A survey of South Asian history. The course explores diverse and exciting elements of this long history, such as politics, religion, trade, literature, and the arts, keeping in mind South Asia's global and diasporic connections.
Same as HISB57H3

This course provides an overview of the historical changes and continuities of the major cultural, economic, political, and social institutions and practices in modern Chinese history.
Same as HISB58H3

For those who reside east of it, the Middle East is generally known as West Asia. By reframing the Middle East as West Asia, this course will explore the region’s modern social, cultural, and intellectual history as an outcome of vibrant exchange with non-European world regions like Asia. It will foreground how travel and the movement fundamentally shape modern ideas. Core themes of the course such as colonialism and decolonization, Arab nationalism, religion and identity, and feminist thought will be explored using primary sources (in translation). Knowledge of Arabic is not required.

Same as HISB65H3

A survey of the art of China, Japan, Korea, India, and Southeast Asia. We will examine a wide range of artistic production, including ritual objects, painting, calligraphy, architectural monuments, textile, and prints. Special attention will be given to social contexts, belief systems, and interregional exchanges.
Same as VPHB73H3

This course explores the social circulation of Asian-identified foods and beverages using research from geographers, anthropologists, sociologists, and historians to understand their changing roles in ethnic entrepreneur-dominated cityscapes of London, Toronto, Singapore, Hong Kong, and New York. Foods under study include biryani, curry, coffee, dumplings, hoppers, roti, and tea.
Same as HISB74H3

An introduction to modern Asian art through domestic, regional, and international exhibitions. Students will study the multilayered new developments of art and art institutions in China, Japan, Korea, India, Thailand, and Vietnam, as well as explore key issues such as colonial modernity, translingual practices, and multiple modernism.
Same as VPHB77H3

This course offers students a critical and analytical perspective on issues of gender history, equity, discrimination, resistance, and struggle facing societies in East and South Asia and their diasporas.

This course critically examines different aspects of Buddhism in global context.

This course examines the complex and dynamic interplay of media and politics in contemporary China, and the role of the government in this process.
Same as MDSC40H3

This course introduces students to media industries and commercial popular cultural forms in East Asia. Topics include reality TV, TV dramas, anime, and manga as well as issues such as regional cultural flows, global impact of Asian popular culture, and the localization of global media in East Asia.
Same as MDSC41H3

This course offers students a critical perspective on film and popular cultures in South Asia. Topics include Bombay, Tamil, and other regional filmic industries, their history, production, and distribution strategies, their themes and musical genres, and a critical look at the larger social and political meanings of these filmic cultures.

This course explores the development of colonialism, modernity, and nationalism in modern Japan, Korea, China, and Taiwan. Key issues include sexuality, race, medicine, mass media, and consumption.

This course offers students a critical perspective on film and popular cultures in East Asia. The course examines East Asian filmic industries, and the role they play in shaping worldviews, aesthetics, ethical norms, folk beliefs, and other socio-cultural aspects in China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Korea, and Japan.

This course examines the history of South Asia's partition in 1947, in the process of decolonization, into the independent nation-states of India and Pakistan. Major course themes include nationalism, violence, and memory. Students will read historical scholarship on this topic and also engage with literature, film, oral histories, and photography. Partitioning lands and peoples is an old colonial technology of rule. Why did it become such a compelling solution to the problems of group conflict in the Indian subcontinent and beyond in the twentieth century even after 1947? How did the emergence of different ideas of nationalism – Indian, Pakistani, Hindu, Islamic, and beyond – contribute to this? Why was the Partition of India so violent? What happened to the people who were displaced at the time of Partition? How has the Partition been remembered and narrated and how does it continue to echo through national and regional politics? Beyond the subcontinent's partition into India and Pakistan, the course will introduce comparative case studies of Burma and Sri Lanka, among others.

An introduction to the distinctive East Asian legal tradition shared by China, Japan, and Korea through readings about selected thematic issues. Students will learn to appreciate critically the cultural, political, social, and economic causes and effects of East Asian legal cultures and practices.
Same as HISC56H3

This course addresses literary, historical, ethnographic, and filmic representations of the political economy of China and the Indian subcontinent from the early 19th century to the present day. We will look at such topics as the role and imagination of the colonial-era opium trade that bound together India, China and Britain in the 19th century, anticolonial conceptions of the Indian and Chinese economies, representations of national physical health, as well as critiques of mass-consumption and capitalism in the era of the ‘liberalization’ and India and China’s rise as major world economies. Students will acquire a grounding in these subjects from a range of interdisciplinary perspectives.

