Cross-course pages: Key Concepts & Terms

Terms I use in various courses that have similar meanings in any of those courses & key concepts

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Just for your information to get a sense of how I think about things, I list here are a few principles that are nearly always in effect when I am grading essays and essay test answers, and are often key to the grade I arrive at:

1. concise answers (they are the result of seeing the bigger perspective and understanding what is major and what is minor, they show confidence)
2. answer the question asked (many of my questions intentionally put the student in a specific box to see if the student can solve the problem created by the limitations of the questions—just answering something does nothing to help me determine this)
3. analysis over summary & description (most of my class have to do with how to think about things and certainly most of my essay questions are about that, rarely about details—some summary or description might be necessary to lead into your observations and conclusions but often not and it always takes up precious space)
4. sweeping statements such as "the Japanese think ..." (see "overreach" below) suggest an uncritical attitude and lack of recognition of the complexities of the issue at hand, whatever it might be
5. conent-rich (students often provide only a topic or a descriptive tag: "This poem was beautiful." Fine, but give me content: in what way is it beautiful? Rhythm? How senses are combined? In the scene it suggests?)
6. avoid at all costs trying to "sell" your answer through rhetoric, especially rhetoric that isn't grounded in a content-rich statement—generally a bit of caution the shows you understand the limits of your claim is the more mature and convincing position to take (love this article: Phillip Lopate, who directs the graduate nonfiction program at Columbia University, NYT 2/16/2013 Op-Ed page "The Essay, an Exercise in Doubt")
7. good handwriting (I have so much to grade, so little time to grade it in, that I can't puzzle over handwriting for very long)

For those of you who are not confident in your critical thinking abilities, and for those of you who are (because I truly hope that you spend your entire life honing this skills to ever higher levels) you might be interested in this Web site: criticalthinking.org and since their wonderful graphic is buried in their Web site in a difficult-to-find location, here's a direct link: Elements of Thought. I have a particular interest in their "intellectual standards" list at the top: clarity, accuracy, precision, relevance, depth, breadth, logic, significance, and fairness.

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Table of contents

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access (to films)

EA105 (love)

Student access. Students must work with films that are complete in their edition, English subtitled, and which they can repeatedly view. (One DVD owned by the team is sufficient if they are responsible about loaning the film back and forth regularly.) Students must work with exactly the same version (including its subtitles). If access is online only, that is, if they do not have a copy of the film in hand, students must be aware that they have exposed themselves to a very serious grade risk if the film or parts of the film are pulled from the net before the end of the time (when I will want to view it).

For films held by our library system. You MUST confirm that the film is still in the system; you definitely cannot simply state that it should be there because it is in the catalogue. You must physically check out and view the film before submitting your film choices. Please remember that such films usually cannot leave the building and that other students may by using the same film. Plan accordingly.

analysis

All courses

My working definition of analysis is something like the below. It evolves as I identify student needs and weaknesses and further consider this matter. (See also Announcements Page > Cross-course policies > Concepts | Facts.)

When it comes to course essays (not on tests, but as papers or projects), three common types (there are others and these types tend to be present to some degree in all essays, it is a question of emphasis) are

• statements of opinion (your response to a given object such as, say, whether the ending of The Tale of Genji is satisfying or not)
• research papers (where you collect and arrange in some fashion information and/or analysis by others and present this information in some organized fashion), and
• analytic papers (that generate your own observations and conclusions that result from research, and so these papers stand on the shoulders, so-to-speak, of what might be considered complete content for a research paper).

Research is key to all academic fields. However, analysis is, in my opinion, under-taught to the types of students who take my classes and so it is the analytic essay that is almost always the type of essay I require. Further, while of course one of the primary purposes of the essay is to learn deeply about a particular object, ultimately analysis is an activity intended for an audience, to have functional value to a specific community. I think this aspect is grossly over-looked and under-practiced. Therefore most of my essay assignments ask you to go beyond exploring something just for your own sake and consider an imagined audience. This additional facet thus requires essays that are in all cases credible (the research and analysis is sound and presented in a way that the reader will conslude so), and, in addition either interesting or valuable or, hopefully, both. No reader will bother with your work if he or she concludes it is not credible and if it is not interesting or valuable in some way to that reader. This is a different sort of essay than the "Teacher, see what I have learned" approach.

Analysis is the investment of time in the informed and disciplined consideration of an object(s) to develop observations and conclusions of use to others.

An explanation of the many components of this declarative sentence can be found here: Annotated version of my working definition of analysis

Some random things found on the Web (mostly for me but I'm sharing):

• Reading strategies / advice for effective analytic reading of literature (Tulane University instructor)
• Pintrest "teaching-reading-literary-analysis"

blind

All courses

This is when team members are working independently, out of communication with each other. A strict rule of secrecy among team members regarding their individual activities is in effect.

EA105 (Love)

There are times when you discuss the project with team members and there are times when you work "secretly" (in the blind) without discussing you work with the team or knowing what they are doing—

togetherness in setting the goals and boundaries,

absolute independence when writing the independent reports except for what little you might learn from your team members during progress reports,

then togetherness once more at the end for the final, joint statement.

Students sometimes subvert this process, then get to the final joint statement only to learn then, when it is too late, that I have set up the assignment in a way that breaking the rule earlier now makes the joint statement very hard to complete quickly or in good form. Keep the rule when it is in place and your road forward is smoother.

