ASST 250(S) Scholars, Saints and Immortals: The Religious Life in East Asia (Same as Religion 250) (D)

REL 250(S) Scholars, Saints and Immortals: The Religious Life in East Asia (Same as Asian Studies 250) (D)
In East Asian cultures, as in the United States, popular conceptions of morality typically take their shape, not from explicit rules, but from moral paragons-stylized figures that are said to embody a distinctive cluster of virtues. For example, American Christians invoke not only Jesus, but also a pantheon of "secular saints" as diverse as Martin Luther King Jr. and General Patton, George Washington and Cesar Chavez. This course will explore the cultural functions of moral paragons (and heroes more generally) by introducing students to examples from Chinese and Japanese history, ranging from Confucian articulations of the ideal scholar-bureaucrat to Buddhist conceptions of the Bodhisattva to Taoist immortals. We will also interpret the top-down creation of new moral paragons by East Asian states, including the popularization of the samurai in interwar Japan and Mao Zedong's self-presentation as the embodiment of China. National communities, after all, gain their coherence from the invocation of public lives as well as the repetition of founding myths and collective narratives. Readings will include primary texts in translation by Chuang-tzu, Confucius, Shantideva and others. This course fulfills the Exploring Diversity Initiative by providing students with tools for cross-cultural analysis of moral paragons, as part of how societies manage difference and articulate hierarchies of privilege and power.
Format: lecture/discussion. Requirements: active participation, short writing assignments, midterm, and a take-home final exam.
No prerequisites. Enrollment limit: 30 (expected: 20). Preference given to Religious Studies and Asian Studies majors.
Hour: JOSEPHSON