Explores the intersections of religion and poetry in the history of Indian literature as expressed in multiple settings and variations including hymns, chants, bhajans, poetic narratives, and new poetic conventions that deal with caste and gender identities.

Introduction to how social forces and interests impact scientific practice, and vice versa, including scientific incommensurability, cultural difference, colonialism, postcoloniality, and methodological issues.

Recent and contemporary manifestations of the Koreas in the world and the world in the Koreas. Subjects include labor and marriage migration, educational sojourning, transnational adoption, tourism, international sport, corporate expatriation, and media flows.

Explores asceticism and the concepts, practices, and goals associated with this radical way of life through case studies from various religions. Subjects include theories of the body and of culture, as well as issues of social status, gender, devotion, and violence.

Examines autobiographies written by prominent artists and intellectuals in Japan from the tenth century to the present. Subjects include the authors' lives and legacies, and how these works are informed by both the historical and cultural contexts in which they were written and by the genre itself. All reading, writing, and discussion will be in English.

A discussion of major comparative approaches in the study of religion.

Focus is on the cultural outsider's perceptions of East Asia in greater travel" dating from as early as Marco Polo up to works published in contemporary America. Selected memoirs and travelogues are presented from the perspective of the cultural outsider, written by missionaries, colonizers, journalists, POW's, scholars, students, and tourists.

Examine the metaphors and mythology from Chinese cultural memory that are present in classic novels, within literary and socio-historical contexts. Explore a cross-section of influential works from classical literature and the major founding schools of Chinese thought.

Explore the cultural history of Japan from the 1980s to the present, with particular attention paid to economic and ecological issues represented in literature, film, and visual culture.

Explore various ways to define translation in the Asian context through translation theory and translated texts and how translation impacts and represents different Asian identities.

Explore the fraught and entangled histories of modern Japan and Korea as depicted in literature and film to consider experiences of imperialism, rapid modernization, war, decolonization, and trauma.

Investigate ancient Chinese beliefs and practices surrounding death and the afterlife from the Neolithic era to the arrival of Buddhism. Explore tombs, burial objects, and funeral rites; philosophical essays and historical accounts; medical practices; religious relics, tokens, and talismans; ghost stories; poetry; and paintings.