Course registration for the 2025/26 Winter Session is coming up soon. Explore a list of new courses (or rare revivals!) offered by the Department of Asian Studies this session. No prerequisites are required, and courses are open to all UBC students across disciplines.
Race and Ethnicity in Japanese Literature and Film (ASIA 316)
Offered in Term 2
Taught by Dr. Christina Yi
Examine relations between majority and minority groups in Japanese society and changing definitions of Japan through literature and film from Japan.
In this course, students will learn how to reevaluate preconceptions of “Japan” and “Japanese-ness” by learning about different representations of race/ethnicity, nationhood, empire, and diaspora. This course will historicize the perception of Japanese society as homogeneous and unique.
Ecoculture and Literature in Japan (ASIA 349)
Offered in Term 2
Taught by Dr. Christina Laffin
Consider how human and nonhuman relations have been understood across time, drawing from Japanese literary and visual sources from the past millennium.
If stories function as tools for worldmaking, then what alternate worlds and ways of understanding can be grasped by interpreting narratives from other times and places? Through exercises involving material culture, observation, and applied tasks, students will learn about Indigenous epistemologies, narratology, ecocriticism, critical animal studies, queer environmentalism, and material ecocriticism.
Gender and Sexuality in Sikhi (ASIA 366D)
Offered in Term 1
Taught by Dr. Kiran Sunar
Explore the place of gender and sexuality in the Sikh tradition, surveying early modern, colonial, and post-colonial feminist readings of Sikh religious text, ritual, and life.
Key questions to be considered throughout the term are: How is gender and sexuality constellated in Sikh scripture and practice? What are the scholarly efforts to analyze and understand Sikhi as a feminist religion? Can a Sikh feminist discourse provide space for political and intersectional work to shift contemporary cultural values?
Korean History Through Film (ASIA 383)
Offered in Term 1
Taught by Dr. Ji-yoon An
Examine how film as cultural product reflects, challenges, and distorts history, with an emphasis on formations of gender, class, and national identities.
Starting from the colonial period to the present day, each week will explore a milestone moment in Korea’s modern history through film. The course places special emphasis on understanding how cinema’s fictional freedom can affect the display of historical events, thereby demonstrating the intersection of ‘history’ and ‘collective memory’ in filmic texts.
Tibetan Literature, Genres, and Book Culture (ASIA 431)
Offered in Term 1
Taught by Dr. Tsering Shakya
Discover Tibetan literature, textual genres, and book and printing culture from the seventh century to the present.
In this course, we will discuss Tibetan literature and genres as well as aspects of material religious culture such as manuscripts and block prints. Students will have the opportunity to read and critically analyze Tibet’s key literary works in English translation and apply theories and methods from the field of literary and material culture studies.
Cinematic Monsters of Asia (ASIX 342)
Offered in Term 2
Taught by Dr. Ji-yoon An
Interrogate various tropes of monsters across modern Asian popular culture and understand the cultural and psychological fascination and anxiety regarding the monstrous.
Monsters have played (and continue to play) a crucial role in identity formation and the shaping of the “Other.” We will explore the fundamental questions of: what makes a monster? Why do we create them? And why do they frighten yet fascinate us? Ultimately, the course aims to implement notions of the self and the Other to larger conversations regarding race, gender, class, and other cultural institutions.
