Infusing my curriculum

1. Infusing my curriculum Alex Bay Associate Professor Chapman University

2. History 262: History of the Samurai • Into a predominantly political and social history approach, I will add a two-week section on samurai religion/spirituality • Initial week will consist of lecturing on the history of Shinto and Buddhism from the 6th century onward as well as Ch’an coming to Japan as Zen and some discussion. • Readings: • Miyazaki Fumiko, “Religious Life of the Kamakura Bushi: KumagaiNaozane and his Descendants,” MonumentaNipponica 47:4 (1992): 435-67. • MusoKokushi, Dream Conversations on Buddhism and Zen, trans. Thomas Cleary (Boston: Shambhala, 1996). • Peter Hershock, Chan Buddhism (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2004). (Selections?)

3. History 262: History of the Samurai • Week Two consists of a discussion of TakuanSoho, The Unfettered Mind: Writing from a Zen Master to a Master Swordsman (Boston: Shambhala, 2012) as well as their papers (3-pages, based on the readings for these two weeks), possible prompt: How have warriors in Japan engaged Buddhism from the ancient to the early modern period? • Friday, religious studies professor Carmichael Peters will lead us in a sitting session during class.

4. Approaches to Asian Studies: Interdisciplinarity in Action • 100-level class, aimed at hooking freshmen into the Asian Studies minor (a major is down the road a bit) • Learning Outcomes: • Students will learn both Asia-related content and different disciplinary approaches to its study. • Students will use disciplinary frameworks of these fields to ask questions about and analyze primary materials, in translation, relating to Asian religion, literature, art history, history, anthropology, polisci, and film.

5. 7GC/Global Study SLO: Connects contemporary social and/or environmental topics to their origins and analyzes their effects on our increasingly globalized world • 1. Cultural/ Global Self Awareness • Basic - Shows basic awareness of the diversity inherent in their own social and/or natural environments and/or other contemporary societies or cultures, or in our world at large. • 2. Knowledge • Basic - Shows surface understanding of the complexity of diverse social and/or environmental topics, customs, beliefs, traditions, lifestyles, biases, assumptions, and prejudices connected to cultural and/or natural diversity and their origins/effects • 3. Critical Skills • Basic - Asks superficial questions about other cultures and environments, recognizes multiple perspectives and limits in their own and other perspectives.

6. Weeks 1-2: A Genealogy of the PresentWhat exactly was/is Asian Studies? • Edward Said, Orientalism (NY: Vintage, 1979), Introduction. • Maribeth E. Cameron, “Far Eastern Studies in the United States” The Far Eastern Quarterly 7:2 (1948): 115-35. • Wm. Theodore De Bary, “The Association of Asian Studies: Nonpolitical but not Unconcerned,” The Journal of Asian Studies 29:4 (1970): 751-59. • Robert E. Ward, “Presidential Address: The Case for Asian Studies,” The Journal of Asian Studies 32:3 (1973): 391-403. • Learning Places: The Afterlife of Area Studies, ed. Masao Miyoshi and Harry Harootunian (Durham: Duke University Press, 2002), selections.

8. Weeks 3-4 Religion/Philosophy • Main point of these reading would be to set up the foundations for tracking themes through lit. and art. • Robert Campany, “On the Very Idea of Religion,” History of Religions 42:4 (2003): 287-319. • Isabelle Robinet, Taoism: Growth of a Religion (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997), selections. • Donald Lopez, Religions of China in Practice (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996), selections. • Selections of Confucian, Doaist and Buddhistprimary docs, stressing the conversation between the texts.

9. Week 5-6: Literature part 1 • Michael Ryan, An Introduction to Criticism: Literature/Film/Culture (Wiley-Blackwell, 2012), selections. • Tony Barnstone, The Art of Writing: Teachings of the Chinese Masters (Boston: Shambhala, 1996). • Wu Ching-tzu, The Scholars (Foreign Languages Press, 2000). • I want some kind of paper assignment analyzing these two works (or parts of them, at least) in terms of seeing the connection between philosophy/religion and writing in premodern China – a practice rather than theory approach.

10. Week 5-6: Literature part 2 • Georg Simmel, The Metropolis and Mental Life, selections. • Edward Seidensticker, Tokyo from Edo to Showa 1867-1989: The Emergence of the World’s Greatest City, selections. • Maeda Ai, The Text and the City: Essays on Japanese Modernity, ed. James Fuji (Durham: Duke University Press, 2004), Ch. 5 on Kawabata. • Kawabata Yasunari, The Scarlet Gang of Asakusa • A possible writing assignment for The Scarlet Gang on how the modern city contributed to new forms of story telling in Japan?

12. Week 7-8: Art • Laurie Schneider Adams, The Methodologies of Art: An Introduction, 2nd ed., (Westview Press, 2009), Ch. 1, What is Art? • Denise PatryLeidg, The Art of Buddhism: An Introduction to its History and Meaning (Boston: Shambhala, 2008), selections. • Robert Fisher, Buddhist Art and Architecture (NY: Thames and Hudson, 1993), selections. • Joan Piggot, The Emergence of Japanese Kingship (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997), Ch. 7 ShomuTenno: Servant of the Buddha • I want to focus on the Buddhist silk road, ending with the 752 eye-painting ceremony, carried out by Indian monk Bodhisena, of the Great Buddha in Todaiji, as a way to conceptualize the spread of Buddhism and art from India to China, through Korea, to Japan.

14. Weeks 9-10 History • Richard Evans, In the Defense of History (W.W. Norton and Co., 2000), selections. • Paul Cohen, History in Three Keys: The Boxers as Event, Experience and Myth (NY: Columbia University Press, 1998), selections. • Rashomon, film. What really happened? • Use Memories of Hiroshima and Nagasaki: Messages from Hibakusha database for a 3-page paper assignment using Cohen’s concepts to analyze the history and memory of the bomb. • (http://www.asahi.com/hibakusha/e/)

15. Weeks 11-12 • Anthropology/Sociology • Introduction to ideas, methods and approaches • Ethnographic reading/s giving students a sense of how anthropologists write • Use film as an ethnographic exercise and have the students write a paper

16. Other disciplines • Weeks 13-14 Political science • Chinese politics? • Japan’s one- (and a half) party system? Weeks 15-16 Film studies Michael Ryan, An Introduction to Criticism: Literature/Film/Culture (Wiley-Blackwell, 2012), selections.

17. 謝謝