ClassInfo

This course surveys the literary and cultural history of Japan from the turn of the twentieth century to the end of the Second World War with a particular attention to the discourses and institutions through which a corpus of texts came to be conceived as a canon of a national literature. It is premised on an understanding of literary study not as a narrowly construed discipline, but as an important nodal point in a larger field of cultural and historical studies. After all, the institution of literature - and more specifically, national literature - is historical. As such, it is imperative to pay particular we will track their relations with such historical developments as the formation of the nation-state, the process of urbanization, the impact of the popularization of visual technologies like photography and cinema, changes in the social position of women, and the expansion of the Japanese empire.

This course surveys the literary and cultural history of Japan from the turn of the twentieth century to the end of the Second World War with a particular attention to the discourses and institutions through which a corpus of texts came to be conceived as a canon of a national literature. It is premised on an understanding of literary study not as a narrowly construed discipline, but as an important nodal point in a larger field of cultural and historical studies. After all, the institution of literature - and more specifically, national literature - is historical. As such, it is imperative to pay particular we will track their relations with such historical developments as the formation of the nation-state, the process of urbanization, the impact of the popularization of visual technologies like photography and cinema, changes in the social position of women, and the expansion of the Japanese empire.

This course surveys the literary and cultural history of Japan from the turn of the twentieth century to the end of the Second World War with a particular attention to the discourses and institutions through which a corpus of texts came to be conceived as a canon of a national literature. It is premised on an understanding of literary study not as a narrowly construed discipline, but as an important nodal point in a larger field of cultural and historical studies. After all, the institution of literature - and more specifically, national literature - is historical. As such, it is imperative to pay particular we will track their relations with such historical developments as the formation of the nation-state, the process of urbanization, the impact of the popularization of visual technologies like photography and cinema, changes in the social position of women, and the expansion of the Japanese empire.