*If you are supposed to be working in the blind but need to talk with your team members for administrative reasons ("When are we meeting?" "Can I borrow film?") that's OK.

compare

EA105 (love)

When I use the word "compare" unless I indicate otherwise I mean: investigate with the goals and themes of the class in mind, try to beat the average Joe rule, remember to stay within the all about love rule, avoid sweeping statements and investigate following the below priorities, going with the first on the list when you can and moving down the list only when necessary:

differences among the objects compared that are not immediately obvious and are worth noting (this might include nuances or similar less-than-striking differences, or hidden differences that are only apparent after some thought)

similarities among the objects compared that are not immediately obvious and are worth noting (this might include nuances or similar less-than-striking similarities, or hidden similarities that are only apparent after some thought)

differences among the objects compared that are not difficult to notice but where you show a consequence or conclusion that is not immediately obvious

similarities among the objects compared that are not difficult to notice but where you show a consequence or conclusion that is not immediately obvious

differences among the objects compared that are not difficult to notice but are worth noting

similarities among the objects compared that are not difficult to notice but are worth noting

I didn't mention the high-low love rule here. Following this hierarchy will naturally lead to a correct use of this aspect.

compound statements

All courses but especially EA105 (love)

We deal with complex issues in this class, many of which lack clear definitions. In order to find our way through the forest, we do our best to keep clarity in analysis. One common sentence structure in students' analyses uses "and" as in:

One obvious premodern core value illustrated in the films is that love can be so ignorant and naïve.

This simply confuses things. It introduces two ideas at once where one is already a challenge. It also suggests a relationship between the two words but it is unclear exactly what type of relationship. — Are they the same thing? (Clearly not.) Is one a subset of the other? (Hmm, I don't think so.) Are ignorant people always naive people? (Not really.) So, in the end, this is not a very useful pairing.

Try to stick with one thing at a time. It helps the reader follow you accurately.

content / content rich

All courses (examples are for EA105)

This is an important concept to me for my classes and problems related to this concept appear all the time, and usually affect the grade.

I request "content" in many circumstances: meeting details, film description, thesis statements, the essay body, and so on. By "content" or "content-rich" I mean substantive statements rather than summary or topical statements.

Topical statement: "My partner and I met and noticed we have a lot of differences in how to interpret the films." (You have only said: "There were differences ...")

Content-rich statement: "My partner and I met. Anne felt that Himiko's jealousy was primarily the result of a difference in status between Himiko and the other woman. Jeremy thought that was possible but personally felt the jealousy was the result of an insecurity Himiko had based on an earlier relationship." (You have said both that there were differences and what those differences were.)

Topical statements pop up in abstracts of articles (when I ask for them) and thesis statements. Avoid them. Examples:

Topical statement (intended to be a thesis but really just a statement of what the paper will be about): I will explore sacrifice in two films, "My Little Sister" and "The Last Letter".

Content-rich statement (a real thesis): I will explore the final sacrifice that is made by the main protagonist in two films: "My Little Sister" and "The Last Letter". I plan to conclude that the sacrifice in my little sister isn't really that at all. Because of the content of her suicide note, as well as the location of that suicide, it is, instead, simply an act of anger meant to hurt her lover. However, "The Last Letter" involves a real sacrifice by the protagonist: he gives up his love to allow her to marry someone else. This is not what he wants for himself, but he realizes this is best for the person he loves. I compare these two sacrifices and suggest that, in the case of the Korean film, the movie is less about romance than plot twists and the dark nature of people, while in the case of the Japanese film, the theme is unrequited love from beginning to end. I suggest that the Korean film is fairly distant from any premodern roots but the Japanese film continues a long tradition of not being able to be with one's lover, something we saw already in The Tale of Genji.

credible and interesting (and of value)

All courses

Your paper, project, whatever should be "credible and interesting" is a pretty frequent comment by me. Sometimes I add that it should be" useful" or "valuable" to others. There is some crossover among "interesting" "useful" and "valuable" in that we often consider things that we can use in some way as also interesting, but I'll mention the three separately.

Credible. 1) You have shown good judgment in a selection of sources (see "credible sources" below) but you have also shown that you have read and understand those sources and, hopefully, they have improved the thinking of your essay or project. 2) You have made reasonable arguments that seem trustworthy — the skeptical reader concludes you know your subject, your are not driving an agenda (is not pushing a point, or trying to sell, or using rhetoric in place of content), you understand and avoid false logical steps, have proceeded with self-critical caution, and you have avoided prejudiced comments and sweeping statements. 3) Your work appears to have been undergone a self-critical reread and rewrite. (The reader needs to conclude you have put more thought into the topic than the reader him or herself.) 4) The work does not appear rushed. ... I use these criteria all the time when grading. These are not high standards. These are normal expectations for any college-level academic work.

Interesting. This word should be understood in the particular context of scholarly activity. We don't mean entertaining, we mean intellectually stimulating: your essay or project has helped us think about something interesting by providing fresh analysis, noticing things we had not, arguing for a different emphasis on how something should be examined, and so on. However, nothing is interesting if it is not credible. And nothing is interesting if you, yourself, are not interested in it. "Interesting" topics, by the way, are not out there to be found. They are made by you: you find a start point by balancing these two questions: "What do others want to think about?" "What can I get excited about?" then you breathe life into it by getting involved. ... This is an important grading component for me on two points. First, I know students learn more deeply and widely, and retain what they learn, when they are engaged in the subject. I conclude that more learning has happened when the product given to me has interest. Second, scholarly activity is a community enterprise and I think we under-teach and under-pursue the responsibility scholars have for doing research that is of interest to the community. Therefore many but not all of my papers ask you as a writer to contribute to an imagined community of interested readers.

