A scholarly project chosen by the student, approved by the Department, and supervised by one of its instructors. Consult with the Diaspora and Transnational Studies Program Office for more information. Not eligible for CR/NCR option.

An in-depth investigation of topics in Diaspora and Transnationalism. Content in any given year depends on instructor. Refer to the Centre for Diaspora and Transnational Studies website (https://www.cdts.utoronto.ca/undergraduate/undergraduate-program/current-undergraduate-courses) for more information.

An in-depth investigation of topics in Diaspora and Transnationalism. Content in any given year depends on instructor. Refer to the Centre for Diaspora and Transnational Studies website (https://www.cdts.utoronto.ca/undergraduate/undergraduate-program/current-undergraduate-courses) for more information.

An in-depth investigation of topics in Diaspora and Transnationalism. Content in any given year depends on instructor. Refer to the Centre for Diaspora and Transnational Studies website (https://www.cdts.utoronto.ca/undergraduate/undergraduate-program/current-undergraduate-courses) for more information.

An in-depth investigation of topics in Diaspora and Transnationalism. Content in any given year depends on instructor. Refer to the Centre for Diaspora and Transnational Studies website (https://www.cdts.utoronto.ca/undergraduate/undergraduate-program/current-undergraduate-courses) for more information.

An in-depth investigation of topics in Diaspora and Transnationalism. Content in any given year depends on instructor. Refer to the Centre for Diaspora and Transnational Studies website (https://www.cdts.utoronto.ca/undergraduate/undergraduate-program/current-undergraduate-courses) for more information.

An in-depth investigation of topics in Diaspora and Transnationalism. Content in any given year depends on instructor. Refer to the Centre for Diaspora and Transnational Studies website (https://www.cdts.utoronto.ca/undergraduate/undergraduate-program/current-undergraduate-courses) for more information.

Food links people across space and time. As it spirals outward from parochial sites of origin to articulate with new sites, actors and scales, it assumes new substance and meaning in new locales. This movement of food gives rise to new ‘foodways’ to help us to understand the past in terms of temporally connected sites of intense interaction. Food also plays a strong role in shaping translocal identities. As peoples have moved in the world, food has played a central role in (re)defining who they are, reproducing myth and ritual, and bounding diasporic communities. This course seeks to address questions surrounding the dynamics of the food ‘we’ eat, the ways in which ‘we’ eat, the meaning ‘we’ give to eating, and the effect of eating in a transnational world. Recognizing that culinary culture is central to diasporic identifications, the focus is on the place of food in the enduring habits, rituals, and everyday practices that are collectively used to produce and sustain a shared sense of diasporic cultural identity.

This course explores the intersection between local conceptions of justice and their transnational and institutional circulations. It interrogates competing meanings of justice and examines the varied practices of actors engaged in justice making domains. From international human rights, to transitional justice and truth and reconciliation, to international legal and traditional justice formulations, the course offers students an opportunity to learn about and critically reflect on the processes and purposes through which justice conceptions are structured, implemented and being contested in the contemporary period. Topics include: theories of transnationalism, transnational justice, social injustice, law and culture, universalism, racism and social inequality.

This course focuses on echoes of diasporic and transnational life in artistic work, and on the significance of aesthetic production to the formation of diasporic and transnational worlds. How have practices, producers, and works of art illuminated the particularities of diasporic life? How do conventions of genre, performance, and tradition shape experiences of borders and crossings? Areas of emphasis will vary but may spotlight particular historical and geographic contexts, and may foreground one or more form, including film, poetry, fiction, music, and dance.

Sexuality is a complex interplay of desires, attractions, interests, and modes of behavior and has diverse meanings in different societies and cultures. In this course, we will examine the notion of sexuality as well as gender identity and expression from an interdisciplinary perspective that is rooted in ethnography. A cross-cultural study of sexuality and gender identity within global and transnational contexts will provide students with an understanding of how the intersections of culture, community, as well as social and political factors affect individuals’ sexual choices and understandings of gender. A particular focus in this course will be experiences of sexuality and gender within diasporic communities.

In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, industry and finance matured together, pushing people into motion around the world. The instruments of long-distance trade, like insurance, credit and debt, connected cities and continents in new and sometimes unsettling ways. The free movement of goods and cash was mirrored by restrictions on migration to some parts of the world and by forced or coerced migration to others. This course explores the history of the rise of global capitalism at a human scale, exploring how financialization, industrialization and imperialism overlapped and intertwined, and how the remaking of the world in the image of capital weighed on human lives.

What is the relationship between diaspora and domesticity? What does it mean to inhabit the position of the stranger not in the public life of the city, but in the private sphere of the household? This course approaches questions of migration, labour, and foreignness through the prism of the home. We consider the international phenomenon of migrant domestic labour and how it shapes social and family relations, both in countries of origin such as the Philippines and Ethiopia, as well as in countries of employment such as Canada and Lebanon. But we also reflect on how migration radically transforms life inside the home, affecting what it means to be a parent, a child, or a partner. In doing so we draw upon diverse representations of “the family”, kinship, and intimacy across both the humanities and the social sciences.

The course explores how composers, performers, songwriters and audiences made sense of traumatic and violent events that they experienced, such as ethnic conflicts, wars, exile and displacement, through music. We will also look at how government ideologies employ music during wars. The case studies will include stories of Jewish, Palestinian, Afghan, Romani, Korean, Rwandan and other diasporas severely affected by wars and violence.

