Department of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies (GRAD)

Focuses on the various collaborations, exchanges, and mutual enrichment between Israelis and Palestinians in the realm of culture, particularly literature and cinema. These connections include language (Israeli Jewish authors writing in Arabic and Palestinian writers who choose Hebrew as their language of expression), collaborating in filmmaking, and joint educational initiatives.

This course introduces students to the specific contours that the Cold War accrued in East Asia. Focusing on literature and film, it explores what the fall of the Japanese Empire and the emergence of the post-1945 world meant across the region.

The formation and transformation of values, identities, and expressive forms in Southeast Asia in response to forms of power. Emphasis on the impact of colonialism, the nation-state, and globalization.

This course aims to explore Persian Sufism, its foundation, Sufi practices and doctrines, and Sufi themes in literature. By looking at its development, we will examine the nature of Sufism, the controversies and debates, and the influence of Sufism on the literary dimension of the Islamic world.

This course explores the social, cultural, political, and economic contexts in which films are made and exhibited and focuses on shared intra-regional cinematic trends pertaining to discourse, aesthetics, and production.

Employing Zionist and post- and anti-Zionist documents, treatises, and mostly literary and cinematic texts, this class will focus on the relations between language, Jewish-Israeli identity, and the notion of homeland. Previously offered as HEBR 436.

An analysis of the roles of women and men in Indian societies from the early to the modern periods. Topics include the cultural construction of gender and sexuality; beauty and bodily practices; gender and religion; gender and politics; race, imperialism, and gender. Previously offered as HIST/ASIA 556.

This course traces the fascinating history of material, cultural, and theological exchanges and conflicts between individuals belonging to two of the world's major religions: Hinduism and Islam. Throughout the course we will also analyze how modern commentators have selectively used the past to inform their understandings of the present. Previously offered as HIST/ASIA 555.

This course introduces students to postcolonial literature and theory. The main focus in the course is on literary texts and literary analysis. However, we will use postcolonial theory to engage critically with the primary texts within a postcolonial framework. We will explore language, identity, physical and mental colonization, and decolonization.

A study of intercultural interaction and interreligious encounter focusing on Asian religions in America, 1784 to the present.

Examines gender, space, and place relationships in the modern Middle East. Investigates shifting gender geographies of colonialism, nationalism, modernization, and globalization in this region. (GHA)

An examination of the history, society, and culture of modern Tibet and its imagination in the context of international politics and from a multidisciplinary perspective.

This course is designed to examine Jewish life in Arab lands in the last century by examining culture, language, and the communal life that the Arab-Jews shared with their neighbors.

This course provides an in-depth examination of the behavioral principles and performances of five core Asian economic systems: Japan, China, Taiwan/South Korea, North Korea and Thailand.

We examine gender and sexuality in literature written by various authors from the Middle East. Our discussions will focus on the significance of sexuality, harems, same-sex desire and homosexuality, construction of female sexuality, masculinity, contraception and abortion, the institution of marriage, gay/lesbian underground subcultures, and social media as sexual outlet.

This seminar draws on feminist and philosophical theory, including the works of Plato, Butler, and Foucualt, as well as postcolonial theory, to explore the categories of sex and gender in South Asian religions. We also analyze the moral cultivation of the self in relation to gender identity in South Asia.

The study of the influence of Western texts upon Japanese authors and the influence of conceptions of "the East" upon Western writers. Goldsmith, Voltaire, Soseki, Sterne, Arishima, Ibsen, Yoshimoto, Ishiguro.

This course approaches constructions of gender and sexuality in Muslim societies in diverse historical and geographical contexts. It focuses on changing interpretations of gender roles and sexual norms. Themes include gender in Islamic law, sexual ethics, masculinity, homosexuality, marriage, and dress.

This course explores Muslim women scholars, activists, and movements that have, over the course of the past 150 years, participated in the debate about the compatibility and relationship of Islam and feminism. It offers an introduction to feminist debates about religion and patriarchy focusing on Islam as 'other' and juxtaposes it critical analysis of contextual expressions of Muslim and Islamic feminist activists, thinkers, and movements that challenge and change gender norms and practices.

