Courses

Transnational Asia Courses | Spring 2027

EASTD 271
Language, Script, and Power in East Asia 
Si Nae Park
In this graduate seminar, students will explore the ways in which debates and negotiations about languages, writing systems, and linguistic and script diversity in East Asia matter in the formation and dispersal of imagined communities, establishment of and challenge to political power, social reproduction, and more. The course’s wide-ranging readings are culled from diverse fields and disciplines including the history of writing, reading, and the book in East Asia (China, Japan, Korea, and Vietnam); linguistic anthropology; sociolinguistics; and studies of modernity/modernism and of colonialism and post colonialism. Examining the relationships between language, culture, and society in societies of East Asia in the past and the present, students will develop comparative (cross-regional, cross-temporal, and cross linguistic/script) and interdisciplinary approaches to the study of East Asia. This seminar is not a language or linguistics course. All readings are in English.

EASTD 97AB
Introduction to the Study of East Asia: Issues and Methods 
Ryuichi Abe
This interdisciplinary and team-taught course provides an introduction to several of the approaches and methods through which the societies and cultures of East Asia can be studied at Harvard, including history, philosophy, literary studies, political science, film studies, anthropology and gender studies. We consider both commonalities and differences across the region, and explore how larger processes of imperialism, modernization, and globalization have shaped contemporary East Asian societies and their future trajectories.

HDS 3504
Women's Access to the Buddha in Southeast Asia 
MK Long
Women remain the most active supporters of Buddhist institutions across Southeast Asia despite widely held understandings of women's karmic inferiority. This central tension in the study of Buddhism will form the core of our study of women's devotion to the Buddha in Myanmar, Thailand, Cambodia, and Sri Lanka. The course advances through close study of ethnographic case studies, auto/biographies, and other vernacular works (in translation).

GENED 1119
Law, Politics, and Trade Policy: Lessons from East Asia 
Christina Davis
Must the East Asian Growth Miracle always lead to trade wars or can international law bring cooperation? How do states balance the challenges and opportunities of international markets? Importing ideas and resources while exporting manufactured goods underlies the East Asian growth miracle but also builds conflict with other governments. This course examines the transformative role of trade policy for Japan, Korea, and China. From the “unequal treaties” of the nineteenth century to the World Trade Organization today, trade law binds the interactions between East Asia and the world. Japan grew from an isolated samurai nation to a leading economic power but now confronts stagnating growth. Korea relied on business conglomerates for rapid industrialization and embraced liberalization to steer its way out of financial crisis. China turned to the WTO to anchor domestic economic reforms but now faces U.S. resistance to its export dominance. East Asia offers models of the success and problems that accompany globalization.

HIST 97H 
"What is Urban History?" 
Uyen Nguyen
More and more people live in cities, many of them in Asia. Since 1950 the world’s urban share has more than doubled, and over half of today’s megacities are Asian. As part of the History 97 seminars, History 97H runs as an apprentice workshop and explores how historians understand cities, with a focus on modern Asia. Our working example is my book manuscript on the communist takeovers of North Vietnamese cities in the 1950s. At each stage, we will examine one step of historical research; you will then apply it to your own project, from first question to revised final paper. No prior knowledge of urban history, Asia, or Asian languages is required.

GENED 1205
The Power, Art, and Technology of Writing in East Asia 
Thomas Kelly
How does writing as art and technology shape the ways in which humans imagine, generate, and use power? This course examines how humans experience, use, and build meaning around the shape of writing, focusing on East Asia across time, place, and media. Centered on a broad, enduring question about writing’s role in society, students engage with materials from literature, art history, history of the book, linguistic anthropology, archaeology, and philosophy. By using materials that are both immediate to, and yet distant from, students’ lives, the course seeks to enhance students’ aesthetic and interpretive understanding of the world, to provide students with an understanding of the social and historical contexts for the development of various technologies related to the production, transmission, and refabrication of the written word in association with power in a variety of ways. By exploring everything from urban graffiti and online protests to ancient tombs and Buddhist temples to petroglyphs and white-paper protests, students will analyze writing’s impact on identity, authority, spirituality, and artistic expression and learn through field works and hands-on experiences such as visits to Harvard’s East Asian collections and workshops on calligraphy and ink-making. The course encourages reflection on how writing mediates power and social change, offering insights into both historical and contemporary practices. All students are invited to think beyond nation-centered and Eurocentric models, developing a nuanced understanding of writing as both art and technology. The course equips students to think critically about the role of writing in an age shaped by generative AI and large language models. No prior knowledge of East Asian languages is required.