Valuable / useful. I teach humanities classes related to Asia. As scholars we do sometimes produce knowledge based the discovery of, or direct work on primary sources but most of our work has to do with interpretation grounded in knowing our subject matter well (which almost always includes the schoarly discourse on it) and deploying with discipline sophisticated analytic methods. This sometimes confuses my students whose primary work is in the sciences and who consider the production of data through controlled experiment to be, probably, the first line of "valuable and useful". Try to set aside that view and take on the humanities thirst for interpretation and analysis. ... That being said, in most cases students cannot yet rise to this level so when I use these criteria what we are really doing is practicing towards that goal.

credible sources (good academic sources)

All courses

I am interested in measuring your ability to show good judgment in your selection of resources for papers and such, at a basic level. Books published by academic presses, articles from refereed journals, and Web sites that have an identifiable author who you can independently confirm is qualified to publish on that topic can all be considered, at the undergraduate level, as good sources. (As a graduate student you will be expected to be more discriminating.) Newspaper articles, Web site essays with no obvious author, or passages (including Wiki), are definitely out-of-bounds. ... The topic is not that cut-and-dried, however. If you are using widely known, non-controversial information such as when someone was born, even Wiki is OK. At the other end of the spectrum, if you are using a highly debatable argument from even a famous, widely published scholar on his or her specialty, you should show awareness in your essay or whatever that this position is his or hers and should be handled with caution. Source selection not only leads to good essays but is one of the main ways a reader (or grader) decides whether you are credible in your writing. (written 15 Jan 2013)

EA105 (love)

I am a little more open as to what is acceptible as long as I can easily determine that you are proceeding with care and have put some thought into the credibility questions.

EA109 (tea)

Even published sources can be nationalist in agenda or less-than-rigorous in their scholarship. Treat all sources with great care. Web sources for this class, in particular, are rife with pitfalls. That includes what might seem like reliable sites such as museums sites and so forth.

East Asian countries

EA105 (love)

For the purposes of this class, this means

• Japan
• Korea (North/DPRK and South/Republic of Korea)
• China (People's Republic of China, Hong Kong [special Administrative Region], and Taiwan [Republic of China] are treated as within the Chinese cultural and linguistic sphere and all count as "China" — you cannot compare, say, Taiwan to Hong Kong)

film summary

EA105 (love)

Brief summary

The brief summary follows the instructions for the extended summary with these exceptions: length is 50-100 words, #7 below is dropped, and, because of the shortened word length, the summary itself is forced to work with only the most basic characters and basic events.

Here is an example, one that captures basic events and mood by setting up the characters thoroughly, then stepping back and talking about the outcome without getting tangled in the steps along the way. In other words, the reader of a brief summary cannot reconstruct mood by reading the multiple plot steps and then guessing at it. You should give something of the "character" of the film, reduce the steps in the plot. That gives a better picture of things. Reminder: taking summaries from the web is academic dishonesty. When I request summaries the implicit understanding is that they are on films you have watch in full, with enough care to write a summary. Having to write the summary is part of the viewing process; I've designed it that way on purpose. Example:

Snakes and Earrings, based off of a popular book, takes place in modern day Tokyo. The story revolves around a sadistic love triangle between a young woman, Lui (19, female, part-time employment as a server, her confused emotions guide the movie), a torturous tattoo artist who goes by Shiba (male, tattoo parlor owner who has disturbing sexual relations with Lui and Ama, although Lui eventually moves in with him), and an immature punk-turned killer named Ama (18, male, Lui's official lover who tries his hardest to be a part of Lui's life but eventually is erotically killed by Shiba). Her consistent desire to feel some type of emotion leads her to pierce her tongue wider and get a back tattoo. In the end, Ama dies at the hands of his homosexual lover, Shiba, and although Lui seems to know this, she accepts it all.

Most of the movie takes place is dark, dirty atmospheres like tattoo parlors or alleyways, giving it a tragic mood from the beginning. The consistent theme of social taboos such as necrophilia and dominating sex reveal a tension between the individual versus society, which is expressed through the multiple relationships.

While the above exceeds the word limit (it is 194 words, ouch), I accepted it because it is well written and so reads rapidly and because of its successes in covering character, plot and the atmosphere of the film. If it went over just because of more plot detail, or because the student just didn't bother to rewrite it for better readability, I would have sent it back for resubmission.

Extended summary

1. The film summary should be about 300-500 words that summarizes the films from the perspective of their "love" narratives. You are not graded for completeness in details; you are graded for an excellent overview of the entire film. Make your words count.

2. The original film summaries must NEVER be pulled from the web. Web-based summaries (that includes paraphrased summaries) receive an "F". Absolutely all aspects of the summary should belong only to you. You are free to use your partner's summary and then edit it in ways that you think are best. However, I recommend that you check with your partner as to the original source of the work. Any summary that you submit is graded as if you have accepted all of its contents according to the rules of the summary. Therefore, if your partner used the web, then you used your partner's summary, you are responsible for the plagiarism even though it was not you who originally did so.

3a-3c. Summaries must give a) a good sense of the film's basic artistic approach, b) mood, c) ethical environment and so on (those things which we have discussed affect interpretation, reveal values and worldviews, etc.). This is graded.