This course explores the role that mountains and pilgrimage have played in Japanese cosmology and how they relate to methodology of studying place and space.

This course discusses the development of Shinto in Japanese history and covers themes such as myths, syncretism, sacred sites, iconography, nativism, religion and the state, and historiography.

Permission of the instructor. This course examines the cultural construction of animals in Japanese myth, folklore, and religion.

The course topic will vary with the instructor.

Permission of the department. For the student who wishes to create and pursue a project in Asian studies under the supervision of a selected instructor. Course is limited to three credit hours per semester.

This course combines readings in representative literary cultures in Sanskrit and several other literary languages from India's classical period in translation, emphasizing poetry and related aesthetic theories, with scholarly readings on Sanskrit poetics, and the literary history of the period. Seminar format.

This course will focus on revolutionary change in the Middle East during the last century, emphasizing internal social, economic, and political conditions as well as international contexts.

Explores the lives of women in the Middle East and how they have changed over time. Focus will change each year.

This course explores changing interactions between the Middle East and the West, including trade, warfare, scientific exchange, and imperialism, and ends with an analysis of contemporary relations in light of the legacy of the past.

This course is intended as a broad overview of Southeast Asian economic history from premodern times to the present day.

Examines struggles to define culture and the nation in 20th-century China in domains like popular culture, museums, traditional medicine, fiction, film, ethnic group politics, and biography and autobiography.

This course examines the histories, representations, and cultural perceptions surrounding bandits and rebels in modern India. The representations of bandits and rebels are studied in the light of the emergence of nationalism, shifting notions of gender and masculinity, race relations, and emergence of capitalist structures.

A wide-ranging exploration of America's longest war, from 19th-century origins to 1990s legacies, from village battlegrounds to the Cold War context, from national leadership to popular participation and impact.

Explores the indigenous Chinese sciences and the cosmological ideas that informed them. Topics include astronomy, divination, medicine, fengshui, and political and literary theory. Chinese sources in translation are emphasized.

Permission of the instructor. A survey of Islamic mysticism, its sources in the Qur'an and the Prophet Muhammad, and its literary, cultural, and social deployment in Arab, Persian, Indic, and Turkish regions.

A survey of the formation of Islamic traditions in the subcontinent from the eighth century to the present, with emphasis on religion and politics, the role of Sufism, types of popular religion, and questions of Islamic identity.

Iran from the rise of the Safavid empire to the Islamic Republic. Topics include Shi'ism, politics, intellectual and sectarian movements, encounters with colonialism, art and architecture, music, literature.

A nontheological approach to the Qur'an as a literary text, emphasizing its history, form, style, and interpretation.

This course explores sexual norms and practices in Muslim contexts in the premodern and modern periods. It considers theories from sexuality, gender, and queer studies, and focuses on the contextual production of sexual norms, going beyond the sex and gender binary, and reflecting on a diverse range of sexual practices in Muslim communities and societies, analyzing concepts such as power, pleasure, control, as they are mapped onto and lived in diverse Muslim bodies.

Permission of the instructor. Study of selected religious, literary, and historical texts in Arabic, Persian, or Urdu.

Presents recent anthropological research on the People's Republic of China. In addition to social sciences sources, fictional genres are used to explore the particular modernity of Chinese society and culture.

Permission of the department. Required for honors students in Asian studies.

Permission of the department. Required for honors students in Asian studies.

This graduate-level course introduces recent scholarly publications in the broad field of Asian history. Covered themes include environmental history and space, colonial and urban contexts, daily life, and margins.

This seminar introduces students to transnational feminisms of the Middle East and South Asia. It examines a diverse range of women's thought and responses to the global and the local in this part of the world, with a focus on theoretical paradigms and tools to better understand women in a global context. Research methods also emphasized in this seminar.

This graduate seminar examines theoretical and research texts related to the mobility of people, languages, ideas, and cultures across Asia and the Pacific. This course aims to critically investigate Asia's past and present with TransAsia and Transpacific perspectives through examining five main themes related to Asian mobilities; 1) Empires, 2) Labor, 3) Transnational Family, 4) Language and Media, and 5) Citizenship.