SAS 171
Constructions of Gender, Sexuality, and the Family in South Asian Cultures 
Martha Selby
Jointly Offered with: Faculty of Arts & Sciences as SAS 171, Harvard Divinity School as HDS 3414
This course will provide you with a comprehensive historical overview of gender issues as they are represented in the great textual traditions of South Asia (these categories include Vedic materials, medical literature, treatises on law and sexual behavior, and texts that outline the great debates over questions of gender identity and salvation preserved for us in certain Jaina and Buddhist materials). To make these classical texts more relevant, readings in recent anthropological studies of religion, performance, and kinship will also be included to enable you to trace recurring themes, images, and symbols. You will thereby gain a sense of continuity of traditions and attitudes as well as generative innovations and contemporary variants and divergences within them.

HIST 133
Slavery in the Global Middle Ages 
Dan Smail
What comes to mind when you think about slavery? For most Americans, the idea is tightly associated with the enslavement of peoples of African descent from the colonial era through the Civil War and beyond. Students from other parts of the world will have their own thoughts about this. But slavery has a much longer history. The practice has been attested in human societies since the late Pleistocene era and shows up everywhere around the globe. Even today, studies suggest that millions of people are living in conditions that approximate slavery.  To understand slavery, we need to attend to this long history. Through exploring practices of slavery in remote times and places, we can begin to ask probing questions about the practice. Are all forms of slavery defined by a fundamental set of core attributes wherever the practice is found? Are racial or ethnic differences essential to this definition? Does slavery have an important gender dimension? Is it possible to draw hard lines between chattel slavery and other forms of domination? Is slavery primarily about labor, or is it about the prestige of masters and the subjugation of slaves? 

This course focuses on systems of human bondage in the period stretching from ancient Rome to the eve of the sixteenth century, when modern racialized slavery began to predominate. Class readings will focus on the historical and archaeological evidence from the societies ringing the Mediterranean Sea and Indian Ocean and will occasionally extend to the Africa, the Americas, and Asia.

LAW 3447
Colonial Law in Time(s) and Space(s) 
Tamar Herzog
This course will examine the relationship between law and colonialism in Latin America, Africa, and Asia during both the early modern and the modern period. By reading some of the seminal works that have been published on the issue we will seek to understand how law both facilitated and limited colonialism and how colonialism, in turn, had modified the legal systems that had existed previously. Attention will also be given to law as a political, religious, social, and economic agent and to the legal arena as a sphere for conflict resolution, negotiation, and identity formation.

ESPP 173
Water Resources in Developing Countries 
Ken Thomas
This course will examine major issues of water resources (i.e. water sources, supply, quality, treatment, use, distribution and storage, policy) in the developing world at various geographic locations and scales. Specific water resources issues will be highlighted through in-depth case studies from Africa, Asia, and Small Island Developing States. Analysis of the hydrological, technological, legal, and geopolitical factors that affect the availability of water for human consumption and agriculture will be explored in all cases. To understand fundamentals in the developing world context, the course will compare how water resources are managed in the developed and developing world. Fundamentals cut across water-related policies, water flows, water sources, water supply, water and wastewater treatment, water distribution, and water storage. The course will emphasize – both quantitatively and qualitatively – the real-world challenges and systemic issues of the developing world that make water resources planning and management complicated.

SOCIOL 1186
Refugees in Global Perspective 
Danilo Mandic
What does it mean to lose your home? Who are refugees? Why are there so many of them? How are they displaced? Where do they go, and why? This course inquires into the nature, causes, and consequences of contemporary forced migration in our globalized world. Students survey regional dynamics in the Middle East, Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Americas. We examine the particularities of refugees compared to other migrants, and the changing nature of forced migration since the World Wars. Students explore historical precedents to contemporary forced migration, learn about different host society approaches to asylum, compare government and criminal mechanisms of forced migration, and examine why refugees are objects of suspicion and hostility around the world. Particular attention is paid to the connection between forced confinement and forced migration, the role of refugee camps and urban integration, and alternative strategies for global asylum management by bridge and destination countries.

