Asian Studies

This study tour of Japan will begin in Osaka and end in Tokyo, with stops at Hiroshima, Himeji, Hakone, Nara, Kyoto, and some smaller places in between, such as Kamakura. The trip focuses on historical sites that are related to Buddhism, Shinto, the Japanese garden, and museums in Kyoto and Tokyo, in addition to several important feudal castles, such as that at Osaka and Himeji. Students will have a week of orientation and preparation time, which will include material on Buddhism and Shinto, and the culture as a whole.

Concentrating on the arts and architecture of China from the Song (960-1279) to the early Qing (1644-1800) dynasties, with a special focus on painting, this course will include the philosophical, religious, and historical bases for landscape painting and the Buddhist arts of sculpture and architecture.
 

A monkey named Wukong (aka Goku in Dragon Ball and Monkey King in Forbidden Kingdom) accompanies the monk Tripitaka on a journey to retrieve Buddhist sutras from India to China.  15 He is able to lift his 17, 000-pound iron cudgel with ease and to travel 34, 000 miles in one somersault. He knows 72 transformations into various shapes of animals and objects, even a clone of himself. He even knows various spells to command wind, to divide water, to conjure vprotective circles against spider spirts, and to freeze humans. Students, using a 16th-century novel Journey to the West, explore (1) the development of popular beliefs (in immortals, oxen demons, hungry ghosts, kitchen god, silkworm goddess, goddess of mercy, spider sprits, ancestors); (2) the boundaries between the seen and unseen realms of divine worlds; (3) a changing society entwined in what have formed/become the history of China. Focusing on Chinese religiosity within its own historical contexts, we examine and explore the knowledge and categorization of “religions” in the field of Chinese studies.
 

Beginning with the earliest known landscape painting in China, this course will address the philosophical and religious background (Daoism, Buddhism, and Confucianism) and the Principles of Painting as first expressed by Xie He in his preface to the “Ancient Painters Classical Record,” which forms the basis for later painting theory. We will study landscape painting from the Six Dynasties through the Qing Dynasties with emphasis on the relationships between painting, poetry, and calligraphy, and part of the course will be devoted to “hands on” experiments with brushes, ink, and paper. The course will also include a field trip to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York to study the collection of Chinese painting and calligraphy.