Same as HISC51H3

The Silk Routes were a lacing of highways connecting Central, South and East Asia and Europe. Utilizing the Royal Ontario Museum's collections, classes held at the Museum and U of T Scarborough will focus on the art produced along the Silk Routes in 7th to 9th century Afghanistan, India, China and the Taklamakhan regions.
Same as VPHC53H3

Students examine historical themes for local and regional cuisines across Global Asia, including but not limited to Anglo-Indian, Arab, Bengali, Chinese, Himalayan, Goan, Punjabi, Japanese, Persian, Tamil, and Indo-Caribbean. Themes include religious rituals, indigenous foodways; colonialism, industrialization, labour, gender, class, migration, globalization, and media. Tutorials are in the Culinaria Kitchen Lab.

Same as FSTC54H3 and HISC54H3

A study of the history of China's relationship with the rest of the world in the modern era. The readings focus on China's role in the global economy, politics, religious movements, transnational diasporas, scientific/technological exchanges, and cultural encounters and conflicts in the ages of empire and globalization.
Same as HISC57H3

This course explores the transnational history of Tamil worlds. In addition to exploring modern Tamil identities, the course will cover themes such as mass migration, ecology, social and economic life, and literary history.

Same as HISC59H3

The course will explore the history and career of a term: The Global South. The global south is not a specific place but expressive of a geopolitical relation. It is often used to describe areas or places that were remade by geopolitical inequality. How and when did this idea emerge? How did it circulate? How are the understandings of the global south kept in play? Our exploration of this term will open up a world of solidarity and circulation of ideas shaped by grass-roots social movements in different parts of the world

Same as HISC73H3

An introduction to Chinese contemporary art focusing on three cities: Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou. Increasing globalization and China's persistent self-renovation has brought radical changes to cities, a subject of fascination for contemporary artists. The art works will be analyzed in relation to critical issues such as globalization and urban change.
Same as VPHC74H3

This course offers an in-depth and historicized study of important cultural issues in historical and contemporary Asian, diasporic and borderland societies, including migration, mobility, and circulation. It is conducted in seminar format with emphasis on discussion, critical reading and writing, digital skills, and primary research.

Same as HISD09H3

This course offers a capstone experience of issues which confront Asian and diasporic societies. Themes include gender, environment, human rights, equity, religion, politics, law, migration, labour, nationalism, post-colonialism, and new social movements. It is conducted in seminar format with emphasis on discussion, critical reading, and writing of research papers.

The course offers an in-depth, special study of important topics in the study of Global Asia. Special topics will vary from year to year depending on the expertise of the visiting professor. It is conducted in seminar format with emphasis on discussion, critical reading, and writing of research papers.

An exploration of the global problem of crime and punishment. The course investigates how the global processes of colonialism, industrialization, capitalism and liberalization affected modern criminal justice and thus the state-society relationship and modern citizenry in different cultures across time and space.
Same as HISD06H3

What is violence? How do we study violence and its impact? How do people subjected to violence communicate, cope and live with violence? The course is designed to study South Asian communities through the concept of violence by exploring various texts. By looking at the various cases, structures and concepts in relation to violence in different parts of South Asia the course will analyze and understand how forms of violence transfigure, impact, make and remake individual life, and communities within and beyond South Asia. We will analyze different forms of violence from structural, symbolic to discreet and every-day expressions of violence. The course closely looks at how, on the one hand, violence operates in the everyday life of people and how it creates social suffering, pain, silence, loss of voice, difficulties of communicating the experience of violence, etc. On the other hand, the course will focus on how ordinary people who were subjected to violence cope, live, recover and rebuild their life during and in the aftermath of violence.

This seminar examines the transformation and perpetuation of gender relations in contemporary Chinese societies. It pays specific attention to gender politics at the micro level and structural changes at the macro level through in-depth readings and research.
Same as SOCD20H3

This course examines how popular culture projects its fantasies and fears about the future onto Asia through sexualized and racialized technology. Through the lens of techno-Orientalism this course explores questions of colonialism, imperialism and globalization in relation to cyborgs, digital industry, high-tech labor, and internet/media economics. Topics include the hyper-sexuality of Asian women, racialized and sexualized trauma and disability. This course requires student engagement and participation. Students are required to watch films in class, and creative assignments such as filmmaking and digital projects are encouraged.
Same as WSTD30H3

The Chinese government has played a central role in the development of print, electronic and digital media. Recent changes in the political economy of Chinese media have had strong political and cultural implications. This senior seminar course examines the complex and dynamic interplay of media and politics in contemporary China.