GOV 94MCC
Peacebuilding After Ethnoreligious Violence 
Melani Cammett
Identity-based conflict seems to be on the rise. Many countries in Africa, South and Southeast Asia, the Middle East and the Former Soviet Union have witnessed wars and conflict and riots that are ostensibly waged for ethnic or religious reasons. Even if they are not the root cause of these conflicts, such identities often become politically salient as a result of violence targeting ethnic or religious “others” and, once activated, exhibit remarkable stickiness in social and political life. When intergroup tensions have ratcheted up, is it possible to reduce their importance? Can a shared civic identity be constructed in the wake of violence waged in the name of ethnicity or religion? This course explores these questions through relevant social science literature, in-depth analyses of case studies of conflict and conflict resolution, and critical assessments of diverse approaches to peacebuilding.

GOV 94PR
Political Economy of Development 
Pia Raffler
This undergraduate seminar is an introduction to the politics and political economy of development, using examples from Africa, Asia, and Latin America as our case studies. Topics include the legacies of colonial rule, state formation, state failure and conflict, democratization and democratic erosion, corruption and political accountability, the role of foreign aid, climate change, and migration. Particular emphasis is put on analyzing governance challenges through a political economy lens, paying close attention to the actors, their incentives, and resulting equilibria. Readings draw from political economy, comparative politics, and development economics. We will read a mix of seminal pieces, cutting-edge research articles, and journalistic accounts. The course puts an emphasis on research design, evaluating causal claims, and evidence-based policy solutions. 
 

EASTD 111
Buddhism and the Environment 
Jointly Offered with: Faculty of Arts & Sciences as RELIGION 128
Paulina Kolata
What can Buddhism teach us about surviving and thriving in the face of ecological crisis? This course examines the challenges and possibilities of life on a changing planet from a Buddhist perspective. Organized thematically around Buddhist concepts such as karma, pollution, suffering, and interdependence, and paired with the material realities of environmental degradation and consumption, the course investigates how Buddhists are responding and contributing to pressing issues such as climate change, extreme weather, biodiversity loss, pollution, waste and wasting, melting glaciers, rising sea levels, and food insecurity.

Rather than offering a comprehensive survey, the course draws on selected historical and ethnographic studies from East and Southeast Asia and Asian diasporas. We will explore how Buddhist practitioners and communities understand and respond to environmental change, as well as how Buddhist institutions and practices may themselves contribute to patterns of consumption and ecological harm. The course critically examines Buddhist environmentalism, including the development of “Buddhist ecology” and efforts to “green” Buddhism, while asking what possibilities and limitations Buddhism offers for imagining life on a damaged planet.

HAA 88
Buddhist Cosmic Art 
Eugene Wang
Long before the modern internet, Buddhism imagined a cosmic network: Indra’s Net—an infinite canopy of interconnected jewels, each reflecting all others in a continuous, endless loop. In this vision of reality, the boundaries between the “one” and the “many” dissolve. Physical scale ceases to matter: a single particle of dust can contain a trillionfold world, and infinity can unfold within a single thought-instant.

This course explores how this cosmos was visualized and staged through art and architecture across Asia. We will examine immersive murals on Silk Road cave walls, the legendary, infinitely reflecting mirror-halls in medieval Chinese monasteries, and monumental, three-dimensional architectural ‘cosmograms’ such as Borobudur. Reading foundational texts—such as the Lotus Sutra and the Flower Ornament Sutra—alongside painting, sculpture, and architecture, we will analyze how texts generate visual worlds and how images and built spaces, in turn, repurpose and reshape textual claims. Ultimately, the course asks how matter and mind, thought and form, interpenetrate—and how cosmos and consciousness may be mutually entangled.

