Prof. Hank Glassman
Email: hglassma@haverford.edu
Office Hours: Wednesday 11:00-1:00, also by appointment on Zoom
This is a class about stories. It is also a class about Japan. Seen from another angle, it is a class about the borders between and among academic disciplines and the typologies scholars use. In this sense, it is a course about how scholars situate types of written text, fixing them in place. In actual practice, stories tend to float free. Characters and “worlds” are borrowed for elaboration and transformation.
The works we will read (all translated into English) and read about been have labeled and classified by Japanese scholars variously as “myth” (神話shinwa), “folklore” (民俗minzoku), or “legend” 説話 setsuwa). These are, each three, categories translated from Western languages and owe an intellectual debt to nineteenth-century European pursuits in the critical study of literature. Even in this European context where they were developed, these generic markers (markers of genre) have come to be seen as problematically extrinsic to the story itself and its context of reading or performance. One can imagine that this is even more the case with Japanese literature. We will think seriously, not only about what we read, but also about how it comes down to us.
We will read stories. These are stories of war, stories of love, wonder, redemption, anomaly, apotheosis, miraculous intervention – you name it – with many a gripping twist and turn. The primary source reading will be fun; there is no question. We will also be thinking hard about how these stories are transmitted to us. That is, we will think about the historical processes of generating, preserving, disseminating, adapting, and reviving texts. We will think about the history of media, markets, and publishing in our approach to texts. Some of our secondary source material will be drawn from scholarship on textual criticism and the history of the book as we think about what goes into editing and curating these stories. Part of the legacy is the influence of European methodological models on Japanese scholars at the turn of the twentieth century. In this sense, while the course is about Japan it is also more generally about how texts survive, how stories move from the temple to the page to the marketplace to the stage.
Email: hglassma@haverford.edu
Office Hours: Wednesday 11:00-1:00, also by appointment on Zoom
This is a class about stories. It is also a class about Japan. Seen from another angle, it is a class about the borders between and among academic disciplines and the typologies scholars use. In this sense, it is a course about how scholars situate types of written text, fixing them in place. In actual practice, stories tend to float free. Characters and “worlds” are borrowed for elaboration and transformation.
The works we will read (all translated into English) and read about been have labeled and classified by Japanese scholars variously as “myth” (神話shinwa), “folklore” (民俗minzoku), or “legend” 説話 setsuwa). These are, each three, categories translated from Western languages and owe an intellectual debt to nineteenth-century European pursuits in the critical study of literature. Even in this European context where they were developed, these generic markers (markers of genre) have come to be seen as problematically extrinsic to the story itself and its context of reading or performance. One can imagine that this is even more the case with Japanese literature. We will think seriously, not only about what we read, but also about how it comes down to us.
We will read stories. These are stories of war, stories of love, wonder, redemption, anomaly, apotheosis, miraculous intervention – you name it – with many a gripping twist and turn. The primary source reading will be fun; there is no question. We will also be thinking hard about how these stories are transmitted to us. That is, we will think about the historical processes of generating, preserving, disseminating, adapting, and reviving texts. We will think about the history of media, markets, and publishing in our approach to texts. Some of our secondary source material will be drawn from scholarship on textual criticism and the history of the book as we think about what goes into editing and curating these stories. Part of the legacy is the influence of European methodological models on Japanese scholars at the turn of the twentieth century. In this sense, while the course is about Japan it is also more generally about how texts survive, how stories move from the temple to the page to the marketplace to the stage.
- rhētor: Hank Glassman
HYBRID TRADITIONS
A famous saying in Japan has it that people, “are born Shinto and die Buddhist.” Religion in Japan is since the start of recorded history hybrid and combinatory. One aim of the course is to challenge the way that students think about the category of religion, both as doctrine and as practice. Much of what we examine during the semester will be premodern. In the second half of the course, students may to choose to explore modern and contemporary religion in individual research.
This course is an introduction and assumes no prior knowledge of Japan, East Asia, or of the topic of religion. If you come with some background knowledge, so much the more you will learn. Either way, there will be things that do not add up or may seem contradictory. This is in part due to the distorting effects of the investigation. This will be OK.
The course takes a thematic approach to examine such topics as deities, pilgrimage, ritual, literature, and doctrine across historical periods to offer a sense of the rich complexity of lived religion. In the first half of the course, we will explore a number themes in Japanese Buddhism and in the second half students will take up research on one of these.
A famous saying in Japan has it that people, “are born Shinto and die Buddhist.” Religion in Japan is since the start of recorded history hybrid and combinatory. One aim of the course is to challenge the way that students think about the category of religion, both as doctrine and as practice. Much of what we examine during the semester will be premodern. In the second half of the course, students may to choose to explore modern and contemporary religion in individual research.
This course is an introduction and assumes no prior knowledge of Japan, East Asia, or of the topic of religion. If you come with some background knowledge, so much the more you will learn. Either way, there will be things that do not add up or may seem contradictory. This is in part due to the distorting effects of the investigation. This will be OK.
The course takes a thematic approach to examine such topics as deities, pilgrimage, ritual, literature, and doctrine across historical periods to offer a sense of the rich complexity of lived religion. In the first half of the course, we will explore a number themes in Japanese Buddhism and in the second half students will take up research on one of these.
- rhētor: Hank Glassman