How love and friendship are expressed in different genres, media, and narrative forms in transnational East Asia. Love and friendship are central themes in diverse forms of literature, dance, arts, film, television, digital media, and popular culture. Examination of different forms of love and friendship with careful attention to how love and friendship issues have evolved over time and for different audiences and forms in transnational East Asia.
Athena Title
Love & Friendship in East Asia
Prerequisite
Experience engaging critically with literary or other texts and experience developing and expressing ideas in written and oral form.
Semester Course Offered
Offered fall
Grading System
A - F (Traditional)
Student learning Outcomes
Students will be able to describe and discuss intelligently those written and visual texts studied in class and how they relate to broader themes such as the relationships among love, friendship, race, gender, class, or sexuality.
Students will be able to understand and respect the diversity and complexity of love and friendship represented in transnational East Asian literature, dance, arts, film, television, digital media, and popular culture.
Students will develop critical and creative thinking through reading, writing, class discussion, performance, and presentation.
Students develop and demonstrate advanced proficiency in cultural awareness related to the East Asian languages, literature, and culture, and synthesize competing positions into an original argument supported by textual evidence.
Students will learn to identify, evaluate, and make a coherent argument.
Students will be able to discuss your own position in relation to perspective(s) from transnational East Asia.
Students will be able to characterize how historical, local, or global forces shape perspectives within transnational East Asia.
Topical Outline
Books
Badiou, Alain. In Praise of Love. New York: The New Press, 2012. ISBN 978-1595588777.
Brooks, Ann, ed. 2022. The Routledge Companion to Romantic Love. Routledge.
hooks, bell. All About Love. New York: Harper, 2000. ISBN 978-0060959470.
Illouz, Eva. 2019. The End of Love: A Sociology of Negative Relations. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. (Chapter 1)
Jenkins, Carrie. What Love Is: And What It Could Be. New York: Basic Books, 2017. ISBN 978-0465098859.
Lee, Haiyan. 2007. Revolution of the Heart: A Genealogy of Love in China, 1900-1950. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Solomon, Robert C., and Kathleen M. Higgins, eds. The Philosophy of (Erotic) Love. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1991. ISBN 978-0700604807. Abbreviated as PEL in class schedule.
Pakaluk, Michael, ed. Other Selves: Philosophers on Friendship. Indianapolis: Hackett, 1991. ISBN 978-0872201132. Abbreviated as OS in class schedule.
Santangelo, Paolo, and Donatella Guida, eds. 2006. Love, Hatred, and Other Passions: Questions and Themes on Emotions in Chinese Civilization. Brill.
Welker, James. ed. 2022. Queer Transfigurations: Boys Love Media in Asia. Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press. (Introduction)
Yan, Yunxiang. 2003. Private Life Under Socialism: Love, Intimacy, and Family Change in a Chinese Village, 1949-1999. Stanford University Press.
Zhu, Yujie. 2018. Heritage and Romantic Consumption in China. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press.
Nothing But Thirty三十而已 (2020)
Word of Honor 山河令 (2020)
Untamed 陈情令 (2019)
Heaven Official’s Blessing (天官赐福) (2020)
Crazy Rich Asians (2018)
Love You Forever我在时间尽头等你（2020）
Love Game in Eastern Fantasy 永夜星河 (2024)
Japanese
Love Letter (1995)
Your Name (2016)
I Give My First Love To You (2009)
Shall We Dance? (1996)
Haru (1996)
Sky Of Love (2007)
Initiation Love (2015)
The Liar And His Lover (2013)
One Week Friends (2017)
Love Like The Falling Petals (2022)
Be With You (2004)
To Each His Own (2017)
Ai Uta: My Promise to Nakuhito (2019)
My Broken Mariko (2022)
Korean
My Sassy Girl (2001)
3-Iron (2004)
A Moment to Remember (2004)
Oasis (2002)
The Classic (2003)
Il Mare (2000)
Daisy (2006)
Time (2006)
I'm a Cyborg, But That's OK (2006)
Be With You (2018)
20th Century Girl (2022)
Queen of Tears (2024)
Literature
Fujiata, Julie Blanchin. 2021. Tokyo Love Story: A Manga Memoir of One Woman’s Journey in the World’s Most Exciting City (Told in English and Japanese Text). La Vergne: Tuttle Publishing.
Han, Kang. 2018. The Vegetarian: A Novel. Translated from the Korean by Deborah Smith. Hogarth.
Shen Fu (1763 – 1810?). 2004. Six Records of a Floating Life （《浮生六记》）. Translated by Leonard Pratt. Penguin Classics, “Introduction”, Part I “The Joys of the Wedding Chamber”, and Part III “The Sorrows of Misfortune”.
Tang Xianzu (1550 – 1617). Peony Pavilion （《牡丹亭》）. Cyril Birch tr. Indiana University Press, 1980. 24-30, 42-53, 66-72, 97-110.
Wang, Shifu, translated by S.I. Hsiung, 1936. The Romance of the Western Chamber（《西厢记》）. New York: Columbia University Press, 1968, 141-190.
Chinese
Dancing Millennium 舞千年 (DM) （2021）
Empresses in The Palace or Legend of Zhen Huan 甄嬛传 （2011）
Eat Drink Man Woman 饮食男女 (1994)
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon 卧虎藏龙 (2001)
Go To The Place with Wind or Meet Yourself 去有风的地方 (2023)
The First Half of My Life我的前半生(2017)
Institutional Competencies Learning Outcomes
Critical Thinking
The ability to pursue and comprehensively evaluate information before accepting or establishing a conclusion, decision, or action.