COMPLIT 232
About the End of the World: Crises of Cosmopolitanism in Contemporary Culture and Theory 
Mariano Siskind
Cosmopolitanism has been a vital master concept for understanding modern and modernist processes of global circulation, disjunction, and transnational/translational formations and subjectivities. Today, the displacement of more than 122 million refugees, migrants, and forcibly displaced persons driven by environmental catastrophes, economic hardships, and small and large-scale perpetual wars in Latin America, Africa, the Middle East, Europe, and East Asia points to the radical dislocation of the symbolic structure we used to call “world.” Is the concept of cosmopolitanism still useful for interrogating this generalized sense of global crisis? Can cosmopolitanism still be posited as a radical utopian horizon from which to oppose the militarization of the globe? What is the ethico-political potential today of "a cosmopolitanism without a world"? This seminar is not about the very real historical suffering and losses of those whose bodies are wounded by the political, economic, military, and environmental upheavals; rather, it is about the post-cosmopolitan traces of those experiences in art, literature, film, and theory, and about how we can determine what art and the critical humanities can and can no longer do about the contemporary experience of what we will call "the end of the world.

HIST-LIT 90CM
Asian American Cultural Studies 
Andi Remoquillo
This course examines Asian American cultural production and the political histories of various Asian American communities. We will place a wide range of primary texts, including fiction, poetry, film, television, and visual art, in conversation with larger political and cultural questions about race, gender, citizenship, imperialism and belonging in the U.S. The course will be organized around four major events in Asian American history: the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 and the subsequent exclusion of Asian immigrants in the decades that followed; the incarceration of Japanese immigrants and Japanese Americans during World War II; Cold War Orientalism after WWII; the racial politics of imperial war and Islamophobia in the post-9/11 United States; and the sharp increase in anti-Asian racial violence during the Covid-19 pandemic. We will also consider the historical movements and migrations of people of Asian descent to North America; U.S. wars in Asia; the conflicts of identity, community, and citizenship; the gender and sexual dynamics of Asian American racialization; and the relationship of Asian Americans to other communities of color. In doing so, this course grapples with what it means for Asian America to have been characterized and circumscribed by a multitude of cultural discourses—legal, geopolitical, and textual—throughout dominant as well as subversive narratives of U.S. history.

HIST 1967
Global Maoism: Radical Protest and China’s Shadow Diplomacy in the Late 20th Century? 
David Spreen
While the period of the Cultural Revolution in some ways isolated China internationally it also inspired large numbers of activists in Asia, Africa, Europe, South America, and the United States. The export of “Maoism” or “Mao Zedong Thought” was actively promoted by the Chinese Communist Party and inspired the creation of countless new Marxist-Leninist Parties, informal political associations, and sometimes political violence.   

At the same time, China supported decolonial movements in the Global South. This led to networks connecting students, disillusioned Soviet-style communists, Chinese and Albanian diplomats, Civil War combatants in Southern Africa, and the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia. This course looks at “Global Maoism” not simply as a “left history” but as an episode of the Global Cold War, paying particular attention to the entanglements of activism, foreign policy, and Cold War conflict.

HDS 3435
Muslim Internationalism and Islamic Socialism 
Teren Sevea
This seminar explores the transnational networks through which Muslim reformers, missionaries, writers, and activists imagined Islam as a source of global solidarity and social change in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Moving across South Asia, Britain, Southeast Asia, the Middle East, Africa, and the Americas, students examine how Muslims used journals, translations, associations, and missionary work to connect communities across oceans and empires.

Drawing on historical and anthropological scholarship, as well as Islamic writings, the course considers how these thinkers responded to colonialism, Christian missionary activity, racial hierarchy, and economic exploitation. They presented Islam variously as a rational and modern faith, a universal brotherhood, and a democratic or socialist alternative to capitalism, caste, and imperial domination. Students explore ideas of progress, education, social justice, and Islamic solidarity, while considering the tensions between these ideals and political loyalties, gender norms, and reformers’ own social hierarchies.

Muslim internationalists were never a unified movement. The seminar examines disputes over religious authority and sectarian boundaries, as well as the exclusions and hierarchies that could shape reform projects. Through these debates, students consider how competing visions of Islam, socialism, and international community took shape across the modern Muslim world.

HAA 78
Contact and Exchange: Modern and Contemporary Architecture and Design in South Asia
Vishal Khandelwal
This course will study buildings, objects, sites, and themes pertinent to architecture and design in South Asia from the eighteenth century to the present. Our examples will address topics including port cities and their architecture; building typologies such as bungalows, urban and suburban apartments, and village dwellings; silverware and textile objects; new cities and their infrastructure; and colonial and postcolonial institutions of architectural and design training. We will prioritize a cross-cultural history of contact, interactions, and exchanges that informed a significant portion of the visual and material culture of the Indian subcontinent, and consider the incidence of comparable typologies and objects in other parts of the world. Section meetings will allow students to build on key issues and questions that emerge from the readings and lectures, and learn the skills of looking, reading, analyzing, critical thinking, and writing that are crucial within the humanities more broadly.

