11:15-12:05 MW BH 015
This course examines the impact of three 20th century wars on the
cultural and political relations between the U.S. and East Asia.  The
purpose of the course is to understand how our violent encounters
with Japan in World War II, with China and North Korea during the
Korean War, and with the Vietnamese between 1960-1975 have shaped
mutual perceptions of culture, race, and gender.  Rather than
consider war from “strategic,” national interest, or geo-political
standpoints, we will consider how war shapes interpersonal contact
between war’s fighting participants and ordinary people—particularly
women and children.

These 20th century wars have brought literally hundreds of thousands
of U.S. men (and women) in contact with the people of East Asia for
the first time.  Contact mediated by the extraordinary conditions of
war’s destruction, social dislocation, cultural trauma, and physical
violence have left lasting impressions on the peoples of our very
different societies.  Therefore, this contact has constructed skewed
cultural and racial perceptions.  We will study how these perceptions
of the experience of war shape our own understanding of East Asia as
well as the nature and meaning of war for ourselves.

In the course of this study, we will also pick-up a broad
understanding of the historical narrative of East Asia in the 20th
century—-its culture, politics, social structure, and values.  We
will use non-traditional sources for this study: feature films,
literature, comic books, documentaries, as well as more traditional
texts.  We intend that the use of such texts and the intense study of
these emotional issues will stimulate you to further deepen your
interest in Asia in general.