New and Highlighted Courses (Spring 2026)

Instructor: Anne Blackburn

Course Time: Tuesday and Thursday, 1:25pm - 2:40pm

3 credits.

For millennia, Buddhist monks, merchants, pilgrims, diplomats, and adventurers have moved around the Indian Ocean arena circulating Buddhist teachings and powerful objects. In doing so they helped create Buddhist communities in the places we now refer to as southern China, India, Sri Lanka, and Southeast Asia. The course explores these circulatory histories by focusing on case studies in each of four historical periods: premodern (esp. early second millennium A.D.); the era of 19th-century colonial projects; mid-20th-century nation-state formation in South and Southeast Asia; and contemporary (early 21st century) times. Drawing together materials from Indian Ocean studies, Buddhist studies, and critical studies of colonialism, modernity, and nation-state formation, this course attends to the ways in which changing trans-regional conditions shape local Buddhisms, how Buddhist collectives around the Indian Ocean arena shape one another, and how trade, religion, and politics interact. 

 (General Education Rubric)

Instructor: Drisana Misra

Course Time: Tuesday and Thursday, 2:55pm - 4:10pm

Cross-listed with SHUM 3022.

3 credits.

In 1610, Nahua chronicler Chimalpahin wrote that a group of Japanese merchants had made landfall in Mexico, bringing with them writing desks, folding screens, porcelain, and silk. During this period, Japanese warlords, merchants, and converts began to engage in overseas exploration, journeying from Acapulco to Rome and traversing the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans. At the same time, these actors engaged in colonial expansion, invading Korea, settling in parts of Southeast Asia, colonizing the island of Ezo (Hokkaido), and dominating the Ryukyuan islands (Okinawa). We will disentangle the complex and obscured role of the Japanese archipelago in early modern globalization through decolonial and archipelagic thinking. In each session, we will apply the readings to a primary source, such as an edict, a world-map folding screen, a set of playing cards, or an anti-Christian tale, that will serve as a focal point for the respective theme of the session. By grounding our interpretations in a diverse array of primary sources, you will develop an interdisciplinary skillset in visual, literary, and historical evidence and gain robust knowledge of transoceanic exchange.

 (Society & Culture Rubric)

Instructor: Anne Blackburn

Course Time: Monday, 12:15pm-1:30pm

3 credits.

Do modern times (which are experienced and conceptualized in varied ways) pose distinctive problems and opportunities for Buddhists? How are Buddhist teachings drawn into forms of social and political critique, activist and advocacy projects, and theorizing about human communities and social processes? In the 20th and 21st centuries, how do Buddhist teachings and practices inform practical and conceptual approaches to human flourishing? Drawing on thinkers from several parts of Asia and the Americas, this seminar highlights how persons work creatively with Buddhist teachings. We shall explore how Buddhist teachings are interpreted to address painful circumstances, as well as how such hermeneutics may offer new (and sometimes liberatory) ways of seeing selves, others, and communities. Writers and artists considered in this seminar interpret Buddhist teachings and practices in relation to capitalism, race, gender, sexuality, environmental ethics, and nationalism.

(Religion Rubric)

Instructor: Daniel Bass

Course Time: Monday, 12:15pm-1:30pm

1 credit.

This is an events-based course. Students will attend ten seminars in the South Asia Program seminar series. The work of scholars, filmmakers, and artists presenting research in the series spans the region and its diasporas (e.g., India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Afghanistan, Bhutan, and Indian Ocean worlds). Topics considered will cross the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences. Students will attend these events and engage with the material presented in short response papers and supplemental readings. The objective of this course is to offer students, whether they are familiar with the region or not, new perspectives on the lived experiences of South Asia. Students will also become familiar with interdisciplinary area studies as an intellectual project.

(Society & Culture Rubric)

Instructor: Ivanna Yi

Course Time: Wednesday, 2:00pm - 4:30pm

3 credits.

This interdisciplinary seminar examines the relationship between literature and the environment in an East Asian and global context. We will explore key questions and approaches in the fields of ecocriticism and the environmental humanities as they relate to ecological change in Korea, China, and Japan. How does literature make environmental crises, their effects on sentient beings, and the earth itself more visible? In what ways does storytelling give voice to changing relationships between humans and the more-than-human world? The seminar will engage the significant conceptual contributions Indigenous thinkers from Asia and the Americas have contributed to ecocriticism as we examine how poets, novelists, filmmakers, artists, nonfiction writers, and critics have responded creatively to environmental change.

(Literature & Linguistics Rubric)

Instructor: Dan Boucher

Course Time: TBD

3 credits.

This seminar is designed to provide an introduction to the idiom of literary Buddhist Chinese. It will include selections from early translations as well as native Chinese compositions that react to the canonical tradition. Students are welcome to read in any East Asian pronunciation (Mandarin, Cantonese, Sino-Japanese, etc.).

(Literature & Linguistics Rubric)

Instructor: Naomi Larson/Rui Liu

Course Time: Friday, 12:20pm - 2:15pm

2 credits.

Enrollment preference given to: graduate students in Asian Studies and Linguistics and, if space permits, other graduate students qualified to become Asian language T.A.s., and undergraduates with sufficient Asian language skills.  

This course presents theories of language teaching and learning, and shows how they apply to Asian language course structure, classroom instruction, and assessment techniques. Students will observe classes taught by experienced teachers, discuss language learning theory and practice, and design and implement their own class activities.

(Literature & Linguistics Rubric)

Instructor: Nick Admussen

Course Time: Wednesday, 11:15am - 1:45pm

3 credits.

Enrollment limited to: graduate students. 

Chinglish language is crucial to formulations of the Sinophone (and Cantophone), to disciplinary life in Asian Studies and translation studies, and in the lives of migrants and transnational people around the world. Chinglish is, however, often edited out of literary and scholarly texts, and its transformative potential competes with taboos against its use. This course will engage with contemporary Sinitic-Anglophone hybrid language in three ways: first, by encountering it as a topic in critical theory, second, by historicizing the practice from maritime pidgin to contemporary social media, and third, by writing scholarship, creative work, and public-facing essays in and about Chinglish. Students are expected to be partially bilingual, but literacy and fluency in both languages is not required.

Instructor: Razima Chowdhury

Course Time: Monday, 7:30pm - 9:20pm

1 credit.

This 1-credit course is designed for students interested in working in the healthcare sector—particularly those preparing for clinical experiences, volunteer work, or future practice in linguistically diverse environments. The course focuses on developing basic communicative competence in Bangla for use in healthcare contexts. Through interactive activities, role-plays, and culturally contextualized scenarios, students will acquire essential vocabulary and phrases to engage with Bangla-speaking patients and communities. Emphasis is placed on practical language skills for clinical settings—such as patient intake, symptom description, and health education—alongside cultural norms and sensitivities relevant to Bangladeshi and Bangla-speaking populations.