This interdisciplinary graduate seminar is a foundational course for the M.A. in Asian and Middle Eastern Studies. The seminar introduces critical theories and disciplinary and interdisciplinary methodologies in studying South Asia, East Asia, and the Middle East. It studies the regions in part and as a whole by applying regional, transnational and global lenses, taking seriously relevant languages, cultural formations, histories, and philosophies. The seminar employs theoretical, ontological and epistemological terrains to critically analyze texts/media.

This course is intended as a graduate seminar devoted to the new topic of the Anthropocene and the ways in which capitalism and climate change have emerged therein. However, we will focus on the ramifications of the Anthropocene for East Asia (especially Japan and China).

Focusing on East Asia, this seminar introduces students to scholarly intersections between science studies and literary and cultural studies. Drawing upon recent scholarship from these fields, it explores the intertwined pasts and presents of scientific, technological, and cultural production. In so doing, it challenges students to think critically about the contingent nature of disciplinary boundaries and the centrality of East Asia's place in global flows of knowledge, objects, and expression.

This seminar will look at how terms for concepts of 'civilization' in different languages (Old Chinese, Modern Mandarin, English, Japanese) and different historical periods have been used to refer to what is now China as a "civilization." This graduate seminar explores the roles played by various notions of 'civilization' in the articulation of different conceptualizations of "Chinese civilization."

This course focuses on the most celebrated novel titled Honglou Meng or The Story of the Stone by Cao Xueqin (1715-1763). This 120-chapter-long novel tells the downfall of a great aristocratic family that is presented as a microcosm of traditional Chinese societies. The novel features all aspects of traditional Chinese cultures including architecture and garden, education, families and interfamilial connections, generational relationships, genders, history, marriages, mythology, philosophies, poetry, etc.

This seminar applies theories from Postcolonial Ecocriticism and Sinophone Studies to analyze diverse Indigenous ecologies in environmental literature from China and Taiwan. We read poems, philosophy, and fiction featuring the cosmologies of Han and Uyghur farmers, Tibetan, Mongolian, and Kazakh nomads, Indigenous Taiwanese hunters and fishers, and Hmong foragers, analyzing relational ontologies among humans, non-human animals, assemblages, and ecosystems. Knowledge of Chinese language, literature, history, or philosophy recommended but not required.

This graduate seminar investigates competing concepts of modernity in South Asia as imagined in film and television media. We begin by exploring how notions of modernity have emerged in South Asia, and how film and television have imagined a "modern" society. Particular topics covered include social justice, gender, nation, globalization, and cosmopolitanism. We will also engage with critiques of films, television programs, and Internet-based videos with respect to social justice, environment, and technology.

This seminar examines a range of performance practices in South Asia, and some of the theories and methods scholars have used to research and understand them. It especially focuses on emerging analytical frameworks and approaches currently shaping the field. In this seminar, "performance" is conceptualized broadly to include aesthetic, social and political forms of performance spanning theatre, dance, musical concerts, film, religious events, military rituals, and so forth.

This course enriches students' understanding of the diversity of Middle Eastern countries, exploring histories of intercommunal contact and conflict. We will investigate contemporary representations and lived realities of religious, ethnic, and sexual minorities of the Middle East from diverse political, cultural, historical and aesthetic perspectives. Although the majority of people living in the Middle East converted to Islam after the Arab conquests, there remained important minorities including indigenous Christians, Jews, and in Iran some Zoroastrians.

What is political about the body? This seminar introduces students to social scientific and humanistic approaches to the body. Instead of taking the body as simply a biological entity, it places it within a wider network of meanings, practices, institutions, histories, and forms of power. The course explores the operations of different regimes of power on and in the body and, conversely, shows how the body can become a locus of resistance and creativity.

Examines the role of images in the modern ME & how these images shape transnational relationships and conceptions of the region within the global imaginary. How do images "speak"? What role do they play in constructing subjectivities and identities of belonging? What is their relationship to power locally and globally? We will analyze a variety of texts and media (film, photography, video, television, modern art, street art, graphic novels, social media, etc) from the ME.