4. Please paragraph frequently to help me follow main events easily. This is graded.

5. Summaries should be written and rewritten until they have excellent clarity that includes all of the below (all the below is graded):

• be sure that the basic outline of the love narrative is prominent in the description—in other words, the most important bump or bumps along the way, and the results of a story line. Don't just set up the situation. This isn't supposed to sound like a blurb for the back of a DVD or an advertisement for the film. It should give the outline of the full story, spoilers included. Remember the topic of our class is not Asian films; it is the identification and comparison of romantic values so your summary should focus on that.
• cultural setting(s) ("countryside Japan", "urban Hong Kong" etc.)
• time period (by year or, in rare cases, historical era: 2007, 1990s, Edo Japan, Tang China, etc.)
• names of key characters in the story (always cited in bold and with the first mention given more details of that individual in parenthesis — age, sex, employment, whatever is relevant to the story)
• all main events of the story (try to prevent the summary from spinning out of control by including too many "maybe main" events)
• the story's outcome
• descriptive passages at appropriate places that give a sense of the movie, not just the skeleton plot line but, rather, a "feel" for the story

6. Treatment of character's names:

Specific character names should be consistent (use the same name every time you mention that person) and include something about them (beyond the initial set of details required in the first mention of the name) to help the reader (me) keep track. So for example, "surfboarder Koji" is more informative than just "Koji"—it will remind me of the individual. Otherwise I have to memorize the who storyline to follow your comments.

Be sure that the basic outline of the love narrative is prominent in the description—in other words, the most important bump or bumps along the way, and the results of a story line. Don't just set up the situation. This isn't supposed to sound like a blurb for the back of a DVD or an advertisement for the film. It should give the outline of the full story, spoilers included. Remember the topic of our class is not Asian films; it is the identification and comparison of romantic values so your summary should focus on that.

7. Your summary first provides a bullet list of main characters and the main romantic events related to them. Please be sure to list their sex, age, social status when relevant and, if it is usually helpful, something about their personality type —cheerful, cynic, cruel, etc. Bold an entry every time you use it here and in the summary and I prefer boring repetition of names than "him" "her" and so on. When skimming these can get really confusing. An entry might look like this:

• Chunhyang (female, late teens?, rank ambiguous between low-class free woman and courtesan): Chunhyang becomes the wife of Mongnyong, a talented and handsome man of about the same age. Chunhyang is a strong and beautiful (somewhat) woman who fiercely upholds her duties and fidelity to her husband. Mongnyong discovers Chunhyang in the countryside, falls in love, asks Chunhyang's mother for permission to marry. They do marry but Mongnyong must leave Chunhyang behind to study in Seoul. (He cannot take Chunhyang with him because she is too low class for his family.) Mongnyong returns to rescue Chunhyang from the evil governor who wanted her to serve him sexually.

Independent essay (IE)

EA105 (love)

This is the essay that each student writes on theri own, working in the blind, once the NDT has been decided. Details are on the instructions page.

informative title

All courses

An "informative title" is my way of requesting a specific type of title. It describes the basic content of the essay beyond just the topic, but includes the topic. It is different from "inviting" titles that are catchy or creative or mysterious. Informative titles tend to be a bit long and are often a bit awkward, but they do give an immediate sense of what the essay will be about in its specifics. Please compose your essays for a neutral context—so not "Michizane's exile" but instead "The exile of the Japan's early Chinese scholar Michizane". This second choice assumes that the reader encountering your title is seeing it out of context and knows nothing about Michizane. Use good judgement, however. Some topics are so famous that being specific seems condescending: "Medieval period critical essays on The Bible" is better than "Medieval period critical essays on the early religious work The Bible". (revised 15 Jan 2013)

instance (also, see "overreach")

EA105 (love)

"Instance" is any text, film, passage, scene or other sort of moment that has become the object of analysis and is situated in a very specific time & place—what that person said or did in that text (or film) which is of that specific historical circumstance. This helps us keep in mind that we are studying cultural moments, little snippets, and that we cannot study, or make conclusions about, a whole culture through a handful of examples. Our class is only one of many baby steps in the process of getting better at reading another culture. That being said, it is through instances that we learn languages and, indeed, cultural worlds (what to do in this situation; what such-and-such a body movement means in that situation; what "X" means when said in this type of situation). We extrapolate from instances to build workable environments in which to move and to make interpretations. (These comments based on TOM / "Theory of mind" —our ability as humans to construct the world of another to have a general understanding of how that person will probably behave.)

Joint Comparative Statement (JCS)

EA105 (love)

This is the statement written at the end of the TCP process. It brings together convergences, divergences and emergences among the team individual essay then, again, among the team's work compared with the work of other teams. This is written in a long face-to-face meeting of all members and sent on the spot, with all members still present.

main point

All courses

When I ask for the "main point" of something, how much detail should the student write? First, often there are several main points. Usually any of those will work as an answer. Second, it is OK to include details as long at they don't confuse the issue. I want to know if you know the main point. Make that clear in your answer, add details if you want. Details might help slightly with a grade but usually not. Either you get the main point or you don't. Exception: A+ answers tend to hit the main point exactly, include some detail, but include that detail in a way that makes it crystal clear that the student knows that it is secondary information. So, adding details when you are unsure tends to work against you, as the grader might conclude "This answer does not clearly identify the main point." "Main points" are associated with the gist of an argument, the agenda of a text, the overall total feel of the text or film or scene or design or painting. They are not the most important events or most striking characteristics. The chainsaw movies are horror genre films. The main point is not the chainsaw or that there is a lot of gore. The main point is abject fear (we fear, greatly, the dis-integrity of the human body) plus some post-modern distance that makes this genre, for some, not horror but rather comedy-horror. I ask for "main points" because I want the reader to step back a bit from the text and ask, "Well, what was all that anyway?"—in other words, some meta-perspective broader than the level of the specifics of the language or plot.

