700 & up – Graduate courses

ASIA 720 – Methods and Themes in Asian and Middle Eastern History (3):

This graduate-level course introduces recent scholarly publications in the broad field of Asian history. Covered themes include environmental history and space, colonial and urban contexts, daily life, and margins.
Instructor(s): Dr. Morgan Pitelka Making Connections Gen-Ed(s):

ASIA 721 – Transnational Feminisms of the Middle East and South Asia (3):

This seminar introduces students to transnational feminisms of the Middle East and South Asia. It examines a diverse range of women's thought and responses to the global and the local in this part of the world, with a focus on theoretical paradigms and tools to better understand women in a global context. Research methods also emphasized in this seminar.
Instructor(s): Dr. Claudia Yaghoobi, Dr. Pamela Lothspeich Making Connections Gen-Ed(s):

ASIA 722 – Asia in Motion: TransAsia and Transpacific Approaches to the Study of Asia (3):

This graduate seminar examines theoretical and research texts related to the mobility of people, languages, ideas, and cultures across Asia and the Pacific. This course aims to critically investigate Asia's past and present with TransAsia and Transpacific perspectives through examining five main themes related to Asian mobilities; 1) Empires, 2) Labor, 3) Transnational Family, 4) Language and Media, and 5) Citizenship.
Instructor(s): Dr. Ji-Yeon Jo Making Connections Gen-Ed(s):

ASIA 725 – Critical Approaches to Asian and Middle Eastern Studies (3):

This interdisciplinary graduate seminar is a foundational course for the M.A. in Asian and Middle Eastern Studies. The seminar introduces critical theories and disciplinary and interdisciplinary methodologies in studying South Asia, East Asia, and the Middle East. It studies the regions in part and as a whole by applying regional, transnational and global lenses, taking seriously relevant languages, cultural formations, histories, and philosophies. The seminar employs theoretical, ontological and epistemological terrains to critically analyze texts/media.
Instructor(s): Dr. Yaron Shemer, Dr. Morgan Pitelka
Offered: Fall Making Connections Gen-Ed(s):

ASIA 730 – The East Asian Anthropocene: Culture, Climate and Colonialism in Japan and China (3):

This course is intended as a graduate seminar devoted to the new topic of the Anthropocene and the ways in which capitalism and climate change have emerged therein. However, we will focus on the ramifications of the Anthropocene for East Asia (especially Japan and China).
Instructor(s): Dr. Mark Driscoll Making Connections Gen-Ed(s):

ASIA 731 – Technologies of Imagination: Science, Cultural Production, East Asia (3):

Focusing on East Asia, this seminar introduces students to scholarly intersections between science studies and literary and cultural studies. Drawing upon recent scholarship from these fields, it explores the intertwined pasts and presents of scientific, technological, and cultural production. In so doing, it challenges students to think critically about the contingent nature of disciplinary boundaries and the centrality of East Asia's place in global flows of knowledge, objects, and expression.
Instructor(s): Dr. I Jonathan Kief Making Connections Gen-Ed(s):

ASIA 740 – Chinese Civilization: A Conceptual History (3):

This seminar will look at how terms for concepts of 'civilization' in different languages (Old Chinese, Modern Mandarin, English, Japanese) and different historical periods have been used to refer to what is now China as a "civilization." This graduate seminar explores the roles played by various notions of 'civilization' in the articulation of different conceptualizations of "Chinese civilization."
Instructor(s): Dr. Uffe Bergeton Making Connections Gen-Ed(s):

ASIA 741 – Honglou Meng: The Story of the Stone (3):

This course focuses on the most celebrated novel titled Honglou Meng or The Story of the Stone by Cao Xueqin (1715-1763). This 120-chapter-long novel tells the downfall of a great aristocratic family that is presented as a microcosm of traditional Chinese societies. The novel features all aspects of traditional Chinese cultures including architecture and garden, education, families and interfamilial connections, generational relationships, genders, history, marriages, mythology, philosophies, poetry, etc.
Instructor(s): Dr. Li-ling Hsiao Making Connections Gen-Ed(s):

ASIA 742 – Indigenous Ecologies in Literatures of China and Taiwan (3):

This seminar applies theories from Postcolonial Ecocriticism and Sinophone Studies to analyze diverse Indigenous ecologies in environmental literature from China and Taiwan. We read poems, philosophy, and fiction featuring the cosmologies of Han and Uyghur farmers, Tibetan, Mongolian, and Kazakh nomads, Indigenous Taiwanese hunters and fishers, and Hmong foragers, analyzing relational ontologies among humans, non-human animals, assemblages, and ecosystems. Knowledge of Chinese language, literature, history, or philosophy recommended but not required.
Instructor(s): Dr. Robin Visser Making Connections Gen-Ed(s):

