CMLT 131 - Love and Sexuality in the Literary Arts of East Asia

This Honors course will examine the words love and sexuality as depicted in East Asian (Chinese, Taiwanese, Japanese, and Korean) literature and film. By exploring the way love and sexuality get treated in the literature and films of cultures on the other side of the globe, we will consider whether there is a universal component to the ideas of love and sexuality, or do these ideas vary from culture and historical setting? Stereotypes of Asian culture in the media of the United States can vary. Images of the Asian man include effete asexual men, kung fu artists, or philandering perverts. Images of the Asian woman vary from the demure geisha to school-girl porn and evil dragon ladies. The goal of this course is to challenge these stereotypes of Asian sexual culture and to seriously examine the assumptions of what love and sexuality mean in East Asian culture as well as in our own. Topics will include: attitudes toward marriage, family, homosexuality, sexual violence, and recent trends in China and Japan’s underground youth culture regarding sex and drugs. (Group III) Honors, (Diversity) (Writing)