Sometimes I provide quite a bit of detail, small specific detail, in lecture and students worry whether they will need to know that for exams. I like concepts as well as the application of concepts towards making interpretations deeper and more accurate. My details are almost always examples of a concept in its application, to help understand the concept or how it can be used to understand something. Testable material is indicated on Web sites and assigned materials. I tend to avoid repeating that information in class so if you hear a specific detail in class, it is either as an example or a repeat of information given elsewhere. I am sometimes offering up interesting topics since it is hard to guess what any particular student might find as truly interesting and worth further investigation and because, well, the world is full of interesting things to think about. By the way, even if I give a "hard fact", reading directly from my notes, I do not build quizzes or exams from my notes. I build them from the online material that is available to you. That helps keep us on the same page.

meeting details

EA105 (love)

This is sometimes a weak point in the student's submission but it is graded carefully so please read the below. This class pivots on the concept of dialogue between team members so I look carefully at the meeting details to try to visualize the quality of the dialogue.

Meeting details require a statement of when (and for how long), where and how in addition to the other content, so please make sure you have a record of these things. Please be sure that the meeting(s) time (date and hour), duration (in minutes or hours), and location are listed and accurate.

I want content-rich details of the meeting. I am trying to imagine the nature of the conversation. So, for example:

• What paths did you take to get to your final position?
• Which student took which positions or contributed which ideas?
• How dynamic was the dialogue?
• How close or far apart are the two students on their opinions?
• Is there a sense of direction or not?

I should have answers to most of the above questions.

When it helps clarify things, use both partner first names: "Maggie thought Alyssa's point was very useful.

Here's an excerpt from an actual, and excellent, description of a non-quantifiable aspect of a meeting. You don't need to be this colorful, but this passage did indeed help me understand the vitality of the relationship and the nature of the dialogue (one student drawing out the other):

I felt throughout the discussion that David is either psychic or I am really easy to read, because, during a lot of our discussion, David could clarify what I wanted to say even though I didn't say it. And I really admired David's overly dramatic sentences (which I highlighted with squiggly lines). We had a lot of fun discussing the ideas behind those sentences and what I thought of those sentences.

nativize / nativizing a concept

All courses

"Chikamatsu Monzaemon is the Shakespeare of Japan." Statements like this have value but it is quite limited. Yes, Chikamatsu is famous like Shakespeare, and a playwright, like Shakespeare, and dealt with issues easily accessible to his theater-going audience (betrayal, money trouble, passion), like Shakespeare. OK< fine. But after that there is a LOT of Chikamatsu that ISN'T like Shakespeare at all. So, my problem with this type of comparison is that is kicks up double trouble in that it encourages a misread of Chikamatsu, and it shuts down the important question that leads to knowledge: Who is Chikamatsu? So, if you want to align a foreign concept (jealousy in The Story of the Stone) with a modern Western concept just to get your bearings, that's OK. What isn't OK is to stop thinking about it, assuming they are just the same. I like dealing with nuances and shades of meaning—they matter. So, OK, in some ways jealousy is the same across cultures but in some ways it isn't. I want to know i you know, or are curious to find out, what those differences are. "Nativizing" a concept means converting something foreign into something familiar, like Chinese food that really isn't Chinese food. It might taste good. You might make a bundle of money. It might be what people wants. But when the question is, "What is Chinese food?" if doesn't answer that question. You analysis can become dull and uninformative. When things really are just like each other, that's interesting, and that is worth knowing. But usually the "just like" rhetorical move is to wrap up a topic and move on. Avoid that.

Besides converting emotions or ideas embedded in specific cultures and relevantly shaped by those cultures into universal or Western emotions or ideas (an analytic movement that ignores cultural boundaries), sometimes students indiscriminately cross historical time zones, assuming that if it is true in modern Japan, it must also be true in premodern Japan, for example. Do a careful double-check that you have good reason to make that assumption because asserting it.

overreach (sweeping conclusions) & instances as a preventitive way of thinking to avoid overreach

EA105 (love) but can often be relevant in any class with an essay due

By "overreach" or "sweeping conclusions" and "broad assertions" I mean conclusions or speculations that are broader than is warranted. Avoid them at all costs! In some versions of this class I emphasize "instances" — we study instances (a text, a film, or even a section of a film) not full cultural spectrums. Perhaps we can get some hints about the culture of a country through the study of instances, but it seems fairly obvious that we must proceed exceedingly carefully. Here is an example of overreach, it is a student's comment about two films:

One obvious difference in worldview is how each country views death in a loving relationship.

That "each country" simply MUST be "each film".

Overreach has exactly the opposite result of the goal of this class. We are trying to learn to notice differences, some not obvious, among cultures. Overreach makes a sweeping conclusions that shuts down the alert search for cultural nuances.

reading with thought and care

J7A, J7B & other classes with assigned readings in secondary materials that present concepts or primary materials (literary texts, etc.)

In most of my classes, I assign literary works and secondary academic material (articles and selections from academic books). The secondary readings are selected to provide support in terms of concepts (not facts) that I believe help one understand (read richly, read with depth, interpret with some accuracy) the literary works.