ASIA 770 – The Moving Imagination (3):

This graduate seminar investigates competing concepts of modernity in South Asia as imagined in film and television media. We begin by exploring how notions of modernity have emerged in South Asia, and how film and television have imagined a "modern" society. Particular topics covered include social justice, gender, nation, globalization, and cosmopolitanism. We will also engage with critiques of films, television programs, and Internet-based videos with respect to social justice, environment, and technology.
Instructor(s): Dr. Afroz Taj Making Connections Gen-Ed(s):

ASIA 771 – Performance in South Asia: Contexts and Theories (3):

This seminar examines a range of performance practices in South Asia, and some of the theories and methods scholars have used to research and understand them. It especially focuses on emerging analytical frameworks and approaches currently shaping the field. In this seminar, "performance" is conceptualized broadly to include aesthetic, social and political forms of performance spanning theatre, dance, musical concerts, film, religious events, military rituals, and so forth.
Instructor(s): Dr. Pamela Lothspeich Making Connections Gen-Ed(s):

ASIA 780 – Minorities in the Middle East (3):

This course enriches students' understanding of the diversity of Middle Eastern countries, exploring histories of intercommunal contact and conflict. We will investigate contemporary representations and lived realities of religious, ethnic, and sexual minorities of the Middle East from diverse political, cultural, historical and aesthetic perspectives. Although the majority of people living in the Middle East converted to Islam after the Arab conquests, there remained important minorities including indigenous Christians, Jews, and in Iran some Zoroastrians.
Instructor(s): Dr. Claudia Yaghoobi Making Connections Gen-Ed(s):

ASIA 781 – The Body and Body Politics in the Arab World (3):

What is political about the body? This seminar introduces students to social scientific and humanistic approaches to the body. Instead of taking the body as simply a biological entity, it places it within a wider network of meanings, practices, institutions, histories, and forms of power. The course explores the operations of different regimes of power on and in the body and, conversely, shows how the body can become a locus of resistance and creativity.
Instructor(s): Dr. Ana Vinea Making Connections Gen-Ed(s):

ASIA 782 – Visual Culture of the Middle East (3):

Examines the role of images in the modern ME & how these images shape transnational relationships and conceptions of the region within the global imaginary. How do images "speak"? What role do they play in constructing subjectivities and identities of belonging? What is their relationship to power locally and globally? We will analyze a variety of texts and media (film, photography, video, television, modern art, street art, graphic novels, social media, etc) from the ME.
Instructor(s): Dr. Nadia Yaqub Making Connections Gen-Ed(s):

ASIA 783 – Critical Postcolonial Perspectives on the Arab-Jew: Promises and Limitations (3):

This seminar investigates the rise of the radical discourse and literature on the Arab-Jew / Mizrahi in the late 1980s and explores its connection to Israel's "new historians," post-Zionism, and post-nationalism and to Third-worldism. With the increasing presence of the Arab-Jew / Mizrahi in academic discourse and, to an extent, in Israeli (and Arab) media and culture, the original discourse has witnessed various permutations and increasing diversification from its inception to the present.
Instructor(s): Dr. Yaron Shemer Making Connections Gen-Ed(s):

ASIA 785 – Critical Genealogies of Middle East and North Africa Studies (3):

This seminar is the core course for the graduate certificate in Middle East studies. It is an introduction to critical issues in the disciplinary, interdisciplinary, and cross-disciplinary study of the Middle East. Making Connections Gen-Ed(s):

ASIA 991 – Research and Writing in Asian and Middle Eastern Studies (3):

This seminar guides students through the major stages and mechanics of thesis writing, including focusing your topic and research questions, finding primary and secondary sources, writing a prospectus and a literature review, developing your argument cohesively across chapters, organizing chapters, building a bibliography, proper citation, and formatting the thesis. The seminar serves as a forum for reading and presenting on academic scholarship in the field and as a writing workshop. DAMES MA students only.
Instructor(s): Dr. Uffe Bergeton
Offered: Fall Making Connections Gen-Ed(s):

ASIA 993 – Master's Research and Thesis (3):

Individual research in a special field under the direction of a member of the department.
Instructor(s): Dr. Yaron Shemer
Offered: Spring Making Connections Gen-Ed(s):