This seminar investigates the rise of the radical discourse and literature on the Arab-Jew / Mizrahi in the late 1980s and explores its connection to Israel's "new historians," post-Zionism, and post-nationalism and to Third-worldism. With the increasing presence of the Arab-Jew / Mizrahi in academic discourse and, to an extent, in Israeli (and Arab) media and culture, the original discourse has witnessed various permutations and increasing diversification from its inception to the present.

This seminar is the core course for the graduate certificate in Middle East studies. It is an introduction to critical issues in the disciplinary, interdisciplinary, and cross-disciplinary study of the Middle East.

The course topic will vary with the instructor.

This seminar guides students through the major stages and mechanics of thesis writing, including focusing your topic and research questions, finding primary and secondary sources, writing a prospectus and a literature review, developing your argument cohesively across chapters, organizing chapters, building a bibliography, proper citation, and formatting the thesis. The seminar serves as a forum for reading and presenting on academic scholarship in the field and as a writing workshop. DAMES MA students only.

Individual research in a special field under the direction of a member of the department.

Classical and/or modern readings in Arabic and discussions in conversational Arabic, according to the students' interest.

Classical and/or modern readings in Arabic and discussions in conversational Arabic, according to the students' interest.

This class explores science and society in the modern Middle East. Drawing on works from anthropology and history, it investigates how science interacts with, is shaped by, and reflects wider processes and formations such as nationalism, colonialism, religion, subject formation, or cultural production. Previously offered as ARAB 353.

We will study fiction from several countries in the Arab world with a particular emphasis on recent works. This literature has arisen out of the lived experiences of people in the Arab world, but each work creates a world of its own. What strategies do writers use for this world-making? What relationships might exist between these fictional worlds and their writing contexts? Who is addressed by these works? Previously offered as ARAB 334.

Introduction to history of Arab cinema from 1920s to present. Covers film industries in various regions of the Arab world and transnational Arab film. All materials and discussion in English.

Permission of the department. For the student who wishes to create and pursue an independent project in Arabic under the supervision of a selected instructor. Maximum three credit hours per semester.

Permission of the instructor. Study of selected religious, literary, and historical texts in Arabic, Persian, or Urdu.

Read authentic texts of modern Chinese, including newspaper articles and writings of literary, cultural, and social interest. Writing Chinese characters is required.

Read authentic texts of modern Chinese, including newspaper articles and writings of literary, cultural, and social interest. Writing Chinese characters is required.

Instruction and practice in Chinese-to-English translation (written) and interpreting (oral), designed for second-language learners of Chinese. Students work with materials covering many fields. Students in track A can take this course either concurrently with or after CHIN 407, but students in track B can take this course only after completing CHIN 313.

The goal of this course is to improve students' overall language proficiency using Chinese for business purposes. They will develop enhanced skills of reading business journalism and case studies and writing business letters or email messages. Students in track A can take this course either concurrently with or after CHIN 407, but students in track B can take this course only after completing CHIN 313.

An advanced Chinese language course that explores the world of Chinese tea culture, history and its impact on everyday life in contemporary China. Myths and philosophies related to tea will be analyzed to offer students a deeper understanding of Chinese tea history and culture. Students in track A can take this course either concurrently with or after CHIN 407, but students in track B can take this course only after completing CHIN 313.

By exploring intersections of the narrative and the normative, this course considers relations between text, ethics, and everyday life in 20th-century China by reading texts on aesthetics.

This course analyzes historical changes of the city through examining the individual, national, and global identity of Shanghai, Beijing, Taipei, and Hong Kong as reflected in their histories, politics, built environment, ethos, language, and culture.

Confucianism is a millennia-long tradition of global reach. By reading and analyzing key ancient Confucian scriptures students will engage directly with philosophical questions of such as the origin of normative values and how to invoke them to solve ethical problems. They will also trace the history of the spread of the cultural and political influence of Confucianism in East Asia and its various receptions and (re-)interpretations in the West.

Daoism is a millennia-long tradition of global reach. By reading and analyzing key ancient Daoist scriptures students will engage directly with philosophical questions of such as the origin of normative values and how to invoke them to solve ethical problems. They will also trace the history of the spread of the cultural and political influence of Daoism in East Asia and its various receptions and (re-)interpretations in the West.