For a student to read a literary work with some "thought and care" means to read it in full, thinking while doing so why things happen they way they do, why content is presented they way it is, and what are the key fictional characters feeling and thinking. In short, you need to spend some time understanding those things that flesh out the plot in terms of its emotional and artistic impact. Just knowing the plot is insufficient. Doing just that is not halfway OK—it is insufficient. Plot summaries are, of course, pointless except as review or guidance.

For a student to read a secondary source with some "thought and care" means to read it for its primary theses, main observations / interpretations, and main conclusions. If I want you to capture anything beyond the most basic details, I will say so. After reading the assignment ask yourself whether you could explain, in 60 seconds and with clarity, the primary ideas. By ideas I do not mean topics! I am referring to the thesis, the main observations, the main conclusions—something among these.

EA105 (love)

In EA105 we read a number of premodern texts, have a set of shared films, and students view additional films for their essays. First "reading" means "thinking while reading" "thinking while viewing". "Thinking" is what I mean by "careful" reading. You should be thinking about these things (remember the "all about love" rule):

• the relationships between major characters and minor characters if they are very telling about the romantic narrative at hand, [Example "What is the role of X character in the story?"]
• the basic movements of the plot and what this suggests of love, [Example "What do the results within the narrative indicate of the characters choices?"]
• the values that seem to be embraced at the level of individual characters (values at the level of the narrative itself) and the overall values that seem to be suggested by how the author has formulated and presented her or his narrative (meta-narrative considerations),
• the worldviews that might be relevant to our class as suggested by a wide variety of things from the choices characters make, the judgments they seem to make of others, the expectations under which they seem to operate, the non-discursive aspects of the text / film that influence interpretation (the atmospherics of the text, its mood / world, for films sound, lighting, camera angle, body language, color palettes and so forth).

Then, texts / films are read comparatively: you think of the others while reading the one at hand, making comparisons as you go.

***The basic character names of our common texts and films must be memorized and rapidly at hand, since you read comparatively and are building a database of values, worldviews, character choices, authorial presentation and so on, that are used to compare works among the three countries and to compare premodern narratives to modern ones. However, we are not reading these texts as literature not doing a "close" reading of them. Find the right level of detail so you can see the forest, with as many tress as your particular approach allows. So, details are wonderful, until you begin to lose the big picture of the narrative in its aspects relevant to the goals and themes of the course.

relate (status of premodern values in modern cinema)

EA105 (love)

When we are considering whether, say, Confucianism is relevant to a film, statements such as "Confucianism seems important to this film" are not informative enough, given the themes and goals of this course. We need to investigate with more specificity.

To do this we first need to break down Confucianism into something more specific such as xin or ren and limit our analysis to that, even while recognizing the inadequacy of such a limited approach. It is, nevertheless, a start towards something larger (even if we never have time to build that larger analysis).

Then we need to give some nuance to what we mean by "relevant". In this class I ask that you go beyond general statements like "very relevant" or "not very relevant" and instead make some tentative conclusions along any of the below, or a mixture of them. I have picked the term "relate" to refer to this, since it is more or less neutral and open in meaning. "Relate" always suggests any or all of these three:

1. To what degree is X quality present or absent? For example, "gay rights" is entirely absent from, say, The Tale of Genji. The narrative simply has nothing to do with it (to readers contemporary with its composition and distribution). "Money" is very present in the film Three Times (Segment 2, the bordello), even though it is not discussed frequently. So "presence" cannot necessarily be measured by frequently or prominence. You need to judge how relevant it is with that in mind but not just that in mind. When we look at modern films, premodern values are almost always "faded" to some degree. To notice that isn't noticing much. Go farther.

2. To what degree is X quality modified? This does not mean reduced in value. (The would be the "faded", above.) Rather, for example, if the premodern value is, say, "one should respect one's elders, whether they are right or wrong" but if the film seems to suggest, "one should respect one's elders, if they are themselves moral beings", then that is a modification. These caveats often appear in films to broaden their appeal.

3. Acceptance / resistance.

A value might be enthusiastically endorsed, such as faithfulness in the film Chunhyang. It might, however, be only grudgingly accepted. It might be mildly resisted or questioned in some way. It might be directly challenged and presented as misguided or out-of-date or wrong for the situation.

Further, these events might happen at the level of the film in its entirely or at the limited level of a particular character's attitude or action.

Also, transgressive behavior provides an interesting instance that is neither acceptance nor resistance; it might be the pleasure of breaking a rule. It might set up a competing value or it might just simply enjoy the illegitimacy of the act.

Finally, films often take multiple positions. For example, in the following trailer it is clear that the typical value "one should love people more than money" is being upheld by certain characters in the film. It is also clear that "there is nothing better than money and it is completely OK to do what is necessary to obtain it, kind or not, legal or not" is a value embraced by some and very attractive, seductively, to others. It is less clear whether the trailer is taking sides. It switches back and forth and shows the appeal of both and though it would seem to take its baseline to be "people before money" it also seems to present, for marketing purposes, a very gleeful, "yeah, man, I, too, secretly desire to go for the golden ring more than anything else". (Aside: the director, I know is on the side of "people before money", given his filmmaking track record and off-screen comments but the film seems to allow space for both). Trailer: 'Wall Street/ Money Never Sleeps' Trailer HD

romance ("love")

EA105 (love)

"Romance" is, of course, a Western term situated within a specific historical and cultural situation that was not shared widely with East Asian countries until modern times. East Asian countries now all have an uneven blend of "romantic" values that are native to the social, philosophical, religious history of each country and their understanding of imported Western romantic values that are deeply involved in broader issues such as individual freedom and so on. When I use the term "romance" in this class, I am not using it to mean, as it might mean in the West, "a positive experience of amorous love" or "the early stages of a marriage-bound relationship" or "a thrilling, dreamlike state built around thoughts of another specific person" or "having one's head in the clouds unwilling to affirm the reality of a specific situation". All of these are workable definitions, and there are others. However all of these arise from some fundamental Western values associated with love.

