Humanities Core: Technology and Media in Modern Japan

This course considers the political, economic, social, cultural, and artistic effects of the introduction of new technologies and media to modern China and Japan. The methodology will integrate techniques gleaned from the disciplines of history and literary studies. Our cross-discipline exploration will encompass printed books and images, language reform, communication technology, serialized fiction and commercial journalism, propaganda and censorship, cinema, comics, animation and television, gaming, and the internet. Through examination of these topics we will investigate a wide range of issues including nationality, ethnic identity, class, revolution, cultural identification, gender, sexuality, literacy, colonialism, imperialism, consumerism, materialism, and globalism, to name just a few. Throughout the course we will be attentive not only to the ways that new technology and media are represented in cultural materials but also how they are materialized in these products through the acts of adaptation, translation, transliteration, and remediation.Students will survey, collect, and synthesize archival materials, engage in media analysis, and undertake close readings to illuminate narrative strategies and other signifying effects. This work will in part be facilitated by the Massive Multiplayer Humanities pedagogical model, which involves flipped classrooms, faculty curated online archives, and student initiated group work.