Japanese religious life from prehistoric times until present. Kami worship; primary Buddhist schools in Japan; Japanese Christianity; Confucianism; and New Religions.

Modern East Asia
 Instructor: W. Miles Fletcher, UNC
Summary: Comparative and interdisciplinary introduction to China and Japan in the 19th and 20th centuries, focusing on impact of the West, nation building, industrialization, and evolution of mass society.

Modern East Asia: 1600-2000
Instructor: Jacques Fasan, Duke
Summary: A broad survey of the modern history of the East Asian region: China, Korea Japan, and their ethnic/political/cultural sub-groups. Explores political, economic, and social interactions within the region and with the world. Critically appraises concepts of ethnic and national identity, nationalism and imperialism, development and modernization.

Music of Asia
Instructor: Alison Arnold, NCSU
Summary: Examination of music from a variety of Asian traditions including India and Pakistan, Japan and Korea, Thailand and Indonesia. Emphasis place on philosophical, social and religious contexts from which music emerges and in which it is experienced bynative performers and listeners.

Narrative, History, and Historical Fiction
Instructor: Simon Partner, Duke
Summary: This class explores the power of story-telling in the practice of history. Why are humans so fascinated by stories? What role do they play in our societies? How are they used – and misused – by historians? What are the differences between historical “fact” and “fiction”? How can we responsibly use the power of story in our history-writing? The class will be a mixture of seminar and workshop. In the seminar part, we will discuss weekly readings, a mixture of theory, narrative non-fiction, and historical fiction. We will cover topics such as the meaning and definition of narrative, authenticity and “truth” in story-telling, the anatomy of the historical best-seller, the construction of argument through the medium of story-telling, and the construction of individual life stories in biograpy and autobiography. In the workshop part, students will support each other in the writing of an extended work of narrative history or historical fiction.

The Pacific War, 1337-1945: It’s Causes and Legacy
Instructor: W. Miles Fletcher, UNC
Summary: An examination of the origins of the Pacific War, the course of this bitter and momentous conflict, and its complex legacy for both Asia and the United States.

Premodern Japanese History and Culture
Instructor: Morgan Pitelka, UNC
Summary: This survey examines Japanese history from early times to the Tokugawa settlement of 1603. We will consider the archaeology of prehistoric Japan; the first great capitals at Nara and Heian; the rise of the samurai; and the tenuous medieval balance of power between the court, warrior government, and Buddhist institutions.

The Rise of Modern Japan, 1850-Present
Instructor: David Ambaras, NCSU
Summary: Japan’s emergence as a modern nation and world power. Topics include nation-state formation; modernization and its dislocations; democratization and authoritarianism; imperialism, international politics, and war; postwar reforms; changing gender relations; popular culture; and social problems.

Swords, Tea Bowls, and Woodblock Prints: Exploring Japanese Material Culture
Instructor: Morgan Pitelka, UNC
Summary: This course surveys Japanese material culture. Each week we will examine a different genre of visual or material culture in terms of its production, circulation through time and space, and modern deployment in narratives of national identity. This course includes regular engagement with the Ackland Art Museum at UNC.

Technology and Organizational Environments
Instructor: Bai Gao, Duke
Summary: Examines how organizations (governments, private corporations, and NGOs) are affected by the social, technological, and cultural environments in which they operate, with a focus on how American and Japanese cultures generate different modes of organization and differing environmental facilities and obstacles.

Tokyo and the Modern World
Instructor: David Ambaras, NCSU
Summary: This seminar will explore the development of Tokyo from its origins in 1600 in Edo, the capital of the Tokugawa Shogunate, to its roles since 1868 as Japan’s national/imperial capital, showcase of modernity (in both its positive and negative aspects), postwar megalopolis, and key node in the circuits of today’s global economy. Using writings by historians and a variety of primary sources including newspapers and magazines, social surveys, maps, literature, film, photographs, and art, we will consider the changing forms and meanings of Tokyo, and think more generally and comparatively about the ways one can approach the historical study of urban space and urban life. Research projects can be on either Tokyo or Tokyo in relation/comparison to another urban formation.

Topics in the Study of Japanese Religions
Instructor: Richard Jaffe, Duke
Summary: An In-depth examination of selected topics in the study of Japanese religions.

The World of Japanese Pop Culture
Instructor: Leo Ching, Duke
Summary: An examination of modern Japanese culture through a variety of media including literary texts, cultural representations, and films.

The World Since 1750
Instructor: David Ambaras, NCSU
Summary: This course surveys the making of the world from 1750 to the present. Topics include: the Industrial Revolution, the development of the Nation-States, the rise of European, American and Japanese Empires, WWI, inter-war reconfigurations of colonial empires, anti-colonial nationalist movements, the Great Depression, the Cold War, struggles for political and economic independence among newly independent nations, the US-dominated neo-liberal order from the 1980s to the present, and contemporary global conflicts over ethnicity, religion, resources, disease, and the environment.

 

A Selection of Courses Offered in Other Years:
UNC
  • First-Year Seminar: Japanese Tea Culture
  • Cowboys, Samurai, and Rebels in Film and Fiction
  • Almost Despicable Heroines in Japanese and Western Literature
  • Literary Landscapes in Europe and Japan
  • Geisha in History, Fiction, and Fantasy
  • Japanese Popular Culture
  • Introduction to Japanese Film and Animation
  • Women and Work in Japan
  • Women Writers in Japanese Society
  • Early Modern Japanese History and Culture
  • Samurai, Monks, and Pirates: History and Historiography of Japan’s Long Sixteenth Century
  • Japan in the 20th Century
  • Japanese Religions after 1868
  • Mountains, Pilgrimage, and Sacred Places in Japan
  • Shinto in Japanese History
  • History, Memory, and Forgetting
  • Women in Japanese Religions
Duke
  • Japanese Cinema
  • Japanese Architecture
  • Topics in Japanese Art: Fascism East and West
  • Ancient and Early Modern Japan
  • Zen Masters, Soldiers, and Artists
  • Japanese Religion: Buddhas, Kami, and Other Deities
  • Japanese Politics
  • Girl Culture, Media, and Japan
  • Later Japanese Art
  • Modern Japanese Literature and Culture
  • Japanese Print Culture
  • Before Modern Japan
  • Environmental and Economic Regulations in Japan
  • Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Human Development: A View from Modern Day Japan and Asia
NCSU
  • Modern Japan: 1850-Present
  • Island Archaeology
  • Asian Civilizations to 1800
  • Contemporary Culture in Japan
  • Politics of China and Japan
  • The Buddhist Traditions
  • Japan’s Empire in Asia: 1868-1945