14024 Advanced Seminar

SoSe 19: (VS) Conflict, Crime and Memory in East Asian Relations: History and Contemporary Issues

Urs Matthias Zachmann

Additional information / Pre-requisites

Student performance will be assessed by - regular and active course participation - end-of-semester paper

Comments

East Asia is one of the most divisive regions of the world today. Although not at war, Japan, China and Korea nonetheless are constantly wary of each other, unable to overcome deep-seated feelings of mistrust. The source of this is to be found in the history of their relations that, throughout the 19th and 20th century, was fraught with violence and strife.

This seminar traces the tortuous history of East Asian relations since the 19th century up until the end of the Cold War. It particularly focuses on the excessive violence that formed a large part of these relations and often was amplified by internal violence following. The seminar investigates different ways in which various actors tried to cope and overcome their traumata, be it through law and diplomacy on the national level, or through literature and art on the individual level. Ultimately, the seminar addresses the more fundamental question how nations (and people) despite horrendous experiences at the hand of each other can still overcome their traumata and start cooperating again.

Course Schedule

1. Paradise Lost in Asia? Asian relations before the advent of imperialism

2. Opium, guns and Jesus: Reassessing the role of agency during the age of High Imperialism

3. 1919 and the ‘Wilsonian Bubble’: Idealism and disillusion in interwar East Asia

4. Ordinary Men? Causes and motivations of excessive violence during the Asia-Pacific War

5. Lawyering Up: Military justice and war crimes trials in East Asia

6. Normalisation without reconciliation: Cold War diplomacy and its legacy in East Asia

7. Atomic nationalism: Japan’s victim complex and birth of post-war pacifism

8. The Red Room: Coming to terms with violence and trauma in contemporary Korean culture

9. Scar Literature: Memories of violence and victimhood in modern Chinese culture

10. A Visit to the Museum: Remembering war in Nanking, Yasukuni and the Smithsonian

11. National strategies of history education in Japan, China, Taiwan and Korea

12. Love songs and hate speech: Pop culture and populism in Japan and Korea

13. Visions of unity and strife: Geopolitical discussions on the future of East Asia

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Suggested reading

Zachmann, Urs Matthias, China and Japan in the Late Meiji Period: China Policy and the Japanese Discourse on National Identity, 1895-1904.

Suzuki, Shogo, Civilisation and Empire: China and Japan's Encounter with the European International Society, London: Routledge, 2009.

Peter Duus et al. (eds.), The Japanese Wartime Empire: 1931-1945, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996.

Tsuyoshi Hasegawa (ed.), The Cold War in East Asia, 1945-1991, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2011

Goh, Evelyn, The Struggle for Order: Hegemony, Hierarchy, and Transition in Post-Cold War East Asia, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013.

Yang, Daqing et al. (eds.), Toward a History Beyond Borders: Contentious Issues in Sino-Japanese Relations, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Asia Center, 2012.

Hein, L. & Selden, M. (eds.), Censoring history: citizenship and memory in Japan, Germany, and the United States, Armonk, N.Y.: M.E. Sharpe, 2000.

Kim, Mikyoung, Routledge Handbook of Memory and Reconciliation in East Asia, Abingdon: Routledge, 2015.

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12 Class schedule

Regular appointments

Mon, 2019-04-08 14:00 - 16:00

Lecturers:
Univ.-Prof. Dr. Urs Matthias Zachmann

Location:
1.2052 Seminarraum (Fabeckstr. 23-25)

Mon, 2019-04-15 14:00 - 16:00

Lecturers:
Univ.-Prof. Dr. Urs Matthias Zachmann

Location:
1.2052 Seminarraum (Fabeckstr. 23-25)

Mon, 2019-04-29 14:00 - 16:00

Lecturers:
Univ.-Prof. Dr. Urs Matthias Zachmann

Location:
1.2052 Seminarraum (Fabeckstr. 23-25)

Mon, 2019-05-06 14:00 - 16:00

Lecturers:
Univ.-Prof. Dr. Urs Matthias Zachmann

Location:
1.2052 Seminarraum (Fabeckstr. 23-25)

Mon, 2019-05-13 14:00 - 16:00

Lecturers:
Univ.-Prof. Dr. Urs Matthias Zachmann

Location:
1.2052 Seminarraum (Fabeckstr. 23-25)

Mon, 2019-05-20 14:00 - 16:00

Lecturers:
Univ.-Prof. Dr. Urs Matthias Zachmann

Location:
1.2052 Seminarraum (Fabeckstr. 23-25)

Mon, 2019-05-27 14:00 - 16:00

Lecturers:
Univ.-Prof. Dr. Urs Matthias Zachmann

Location:
1.2052 Seminarraum (Fabeckstr. 23-25)

Mon, 2019-06-03 14:00 - 16:00

Lecturers:
Univ.-Prof. Dr. Urs Matthias Zachmann

Location:
1.2052 Seminarraum (Fabeckstr. 23-25)

Mon, 2019-06-17 14:00 - 16:00

Lecturers:
Univ.-Prof. Dr. Urs Matthias Zachmann

Location:
1.2052 Seminarraum (Fabeckstr. 23-25)

Mon, 2019-06-24 14:00 - 16:00

Lecturers:
Univ.-Prof. Dr. Urs Matthias Zachmann

Location:
1.2052 Seminarraum (Fabeckstr. 23-25)

Mon, 2019-07-01 14:00 - 16:00

Lecturers:
Univ.-Prof. Dr. Urs Matthias Zachmann

Location:
1.2052 Seminarraum (Fabeckstr. 23-25)

Mon, 2019-07-08 14:00 - 16:00

Lecturers:
Univ.-Prof. Dr. Urs Matthias Zachmann

Location:
1.2052 Seminarraum (Fabeckstr. 23-25)

Subjects A - Z