This course explores "queer" expressions in Chinese literature and visual culture from 1949 through the twenty-first century. It surveys a combination of all-time classics and lesser-known cultural texts featuring non-heteronormative sexual desire and gender-bending performance. We mobilize queer as a broad site of critique beyond Western models of the concept, asking not only how queer challenges normative bodyminds, but also how it negotiates notions of age, family, race, and the neoliberal order.

Readings in Chinese literature and language on varying topics. May be taken more than once for credit as topics change. Students in track A can take this course either concurrently with or after CHIN 407, but students in track B can take this course only after completing CHIN 313.

Permission of the department. For the student who wishes to create and pursue an independent project in Chinese under the supervision of a selected instructor. Maximum three credit hours per semester.

Advanced study of Chinese classics. Students in track A can take this course either concurrently with or after CHIN 407, but students in track B can take this course only after completing CHIN 313.

This is a fifth-year Chinese course offered as a language course to improve students' language abilities and as a content course surveying Chinese history in Chinese.

Recommended preparation, CHIN 510. This course examines the reinterpretation and appropriation of ancient Chinese philosophy in contemporary China, on such themes as Confucian ethics and Daoist metaphysics and aesthetics.

This research seminar contextualizes the contemporary explosion of Chinese science fiction within modern Chinese intellectual history and SF studies worldwide. We read globally influential novels such as The Three-Body Problem and trace several waves of the genre's century-long evolution within Chinese literature. We ask how threats of global annihilation, the exhaustion of environmental resources, discoveries in virology, epigenetics, and innovations in cybernetics intersect with global development, climate migration, decolonization, and structures of race and class.

Selected topics in Chinese poetry concentrating on one period or one genre.

Selected topics in Chinese fiction, historical writing, and prose belles letters, concentrating on one period or one genre.

This course analyzes contemporary Chinese urban art, architecture, cinema, and fiction to elucidate dynamics between the built environment and subjectivity. Students analyze how social, economic, and political factors shape environments, and debate whether new urban spaces create social conflict or new civil possibilities.

This is an advanced topics course in Chinese literature and language, culture and society. The instruction is entirely in Chinese with the use of authentic materials. Three hours per week.

Recommended preparation, at least one advanced Chinese language course above the CHIN 408 or CHIN 313 level. This is a content and language course designed for advanced (native or near-native fluency) undergraduate and graduate students to enhance the four language abilities and cultural literacy. Students will read The Story of Minglan, and analyze the problematic portrayals of traditional women's domestic lives.

Recommended preparation, at least one advanced Chinese language course above the CHIN 408 or CHIN 313 level. Encompasses a century of literary writings on the experiences of Chinese in the United States. The select works are written for Chinese communities worldwide, hence "writing Chinese in America," while they reflect upon the formation of Chinese American identity, therefore "writing Chinese America."

Advanced language course introducing authentic readings on cultural and social topics relating to modern South Asian society. Texts are supplemented by case studies and interviews. Course is taught in Hindi-Urdu and provides further training in speaking and writing. Participation in extracurricular activities is encouraged.

This advanced language course introduces students to authentic film and visual and print media from modern South Asia, analyzed within historical, social, and aesthetic contexts. Course is taught in Hindi-Urdu with further training in speaking and writing. Participation in relevant extracurricular activities is encouraged.

This seminar explores the issues of gender, sexuality, and social justice in modern India and Pakistan. The course uses a variety of media sources, including monographs, films, television shows, documentaries, newspapers, and magazines.

Ghazal is the most important genre of Urdu-Hindi poetry from the 18th century to the present. This course, taught in Hindi-Urdu, concerns the analysis and interpretation of ghazals.

This seminar explores approaches to health and medicine in India and Pakistan, and contemporary public health challenges in South Asia and diaspora communities in North Carolina. Also addresses "alternative" systems of medical thought in South Asia including Ayurveda, Unani Medicine, Yoga, Naturopathy, and Homeopathy.

Course may be repeated for credit as topic changes. Possible areas of study include Indian film and literature, Hindi-English translations, the Indian diaspora, Hindi journalism, and readings in comparative religions.