DPI 453
Politics and Policy in South Asia 
Gautam Nair
This course examines politics and policy in South Asia, a region encompassing a quarter of the world's population and countries as diverse as India, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Afghanistan, and Bhutan. South Asia simultaneously confronts vast and varied problems and huge opportunities. We will examine a number of pressing topics including democracy and political development; the management of ethnic diversity and conflict; jobless economic growth and industrial policy; the political economy of gender inequality; climate change and pollution; foreign policy; nuclear weapons; and the role of great powers. Drawing on cutting-edge research and classic scholarship, the course will emphasize the development of analytical frameworks to critically assess the complex issues and opportunities facing most of the countries in South Asia. There are no prerequisites and prior knowledge of the region is not assumed, but an enthusiasm to learn swiftly is essential.  Students will complete a small-group research project on a live policy issue, ideally one that contributes to knowledge and is ultimately publishable in an academic or general interest venue. Students from any School are welcome to enroll for credit. HKS students will get priority and auditors are not permitted.

EASTD 260
The Lotus Sutra: Texts, Narratives, and Translations: Proseminar 
Ryuichi Abe
This seminar offers a fresh approach to the Lotus Sutra, introducing Mahayana Buddhism by exploring the text's narrative art, ancient Indian origins (1st–2nd centuries CE), and connections to early scriptures like the Vimalakīrti and Prajñāpāramitā sutras. Rather than treating the text as isolated doctrine, we will trace its overarching story arc across chapters to reveal how famous parables, poetic innovations, and major figures—such as Guanyin, Mañjuśrī, and the Dragon Princess—intertwine. Students will gain a deep, engaging foundation in Mahayana concepts, from the cosmic identity of all Buddhas to the inseparability of compassion and enlightenment.

EASTD 194
Historical Legacies in East Asian Politics 
Daniel Koss
How does the historical past shape politics in the present? East Asia and its recent political developments provide a most striking universe of cases, where legacies of the past influence both domestic politics and international relations. Located at the intersection of history and political science, this course is grounded in theories of institutional development, introducing concepts such as path dependence, critical junctures, and unintended consequences. Beginning with China, the course discusses explanations of development successes grounded in grand narratives going far back in time; the impact of cultural norms, imperial techniques of statecraft, revolutionary practices; the uses and abuses of history in the service of the party state; and the long-term impact of Christian missionaries, Japanese colonizers, and a decade of warfare. Through the case of Japanese domestic politics, we explore how tradition is transmitted through habits and memories of individuals; through institutions such as the perennial ruling party; and through a broadly defined civil society. As examples of critical junctures, we will discuss North Korea’s early postwar history and South Korea’s democratization process, discovering their enduring influences on both political systems. Turning to international relations, this course asks whether foreign and security policy is the result of a deeply rooted strategic culture, how diplomats maneuver the divisions over historical guilt of World War II, and what narratives such as the “century of humiliation” reveal about actors’ strategic thinking. Throughout the course, we will pay attention to regional linkages.

HIST 1942
The Second World War 
Erez Manela
The Second World War profoundly shaped 20th century history and its legacies continue to reverberate today. This course will take an expansive approach to the history of the war, both in time and space. We will begin with the legacies of the First World War and how they foreshadowed the next global conflict. We will examine the unfolding and impact of the war not only in Europe but also in Asia and around the globe. Finally, we will look at the war’s legacies in the postwar international order, including the emergence of the Cold War and the unfolding of decolonization.

MUSIC 207R
Ethnomusicology: Seminar 
Richard Wolf
Music and Language. This course focuses on the practical interfaces between "music" (forms, genres, and practices) and "language" (structures, patterns, and habits of use).  Over the semester students will read a diverse selection of writings from ethnomusicology, historical musicology, music theory and philosophy, linguistics, and linguistic anthropology.  Readings and assignments will balance attention to theoretical treatment of music-language relations with practical exercises in listening to diverse musical and linguistic materials.  Examples are drawn from different parts of the world, with an emphasis on Africa, South Asia, the Middle East, the Americas and the English-speaking world.

