Here be the current term's graduate-level MEMS courses with descriptions. Additional 400-level courses may be found via the undergrad/current courses links.
MEMS Graduate Courses Winter 2025
SE Kile
ASIAN 551 | Critical Introduction to Asian Studies II
This course will explore the relationship of language to place and to powerin Asia before the modern period: How does the broad consideration of Asia across boundariesof language and region enable deeper understandings of particular cases of cultural change? Thiscourse studies the changes in language use across the Asian continent, focusing, first, on the roleof Sanskrit and classical Chinese in spanning vastly varied peoples and regions and, second, onthe emergence of different vernaculars across Asia, in different relations to this complex legacyof the classical cosmopolitan. In the second half of the course, we expand our study beyondlanguage to examine three methodological models for work in Asian Studies: comparative,connective, and theoretical. We will assess the possibilities and limitations of each of thesemethodological approaches to the study of Asia as students develop comparative researchquestions of their own.
ASIAN 470 | Three Kinggdoms Lab: From History to Video Games
Constant, violent warfare characterized the “Three Kingdoms” period (220-280 CE), as valiant men exhausted their wits and their strength in an ultimate battle to make their kingdom – Wei, Shu, or Wu – the legitimate successor of the Han Dynasty (206 BCE-220 CE). These regional forces battled ferociously for what they all knew – or believed – would someday be a single, united country once again. The heroes, weapons, and innovative strategies recorded in histories of this period have captured the imagination of people – in China and throughout East Asia – for almost two millennia, in the pages of novels, on the theatrical stage, in New Year’s prints, in shrines, and in oral storytelling. In this course, we will explore the saga of the Three Kingdoms as it transforms across a range of media. We will see history rewritten, theater giving old stories new life on stage, and illustrations and prints adding a vibrancy to oral and textual traditions. Around 1522, the most extensive creative reworking of the story material was published in what is now called China’s first novel, The Romance of the Three Kingdoms (Sanguo yanyi 三國演義). In recent years, comic book versions of the story have been joined by an international profusion of television series, films, video games, fan fiction, and online forums. We will make our way through this novel, discussing what makes it so powerful and so durable.