We, nevertheless, need an English terms since one of the preconditions of this class is that we must, unfortunately, take English as our common language in order to level the analytic field and include equally narratives from China, Japan and Korea.

So, "romance" it is, but it means, more or less, this:

Heightened emotional states positive ("I want to be with you always") or negative ("I feel more guilty than happy when around you"), within or without marriage, that arise from thoughts of a specific person(s) real or imagined ("Fred, the man I love, I think" or "the perfect woman that will sometime marry me" etc) or a specific situation ("a fabulous and disastrous affair" or "a perfect house, bank account, set of children and husband/wife that enables that") and which forcefully insist on an answer to the question of whether or not to be together with that person(s).

In other words, we do NOT in this class, primarily study country-to-country differences in the institution of marriage & family. We focus, instead, on the feelings, expectations and romantic behavior of two or so people, who may or may not be married, intend to marry, were married or whatever.

Further, we do not assume that romantic feelings are necessarily morally proper or necessarily a positive experience.

Further, we do not assume that romantic feelings are universal because they reflect an actual entity that could be called love that is stable across country boundaries and eras (as in, specifically, Christian definitions of divine love).

Further, we do not show interest in just the early stages of attraction where two people seem compelled to be together. We can, and will, look at other stages of a romance.

Finally, our focus is not on the "biology" of love. Humans are social animals and, in addition, they do have sexual drives. They will seek to make bonds and they will seek to make the next generation. We are not exploring "What, really, is at the core of an intimate relationship?" Our perspective is much less essentialist: What are the differences, some almost paradigmatically difference, some so subtle as to usually go unnoticed, from country to country when the topic is how romantic stories are told and understood and the values that inform those stories.

This is not a class on how to love someone, or how to romance someone. But it is a class on how to understand one's own values better, how interpretation of behavior differs greatly from one person to the next, how East Asian countries share certain values that contextually affect interpretations of romance, and how East Asian countries also have substantive differences from one another.

story / story's world

EA105 (love) in particular but might be relevant to other courses

When trying to deduce a story's worldviews or values (whether text or film), please be careful to keep a distinction between what happens and what such an event might or might not indicate about similar or different values or worldviews. Just because the story (narrative) chain of events differ between two texts or films does not necessarily mean they work from different values or worldviews. Here's a student example (when asked to find differences between two countries represented by two films):

In Addicted (Korea, 2002), Dae-jun fell in to an unrequited love with Eun-soo much earlier than his brother. He never gave up, and finally got to be with Eun-soo. However, in contrast, even though Ah Keung in L for Love, L for Lies (Hong Kong, 2008) fell into an unrequited love with Ah Bo much earlier, Ah Keung died and wasn't able to be with Ah Bo.

This has not established different values, only that different things happened. To establish that there are different values (if that is truly the case) we need to read something like "Addicted seems to present this final success as a glorious outcome, as a result, maybe even an inevitable result, of his determination. L for Love, L for Lies seems to present Ah Keung death as almost inevitable, as if the film is saying that love is difficult or impossible to find, that something will always go wrong." — If this is the way it is, then there really are differences. But if L for Love, L of Lies seems to be a "frustration" film (a tragedy in the Greek sense), where it seems that the possibility of love is affirmed but something just went badly wrong in this particular case then both films uphold the view that love is possible, that efforts might or might not be rewarded but it is good to try hard.

So, in short, you cannot deduce a text's or film's values based solely on narrative events; it is necessary to think about how those events are presented.

style, documentation (citations) & bibliographies

I prefer MLA style and if I do not say otherwise, assume this is the style required for documentation and bibliographies, as well as the essay in general.

You can learn MLA bibliography citation style at any of these Web locations, and many others:

• Purdue Online Writing Lab - MLA Works Cited Page: Basic Format
• The Writing Center University of Wisconsin - MLA Documentation Guide
• Cornell University MLA Citation Style

style, bibliography with annotations

Sometimes I ask for additional information about the listings on your bibliography:

How you accessed the citation. Please tell me whether you checked it out of the library (and which one, by the way), or read it in the library, or purchased it, or accessed it online, etc. If you accessed it online, you must include the URL you used, and make sure it works. The question is how you accessed it, not how you found it. (For example, some students answer "Googled 'impermanance'" etc.)

How I can access the citation. Tell me how I can access the citation.

How you used the citation. Describe how you used this citation. Avoid topical answers (my essay was on swords and this was a good article on swords). Instead, give specifics (the authors thesis, that the main stimulus that advanced sword making techniques was such-and-such help me frame the essay so I could ask my own question such-and-such). If it was just for information, say so, but say something about what information (not just topic, the specifics).