Work is a central preoccupation in human life and culture, and the working day – measured in daylight, in shifts, or in tasks and ‘gigs’ – is, for most people, the basic unit of work. A ‘day’s work’ is so ubiquitous that it seems natural – but it is not – the offices, worksites, hourly wages and everyday forms of discipline and surveillance that shape working lives have a history. This course explores the transnational and diasporic histories of working life, from plantations to factories to offices to informal work at the margins of global industrial capitalism.

Nation-states not only perpetrate mass violence regularly but also pivotally shape how that violence is remembered and memorialized. In doing this, they shape how communities heal or do not heal from violence. Memorializing violence is also tied to how states both make violence endemic and draw upon violence that may already be endemic within particular social contexts. This class will examine these phenomena in transnational and transhistorical perspective, focusing on case studies spanning different historical eras and various continents. These comparisons will reveal differences and linkages between the formation, utilization, and weaponization of memory in widely divergent contexts.

This course explores colonial histories and counter- stories of resistance in the Black Mediterranean. Intended not only as a physical space but also as a symbolic site, the Black Mediterranean can be seen as a new theoretical approach useful to understand the racialized production of bodies and borders, and to highlight forms of resistance. The course will focus on Italy and its (post)colonial ties with Libya, Eritrea, Ethiopia and Somalia. Going from the Italian invasion of Eritrea in 1890 to the current so-called “refugee crisis”; the case of Italy illustrates the intersections and resignification of race, bodies and borders in the Mediterranean region, as well as the presence of important histories of resistance and alternative conceptualisations of belonging.

Intended for students with no background in Mandarin or any Chinese dialect, this course provides an introduction to modern standard Chinese as a foreign/second language. The course consists of mandatory lectures and tutorials. Students study a minimum of 450 Chinese characters. Students must go through screening process conducted by the Department. See www.eas.utoronto.ca/languages/chinese for details.

This course is designed for students who understand elementary Mandarin or any Chinese dialect. The course consists of mandatory lectures and tutorials. Students will learn 600 characters. Students must go through placement process conducted by the Department. See www.eas.utoronto.ca/languages/chinese for details.

Examines how various histories of East Asia can be written by focusing on specific themes in the histories of China, Japan, and Korea to roughly 1600. Required of EAS specialists, majors, and minors.

Examines how various histories of East Asia can be written by focusing on specific themes in the histories of China, Japan, and Korea from roughly 1600 to the Cold War. Required of EAS specialists, majors, and minors.

This course is designed to help students build communication skills in the Korean language. Through an integration of listening, speaking, reading and writing, it aims to provide a solid foundation in beginning-level Korean. This course assumes that students do not have any prior knowledge of Korean. Students must go through screening process conducted by the Department. See https://www.eas.utoronto.ca/languages/korean for details.

This course is for students with no or a very limited background in Japanese. Students must go through screening process conducted by the Department. See www.eas.utoronto.ca/languages/japanese/ for details. Not eligible for CR/NCR option.

This course is for students with no or a very limited background in Japanese. Not eligible for CR/NCR option.

This course, which is a continuation of EAS151H1, is for students with some background in the Japanese language. All students must go through a screening process conducted by the Department. See https://www.eas.utoronto.ca/languages/japanese for details. Not eligible for CR/NCR option.

This course explores how China might be understood through marginal voices, genres, and perspectives. Course focus may include indigeneity, cross-cultural exchange, language policy, and aesthetics, among other themes, across a wide range of media and time periods. Restricted to first-year students. Not eligible for CR/NCR option.

This course explores the old and new reincarnations of “the Yellow Peril” complex. The 2020 naming of COVID-19 as “the Chinese virus” by the U.S. president Donald Trump has provoked much anger, criticism, and concerns for anti-Asian violence and the reagitation of “The Yellow Peril” panic. Yet the imaginaries of “the Yellow Peril” and their power effects have been engrained in our political modernity, the Enlightenment ideas, and its institutions in a much more complex, far-reaching, and intersecting ways in East Asia and beyond. The course will explore various types of cultural productions, including history, literature, film, news media, etc., to introduce the racial, colonial, capitalist, sexual, militarized, and other dimensions of the “Yellow Peril.” Restricted to first-year students. Not eligible for CR/NCR option.

This course will discuss ‘East Asia’ through music as composed, performed, recorded, processed, remembered, imagined, and represented. Questions to be asked include: what kinds of sound are recognized as music in East Asia? What are the goals and effects of music? When, where, and how is music performed in East Asia? How is music described in East Asian literature and visual art? How does music translate East Asian literature and visual art? How are certain musical elements—tonality, rhythm, genre, instruments—recognized as ‘East Asian’? How is East Asia imagined musically? How are East Asian composers and performers received globally? Restricted to first-year students. Not eligible for CR/NCR option.

This course looks into the history of cultural production of Chinese Shan Shui (lit., mountain and water) landscape representations from an environmental humanities perspective. As an artistic motif, Shan Shui travels between past and present and across various mediums as well as literary and artistic genres. What exactly are we invited to see and contemplate on in the Shan Shui? Are Shan Shui works about “nature,” spirit, Qi, or the human world? The course seeks to inquire into these and other questions through examining the concepts, arts, and transformations of selected Shan Shui works in imperial and contemporary China. Restricted to first-year students. Not eligible for CR/NCR option.

This course explores the roles that consumption and taste play in personal and public lives in East Asia. Course focus may include the cultural histories of food, fashion, tourism, sports, or forms of audio and visual media. (No prior knowledge of East Asian languages or cultures is necessary.) Restricted to first-year students. Not eligible for CR/NCR option.