New and Highlighted Courses (Fall 2025)

Instructor: Drisana Misra

Course Time: Tuesday and Thursday, 11:40am - 12:55pm

3 credits.

The samurai looms large in Japanese history, often serving as one of the most recognizable symbols of Japan to global audiences. Yet this quintessentially “Japanese” identity was also held by Japanese Christians, Koreans, Ming-dynasty refugees, women, Europeans, and even formerly enslaved Africans. Furthermore, far from being mere warriors, samurai filled many other roles, including those of doctors, naturalists, cosmographers, and popular fiction writers. By challenging the traditional image of the samurai, we will uncover the complexities of early modern Japanese culture and society. We will trace the samurai’s trajectory from their emergence in the 8th and 9th centuries to their zenith as the “Great Unifiers” of the Warring States period. We will then consider their stagnation and decline during Japan’s “Great Peace” and their eventual disappearance in the 1870s. We will also become critical consumers of various forms of samurai-related media—from Edo-period fiction, kabuki plays, and woodblock prints to contemporary anime, period films, and video games. Through this exploration, we will develop a more nuanced understanding of the samurai and their significance in Japanese history. No knowledge of Japanese is required. All readings will be provided in English translation. 

 (Society and Culture Rubric)

Instructor: Drisana Misra

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

3 credits.

This seminar offers an examination of Japanese foreign relations and engagements during the Tokugawa Period (1603–1868). This period has traditionally been organized through the frame of Japanese isolationism (sakoku, lit. “closed country”). A retroactive application of Englebert Kaempfer’s conception of Japanese foreign politics, the term sakoku remains entrenched in twentieth-century understandings of the period’s transregional and transcultural dynamics. This course guides students through a reconsideration of the isolationist historiography of early modern Japan, known to famed Japanologist Donald Keene as the “world within walls.”  Upon further study of the "four gateways," which facilitated trade with the Dutch, Chinese, Korean, Ryūkyūans, and Ainu, recent scholarship has moved towards a pluralistic understanding of sakoku, with the corrective terminology “maritime prohibitions” serving to highlight the multifocal, dynamic, and diachronic aspects of the concept. By examining historical documents, world maps, cosmographic writings, and literary evidence, we will explore the various modalities by which Japanese agents imagined, encountered, and ordered the outside world. No knowledge of Japanese required. 

 (Society and Culture Rubric)

Instructor: Anne Blackburn

Course Time: Monday and Wednesday, 2:55pm - 4:10pm

Cross-listed with RELST 4023.

3 credits.

Buddhist ideas, practices, and institutions play many roles in the political life of South and Southeast Asia, in the present day and throughout the long history of these regions.  This course approaches “politics” broadly. Thus, the course explores how persons invoke Buddhist concepts and understandings of Buddhist traditions when acting for and against state and sovereign powers, but also how Buddhist ideas and institutions are drawn into other social projects that shape the flow and accumulation of social capital, economic benefit, and authority. Case studies and theoretical works address historical, modern, and contemporary materials. Assignments include the opportunity for students to focus on a contemporary regional location of their choice.

 (Religion Rubric)

Instructor: Daniel Bass

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

3 credits.

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, 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 and Culture Rubric)