SOCIOL 1148
Race and Ethnicity in Global and Comparative Perspective 
Ellis Monk
This course provides an introduction to the comparative study of “race and ethnicity” around the world. We focus here not on particular “ethnic” or “racial” groups, but rather, on particular cases which illustrate how “race” is used as a way in which to divide, sort, and rank human beings (i.e. a principle of social vision and division).  In particular, we compare and contrast how different societies have constructed ethnoracial boundaries by focusing on several key forms of ethnoracial domination: categorization, discrimination, segregation, ghettoization, and exclusionary violence.  Readings include sociological, historical, and anthropological studies of ethnoracial dynamics primarily in the U.S. and Brazil, but also South Africa, Asia, Western Europe, and Latin America.

TIBET 300
Readings in the Commentary on the Saṃdhinirmocanasūtra by Wŏnch’ŭk [Yuáncé圓測] (613-696)
Leonard van der Kuijp
The Saṃdhinirmocanasūtra deals arguably in part with a theory about the history of Buddhist thought. Written by the Korean monk Wŏnch’ŭk, this monumental work was translated into Tibetan in the ninth century and is occasionally cited in the later Tibetan literature. In this course, we will read several excerpts from it using the Chinese text and the Tibetan translation.

GENED 1119
Law, Politics, and Trade Policy: Lessons from East Asia
Christina Davis
East Asia’s economic rise highlights how trade policy drives development, from 19th-century "unequal treaties" to modern WTO rules. By tracing Japan's post-samurai expansion, Korea's conglomerate-led growth, and China's market integration, this course examines how trade creates both national wealth and international conflict. Ultimately, these countries provide crucial models for navigating the opportunities and challenges of globalization.

RELIGION 116
The Conduct of Life in Western and Eastern Philosophy
Michael Puett 
Jointly Offered with: Harvard Law School as LAW 2392, Harvard Divinity School as HDS 2313
A study of approaches in the philosophical traditions of the West and the East to the conduct of life. Philosophical ethics has often been understood as meta-ethics: the development of a method of moral inquiry or justification. Here we focus instead on what philosophy has to tell us about the first-order question: How should we live our lives? This year a major concern will be the study and contrast of two such orientations to existence. One is the philosophical tradition focused on ideas of self-reliance, self-construction, and nonconformity (exemplified by Emerson and Nietzsche). The other is a way of thinking (notably represented by Confucius) that puts its hope in a dynamic of mutual responsibility, shaped by role and ritual and informed by imaginative empathy.

EASTD 141
East Asian Religions: Traditions and Transformations
James Robson 
Jointly Offered with: Faculty of Arts & Sciences as RELIGION 130, Harvard Divinity School as HDS 3010
This course provides an introduction to the study of East Asian religions. It covers the development of Buddhism, Daoism, Confucianism and Shinto. It is not a comprehensive survey, but is designed around major conceptual themes, such as ritual, image veneration, mysticism, meditation, death, and category formation in the study of religion. The emphasis throughout the course is on the hermeneutic difficulties attendant upon the study of religion in general, and East Asian religions in particular.

ECON 1342
The History of Economic Growth
Melissa Dell
This course examines the history of economic growth, from prehistoric times through the present. Topics covered include the Neolithic Revolution; economic growth in ancient societies; the origins of modern economic growth; theories and evidence about the institutional, geographic, and cultural determinants of growth; the East Asian Growth Miracle; and theories and evidence about the persistence of poverty in the world’s poorest regions. 

LAW 3137
China and the International Legal Order
Mark Wu
In the Xi era, China has started to cast aside the long-standing maxim of “keeping a low profile and biding one’s time” in international affairs. What does China’s rise portend for the international legal order? In what ways is China seeking to reshape global norms versus uphold a status quo order exhibiting increasing fragility? This seminar examines this question for various domains of international law, including climate change, economics, sovereignty, human rights, and development. It will consider the ways in which history, geostrategic competition, domestic politics, and economic interests impact these questions.

