East Asian Languages and Literature

Session I  (June 3 - June 28)

EALL 257 - Gender and Consumption in East Asia: From the Premodern to the Postwar

Amy Marshall, Mellon Fellow at Wellesley College

This course will make use of film, scholarly articles, historical fiction, and more traditional forms of cultural interpretation to explore the events, ideas and legacies of the development of East Asian consumer culture. This course is an investigation of forms of leisure, the consumption of goods, and attendant cultural practices that starts in the late-seventeenth century and moves forward chronologically into the present. The principal concerns of the course fall into three areas: gender; leisure and cultural practices; and media, advertising, and technology. "Consumer Culture in East Asia" seeks to provide students with a nuanced cultural and literary understanding of who was consuming what and how that changed society, primarily in the context of the lives of Japanese citizens; some materials on China and Korea will be included for comparative purposes.

Meeting times: M,W, Th (1-4pm)

Location: PNE 239

Credit: 1.0 unit (4 sem. hrs.)

Tuition: $2,300

Registration Fee: $50 (non-refundable)