2021-2022 Academic Catalog 
    
    Mar 29, 2024  
2021-2022 Academic Catalog [ARCHIVED CATALOG]

JAPN 280 - Memory and National Identity in Post-War Japanese Fiction and Film


This seminar will explore Japanese literature and film from 1945 to the present as a response to dramatic and total defeat in World War Two. What is the legacy of WW2 for Japanese cultural production? How has the memory of the war shaped the themes of novels, manga, film and other forms of artistic expression? How has post-war literature both reflected and transformed issues of national identity? What do these works reveal about modern, and post-modern, Japanese constructions of the self? From atomic desert to economic powerhouse, we will consider the cultural context of post-war trauma and subjugation, of war guilt and its denial, of affluence and anomie: the long shadow cast by World War Two.

Course Designation/Attribute: DI

Anticipated Terms Offered: bi-annually