First-Year Seminar: The Samurai: Gender and Power in Japanese History

Examines the history of the samurai, the hereditary, elite warrior population that emerged as a new social and political force in Japan in the 12th century and which ruled, largely unchallenged, until the Meiji Restoration of 1868. In the modern era, frequent reinventions situated the samurai as core to understanding ''traditional'' Japan, as well as vague and aphoristic notions of the Japanese spirit and Japanese masculinity.