Sense and Sensation in Premodern Japanese Theater & Literature

Undergraduate / Graduate

Each week will focus on a particular sense or sensation (sound, touch, horror, wonder, etc.) in works of premodern Japanese theater and fiction, paying particular attention to performance (broadly defined to include noh, kabuki, and puppet theater as well as comic storytelling and spectacle shows) as a public site for the exploration of intimacy and alienation, the circulation of feelings, and the staging of somatic difference. Considering, for example, anti-theatrical bias and discourses of contagion, scenes of possession and physical transformation, and the psychologizing of emotion and the senses, the course will engage with theories of embodiment, emotions, disability, and wonder. All readings will be available in English. Previous experience in Japanese literature or history is not required. Open to both undergraduate and graduate students. Students taking the Literary Japanese sequence will be encouraged to complete complementary primary source reading and a final translation project as part of the course.