Undergraduate Course Pages > Case Studies I

October 2: This seminar now coincides with the Interpreting Culture seminar on Wednesday afternoons. Updates may be found on the course page for that seminar.

July 10: The last seminar meeting of the term was spent in informal discussion, led in part by Kwiran, of the relation of Korea and Japan, policies related to Koreans born in Japan, and the Japanese discourse of internationalization.

July 3: The class was cancelled. We'll meet July 10 to wrap up the first half of the seminar and plan for the second.

June 26: Successful presentation on “the construction of gendered identity in Japan.”

June 19: Successful student presentation on Joe Wood’s “The Yellow Negro.” Discussion of the concepts of cultural essentialism and cultural hybridity. Announcement of fines for improperly prepared bibliographical citations: ¥1,000 for failure to italicize or underline a book or journal title, ¥10 per error of any other sort. Proceeds will go to a charitable cause of the students’ choosing.

June 12: Successful student presentation on Kayoko Hashimoto’s ‘“Internationalization” is “Japanisation”: Japan’s Foreign Language Education and National Identity” (Journal of Intercultural Studies, 2000); beginning of a presentation on Joe Wood’s “The Yellow Negro” (Transition, 1997). Students are reminded that at the beginning of each presentation full and accurate bibliographical information must be provided on the whiteboard for each source discussed. The seminar will once again try to meet weekly, and will do so as long as student preparation is adequate. Students continue to be expected in the Discovering Others II seminar on Friday afternoons.

May 29: The procedures of the seminar have been reorganized. Students will join the more lively discussions in the Discovering Others II seminar on Friday afternoons, and in addition will meet during our regular Thursday afternoon time period every two weeks. The content of the Thursday meetings will be student presentations on a category from the Cultural Studies Bibliography. Our next Thursday meeting will be June 12. The homework for that class is 1) to prepare a 300-500 word written summary (typed, standard manuscript form) of an article from the CS Bibliography, and 2) a 20-minute oral presentation on the same text. Initially these presentations will be about the individual articles, but in time, as students have read more on a particular topic, the content of the presentations will be the category that has been chosen rather than individual articles about it. Please e-mail me the title of your article as soon as it has been decided, so that I may have time to read it in advance of the class.

May 22: Discussion of both the practical and the theoretical implications of the model of representation set forth in Orientalism, and how it may be applied to analysis of imagined constructions other than “the Orient.”

Homework: Look closely at the entries in one or more of the categories of the Cultural Studies Bibliography on this site. Choose a topic that is of interest to you, and three articles about that topic that you might find engaging. Bring a blank CD-W or CD-RW (or any other electronic storage device) to the May 29 class session so that I may provide you with the texts of interest.

A note on attendance: Absence from the seminar, except in very unusual circumstances, is not an option. If you are committed to the work of the course then you are of course welcome to participate. If you are not, and by this I mean if you are not prepared to be in attendance at all seminar meetings, then you should be in a different course. If unavoidably you must miss one session I appreciate and expect an e-mail notice in advance of your absence. If you you must unavoidably miss more than one session per term then please pursue both your absence and your presence in a seminar in which neither will be noticed.

May 15: Continued discussion of the opening pages of Edward Said’s introduction to Orientalism, through question 12 on the worksheet. Particular attention was given Said’s second “meaning” of Orientalism, a “style of thought based upon an ontological and epistemological distinction made between ‘the Orient’ and . . . ‘the Occident’” (p. 2). Getting through the mist of these philosophical terms to a clear grasp of what Said has in mind in using them in this way is necessary to understanding of Said’s introduction, Orientalism itself, and this seminar.

May 8: Discussion of reasons that in the context of Said’s introduction to Orientalism “Easterners and Westerners,” “Asians and non-Asians,” and “Blacks and Whites” are not responsible answers to the question posed in the May 1 seminar, and may even be characterized as ungenerous, inintelligent, untruthful, and dangerous. This is a point to which the seminar will return in two or three weeks. The May 15 class will continue with the worksheet on Orientalism, beginning with question 6.

May 1: Discussion of Edward Said’s introduction to Orientalism, and questions 1-5 of those provided about this text two weeks ago. Student preparation for discussion of the questions was not close to adequate. (Exception to this comment is made for Kwiran, for the pages of downloaded material in Korean that helped her in preparation for the discussion.) Participants in the seminar are advised that we may proceed in one of two ways: 1) we may prepare properly for the seminar and continue to address texts under consideration in an informal way, or 2) we may not prepare properly for the seminar and replace informal discussion with set assignments and examinations.

Homework: 1) unlike this week, prepare seriously and well for discussion of questions 6 and thereafter on the Orientalism worksheet; 2) prepare a written account of at least 300 words, in either English or Japanese, in standard manuscript form, of why in the context of this seminar two of the answers to today’s question were more truthful, more humane, more generous, and more intelligent than the others.

The question was this: if you had to divide all the world’s people into two categories, what would they be? The answers were: 1) rich and poor, 2) men and women, 3) Easterners and Westerners, 4) Asians and Non-Asians, 5) Blacks and Whites (?).

Until we all are clear about the profound (and dangerous) wrongness of three of these answers we shall not be able to proceed properly with the work of the seminar.

April 24: Further introductory discussion about the nature of the work to be undertaken in this course, helped along by Mia Serita and Shiho Takaso, students who have been well-engaged with the texts we’ll read in the first half of the course. Homework: continue preparing for discussion of the Orientalism introduction.

April 17: Introduction to the course; discussion of Hugo of St. Victor’s lines:

He who finds his homeland sweet is still a tender beginner; he to whom every soil is as his native one is already strong; but he is perfect for whom the entire world is as a foreign land.

Discussion of Edward Said’s characterization of these lines as “spiritually detatched” and “generous.” Homework: Edward Said, Orientalism, Introduction, part I, and written answers to questions about this passage.