GENED 1042
Anime as Global Popular Culture
Tomiko Yoda
In this course, students will learn to engage Japanese or Japanese-style animation (sometimes known as anime) through two-pronged approaches. First, the students will learn to evaluate the aesthetic and socio-cultural relevance of anime in relation to the criteria and perspectives developed through the study of more established artistic forms such literature, cinema and visual arts. We will cover topics including, anime’s generic conventions, formal aesthetic, and narrative motifs. Secondly, students will learn to address the cultural value of anime in manners that recognize the specificity of its media ecology, encompassing the modes of production, distribution, and consumption. In particular, we will pay close attention to the ways media technology, industrial production of anime, marketing, and fan culture are integral facets of anime eco-system. In this sense, we will study anime as a node in the global network, involving diverse commercial as well as non-commercial medias such as graphic novels, live-action films, video games, character merchandises, and fanzines and other fan practices. The course as a whole suggests that we need to work between these two approaches in order to understand anime as a medium of global popular culture today.

COMPLIT 100Y
Contemporary Southeast Asia through Literature and Film
Annette Lienau
This course will explore contemporary literature and cinema across Southeast Asia, focusing on regional developments after the Asian financial crisis of 1997 through the present. Themes discussed include literature’s relationship to economic turmoil and political change; questions of class and social mobility; anti-authoritarian writing and issues of censorship; literature, youth culture, and new media landscapes; and literary explorations of gender and sexuality. Readings will include a selection of critical essays to foreground these central themes of the course, along with poetry, short fiction, and films from: Brunei, Cambodia, Laos, Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Timor-Leste, and Vietnam. Readings will be taught in English translation and films will be screened with English subtitles.  

EASTD 145
Views from Mainland Southeast Asia: “Indochina” in a Century of Exchanges and Conflict, 1880s–1980s
Uyen Nguyen
This seminar introduces students to the modern histories and cultures of Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia, examining the most consequential episodes in the intertwined and often tumultuous relationships among these three countries from the late nineteenth to the end of the twentieth century. The course pays particular attention to “Indochina” as a colonial and postcolonial framework—one that at times connected, and at other times divided, the region’s peoples and states.

Throughout the seminar, students will engage with scholarly texts and films, as well as literary works, memoirs, and oral histories. The course asks a set of guiding questions: Does geographical proximity foster cultural similarity? Does forced inclusion in a colonial union such as French Indochina unite or divide colonized societies? Does shared political ideology necessarily lead to collaboration and mutual support?

GOV 94MCC
Peacebuilding After Ethnoreligious Violence
Melani Cammett
Identity-based conflict seems to be on the rise. Many countries in Africa, South and Southeast Asia, the Middle East and the Former Soviet Union have witnessed wars and conflict and riots that are ostensibly waged for ethnic or religious reasons. Even if they are not the root cause of these conflicts, such identities often become politically salient as a result of violence targeting ethnic or religious “others” and, once activated, exhibit remarkable stickiness in social and political life. When intergroup tensions have ratcheted up, is it possible to reduce their importance? Can a shared civic identity be constructed in the wake of violence waged in the name of ethnicity or religion? This course explores these questions through relevant social science literature, in-depth analyses of case studies of conflict and conflict resolution, and critical assessments of diverse approaches to peacebuilding.

HDS 3504
Women's Access to the Buddha in Southeast Asia
MK Long
Women remain the most active supporters of Buddhist institutions across Southeast Asia despite widely held understandings of women's karmic inferiority. This central tension in the study of Buddhism will form the core of our study of women's devotion to the Buddha in Myanmar, Thailand, Cambodia, and Sri Lanka. The course advances through close study of ethnographic case studies, auto/biographies, and other vernacular works (in translation).

HIST 37
Modern Southeast Asia
Sugata Bose
A lecture survey of the modern history of Burma (Myanmar), Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos and the Philippines from 1800 to the present comparing the experience and aftermath of British, French, Dutch, Spanish and US imperialism in the region.

The courses listed here have been curated to highlight Spring 2027 offerings that feature an explicit transnational, regional, or cross-border comparative framework focused on Asia. While we strive to compile a comprehensive directory, some eligible courses may have been inadvertently omitted due to variations in departmental course indexing.

If you are a faculty member offering a Spring 2027 course with a primary emphasis on transnational or comparative Asian studies that is not currently listed, please contact us at tngodup@fas.harvard.edu to update our directory.