EAST ASIAN LANGUAGES & CIVILIZATIONS (EALC)

Religion, State, and Society in East Asia

lpscps_user — Sat, 28 Feb 2026 05:35:40 +0000

Religion, State, and Society in East Asia

Term

Summer 2026

lpscps_user Sat, 02/28/2026 - 00:35

Session

Summer Session I: May 26 – July 1, 2026

Format

Online

Subject Area

EAST ASIAN LANGUAGES & CIVILIZATIONS (EALC)

Course Number

EALC 1508 910

Course Code

EALC1508910

Course Key

88844

Schedule

Tuesday 7:00pm-8:30pm

Thursday 7:00pm-8:30pm

Day(s)

Tuesday

Thursday

Time

7:00pm-8:30pm

Instructor

TAVOR, ORI

Primary Program

School of Arts and Sciences

Secondary Program

Pre-College Program

Fulfills

COL-FND-CrossCultural Analysis

Course Description

This course examines the relationship between religious institutions and the state in East Asia. Focusing on China and Japan, we will learn about the impact of religious ideas, practices, and organizations on social, political and economic processes and inspect the role of religion in the consolidation of individual, communal, and national identity. Adopting a comparative and transnational approach, we will examine the impact of Asian religious traditions: Confucianism, Daoism, Buddhism, and Shinto, as well as global religions such as Islam and Christianity, on the states and their role in shaping power relations on the international level.

Crosslistings

RELS1508910

Subject Area Vocab

EAST ASIAN LANGUAGES & CIVILIZATIONS (EALC)

Gods, Ghosts, and Monsters

lpscps_user — Mon, 15 Dec 2025 19:30:13 +0000

Gods, Ghosts, and Monsters

Term

Summer 2026

lpscps_user Mon, 12/15/2025 - 14:30

Session

11-Week Session: May 26 – August 7, 2026

Format

Online

Subject Area

EAST ASIAN LANGUAGES & CIVILIZATIONS (EALC)

Course Number

EALC 0502 900

Course Code

EALC0502900

Course Key

88583

Schedule

Wednesday 8:00pm-9:00pm

Day(s)

Wednesday

Time

8:00pm-9:00pm

Instructor

MCDANIEL, JUSTIN

Primary Program

LPS Undergraduate & Post-Baccalaureate

Fulfills

COL-SECTOR-Humanities&Soc Sci

Course Description

This course seeks to be a broad introduction. It introduces students to the diversity of doctrines held and practices performed, and art produced about "the fantastic" from earliest times to the present. The fantastic (the uncanny or supernatural) is a fundamental category in the scholarly study of religion, art, anthropology, and literature. This course fill focus both theoretical approaches to studying supernatural beings from a Religious Studies perspective while drawing examples from Buddhist, Shinto, Christian, Hindu, Jain, Zoroastrian, Egyptian, Central Asian, Native American, and Afro-Caribbean sources from earliest examples to the present including mural, image, manuscript, film, codex, and even comic books. It will also introduce students to related humanistic categories of study: material and visual culture, theodicy, cosmology, shamanism, transcendentalism, soteriology, eschatology, phantasmagoria, spiritualism, mysticism, theophany, and the historical power of rumor. It will serve as a gateway course into the study of Religion among numerous Asian, and East Asian Studies, as well as Visual Culture and Film Studies. It will include guest lectures from professors from several departments, as well as an extensive hands-on use of the collections of the Penn Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology and the manuscripts held in the Schoenberg Collection of Van Pelt Library. It aims to not only introduce students to major, approaches, and terms in the study of religion and the supernatural, but inspire them to take more advanced courses by Ilya Vinitsky, Liliane Weissberg, Projit Mukharji, Talya Fishman, Annette Reed,David Barnes, David Spafford, Frank Chance, Michael Meister, Paul Goldin, Renata Holod, Paul Rozin, among several others.

Crosslist Primary

RELS 0130 900: Gods, Ghosts, and Monsters

Crosslistings

EALC0502900

Subject Area Vocab

EAST ASIAN LANGUAGES & CIVILIZATIONS (EALC)

MLA Proseminar: How to Look at and Write Asian Art

lpscps_user — Thu, 11 Sep 2025 04:30:48 +0000

MLA Proseminar: How to Look at and Write Asian Art

Term

Spring 2026

lpscps_user Thu, 09/11/2025 - 00:30

Format

Online

Subject Area

EAST ASIAN LANGUAGES & CIVILIZATIONS (EALC)

Course Number

EALC 5100 640

Course Code

EALC5100640

Course Key

88110

Schedule

Wednesday 5:15pm-8:15pm

Day(s)

Wednesday

Time

5:15pm-8:15pm

Instructor

STEINHARDT, NANCY R S

Primary Program

Master of Liberal Arts

Course Description

This seminar focuses on ten very different monuments of Asian art in order to learn how to ask questions about and write about painting, sculpture, and buildings. Following a general introduction to the art of East Asia and South Asia, each class will focus on a major monument and similar examples of it: a Chinese bronze vessel, the Tomb of the First Emperor, Sokkuram, Elephanta, Traveling through Famous Sites of Wu, Tale of Genji, Gold Pavilion, the Forbidden City, Taj Mahal, the city Xi'an. We will discuss why each is important, its religious or philosophical context, and assess how it has been discussed in literature and modern writing. We will then discuss optimal or innovative ways to present it and write about it. Each week students will analyze writing about that week's subject and turn in a short evaluation of writings about the subject of the former week's class. The final paper will be an article of the kind one would submit to a newspaper or magazine. The class will be taught synchronously. However, students will be encouraged to write about an object in a local museum for the final project.

Subject Area Vocab

EAST ASIAN LANGUAGES & CIVILIZATIONS (EALC)