Permission of the department. For the student who wishes to create and pursue an independent project in Hindi-Urdu under the supervision of a selected instructor. Maximum three credit hours per semester.

Historical causes of violence between Hindus and Muslims in modern India. Short stories, poetry, and novels in translation are used to explore how conflicts over religious sites, religious conversion, image worship, and language contributed to a sense of conflicting religious identity.

This course reviews the key grammar, vocabulary, and characters from the first three years of Japanese in preparation for the more advanced work of fourth-year elective courses.

Uses newspaper and magazine articles and television broadcasts to introduce journalistic writing and speech as well as contemporary social and cultural issues. Class conducted in Japanese. Participation in relevant extracurricular activities encouraged.

This course introduces students to the popular writing, both fiction and nonfiction, designed for mass-market consumption in contemporary Japan. Class conducted in Japanese. Participation in relevant extracurricular activities encouraged.

Advanced Japanese course designed to develop Japanese skills and deepen appreciation of Japanese cooking. Students will develop the ability to discuss and write about topic-oriented issues in Japanese.

Students will learn a history of postwar Japanese music as an integral part of Japanese society and culture, and try to understand what messages each song attempts to communicate.

This course explores contemporary Japanese language and culture through the pop cultural media of manga and anime. Topics include manga history, production, and various genres of Japanese comic books, manga.

Introduces students to the unique Japanese cultural perspective on sports, while introducing new kanji and grammar structures and improving reading, speaking, and writing abilities.

Students will learn about business culture in Japan, including customs and rules, in order to broaden their understanding of Japanese culture and people, while improving their language skills.

This course helps students to improve their Japanese language skills while developing an understanding of Japanese culture through films and literature. Exercises include reading novels in Japanese, close observation of Japanese films, analysis of cultural context, writing summaries, and frequent discussion.

The primary goal of this course is to prepare students to work, using the Japanese language in their desired occupation, such as in business, teaching at school, research, and so forth.

This course surveys Japanese material culture. Each week we will examine a different genre of visual or material culture in terms of its production, circulation through time and space, and modern deployment in narratives of national identity. This course includes regular engagement with the Ackland Art Museum at UNC.

Explores Japanese culture and society through investigating changing concepts of the human body. Sources include anthropological and history materials, science fiction, and film.

Possible areas of study include popular culture, business Japanese, and Japanese-English translation. Course may be repeated for credit as topic changes. Participation in relevant extracurricular activities encouraged.

Permission of the department. For the student who wishes to create and pursue an independent project in Japanese under the supervision of a selected instructor. Maximum three credit hours per semester.

Students will improve Japanese language skills while they develop an understanding of Japanese culture through TV dramas. Exercises include intensive listening, reading and analyzing drama scripts, writing summaries, and frequent discussions on various topics.

Introductory linguistic description of modern Japanese. For students of linguistics with no knowledge of Japanese and students of Japanese with no knowledge of linguistics.

Topic varies by instructor. Possible topics include Japanese literature, popular culture, and media. Course may be repeated for credit as topic changes. Participation in relevant extracurricular activities encouraged.

Modern Korean literature by major authors, from around 1940 to the present. Emphasis on reading, translation, and criticism. Students will improve their written and oral communication skills in Korean through the study of literary works in their social, cultural, and historical context.

This course is conducted in Korean, emphasizing reading, translating, and criticism. This is a general introduction to Korean history from the first kingdom of the Korean Peninsula, Gojoseon, to the last kingdom, Joseon Dynasty.

This course aims at a deeper understanding of Korean society, through critical analysis of language use and viewpoints expressed in various types of media. This course will also focus on cultural products and practices.

In this course, we will explore the multiple, shifting, and often contested diasporic subjectivities represented and produced in Korean diaspora cinemas; these subjectivities encompass various Korean diaspora communities in Asia, Central Asia, Europe, and the Americas.

Topic varies and course may be repeated for credit as topics change.

Permission of the department. For the student who wishes to create and pursue an independent project in Korean under the supervision of a selected instructor. Maximum three credit hours per semester.