Time Schedule:
David Spafford
HSTAS 520
Seattle Campus
Field course; Japanese history prior to 1868. Prerequisite: HSTAS 421 and HSTAS 422, or SISEA 441 and SISEA 541, or permission of instructor.
Class description
The seminar will be an introduction to recent scholarship on premodern Japan--primarily the early modern period. In particular, weekly readings will familiarize students with the growing body of English-language scholarship that has been drawing attention to the links between travel (be it for leisure, duty, or pilgrimage) and the printing and publishing industry. This scholarship has shown the importance of travel and travel literature, for instance, in the formation of a nascent, proto-national Japanese identity, challenging the long-established, one-dimensional view of the Tokugawa period as conservative and dominated by an oppressive regime bent on "freezing" the social order and quashing commoner initiative and mobility.
Student learning goals
General method of instruction
Recommended preparation
No formal prerequisites. If this is your first class in pre-modern Japanese history, please contact me before the start of the quarter.
Class assignments and grading
Students will be expected to take turns presenting on readings, to write three short book reviews and one longer (10-15pp) paper based on the quarter's readings.