Description of source and the portion relevant to your essay. I would like to have some sense of the work itself, and, also, some sense of what portion(s) you used. Something along the lines of "This was a fairly large work, several hundred pages, on the history of the blah-blah. I was mostly interested in the first chapter, which discussed the relationship of X to Y." This cannot be cut-and-paste or a paraphrase of an abstract you find or from the book itself. That will be considered academic dishonesty in this context. This must be based on your personal review of the work that helps me understand the nature of the overall work and the place within it of the portions you use. In needs to be in your own words because this helps me understand if you understand the work. Think carefully on the difference between a summary and a description; they are not the same. If you have read well, you can write a good description. If you have skimmed or not understood well, it is more likely you will place in this section a summary. Descriptions are grounded in your rich understanding of the source and what needs to be said to convey to another its shape, tone, thrust of argument, density of material, range of thought, etc. Summaries can be written without understanding content by paraphrasing topic sentences and so on. A summary of content can be useful and you can include it if you want, but it cannot substitute for description.

style, documentation (citations) with access info

In most cases I ask that you add a very non-standard component to your documentation because I want to be able to actually go to the source you are citing and check to see if you are using it effectively as well as with "fairness and accuracy" (as noted on my policy "Academic Honesty").

This means that I require footnotes (preferred) or endnotes. Then, after the standard citation, you must include an accurate URL if your source was online, and specify, somehow, where I should look on the page. (If your source is not online, you skip this part.)

Example:

term slippage

All courses

A common phenomenon in my classes is "term slippage", perhaps because I am keen on accuracy in terms use and so notice it or perhaps because many of the topics we take up are vague. I want to engage complex and ambiguous issues, but such issues demand discipline when working with them. "Term slippage" is a messy exploration of an idea (or a sly rhetorical move when done on purpose). Here's an example:

In L for Love, L for Lies (Hong Kong, 2008), beauty and grace are presented as the most attractive feminine values.  Ah Keung falls for Ah Bo because of her kind and trusting nature. (I'm putting terms in bold to highlight the slippage.)

This (hypothetical) student is implying that the personality traits "beauty and grace" are the same as the personality traits "kind and trusting". This may or may not be true, but to slide from one set to the next raises confusions we don't want and makes an argument simply by association which isn't good enough for credible academic discourse. Term slippage is eliminated through rereading and rewriting one's work becasue it can be hard to catch at the time of the first draft. (I think because it leans into conclusions that you are writing towards.)

In the above type of term slippage one term or set of terms has an overly loose relationship to another term or set of terms.

Another type of term slippage I often see results from an over-simplified intermediary that generates a false conclusion: "This movie is sad. That movie is sad. They are similar." The problem here is that "sad" might mean in the first movie "a very dark film where everyone in pessimistic and in despair" and might mean in the second film "an outcome that makes one sad, such as the friend or lover dying". Both have been dumbed down to "sad", ignoring the complexities and textures of each and then, based on the summary word "sad", they are made to appear as if similar to one another. The dumbing down of the terms creates a similarity that really isn't that similar and certainly isn't useful. This dumbing down of complex terms, complex or nuanced situations, and so forth is so common as to almost be the norm in student essays, especially when written without critical awareness or in a hurry or when done with lack of interest for the subject under consideration.

values / worldviews

EA105 (love)

This is an evolving portion of my class and the terms do indeed cause some confusion. Further, they are being defined specifically for this course. I am not making a larger philsophical claim.

Here is the basic, most important point:

By "worldviews" I mean metaphysical explanations of things (such as "everything changes constantly"). These, I suggest, provide contexts for interpreting romantic situations ("he tells me he will love me forever—but I know that everything changes").

A "value" as I use it is a social ideal (the perfect woman is demure) or, more frequently, a social behavioral norm (women should be demure in their behavior).

Worldviews are more absolute than values. In the case of values, one can be aware of another's values and simply not agree with them. Worldviews, however, tend to represent the outer limit of what one can imagine (Jauss's "horizon of expectation") or represent non-negotiable claims—things about how the world is built or works about which the individual is so sure that it is difficult to convince him or her otherwise.

Note: Some students seem to use the term "values" to mean "widely held ideas / characterizations". For example, "America values its national parks." But, for this class at least, I want "values" to mean what we understand should be done in a given situation, not necessarily what people do: "If you find $1,000 in a wallet in a gutter, you should return it to the owner." That's a value of honesty. But a competing value says: "There are times when it is silly to be too honest." That's a value of a more practial nature but still carries with it a sense of "should" since a lot of people might say you are dumb for returning the money. So values: a) may or may not have consensus to rise to the high level of being a value rather than just a common practice or advice, and b) there can be a gap between what we know should be done and what we expect will be done. The gap between values (ideally what everyone should do) and practice is something we all observe regularly. "Common sense" is sometimes used as a measure of the ever ongoing negotiation between ideals and real situations. "Common sense", please remember, is not necessarily common across cultures. In fact, it probably is key in identifying a cultural group.

Worldviews are important to us because they create contexts that should guide and constrain our interpretations.

Values are important to us since they shape the expectations and possibilities of a romance (how it will play out).

(Detailed comment of that assertion:) We create a theory of a person's (or group's) behavior and follow the twists and turns of our narratives using those preditive theories. It is how a narrative makes sense, how it creates suspense, how it can offer closure and so on. — "If you love someone you should put them first" is more acceptable as a definition of ideal Western love than "If you love someone you should have them do a lot for you, you will feel good." So if we think a character is a "good" person we will probably predict his or her behavior using the first comment, not the second, and if he or she deviates from that action, we reevaluate the character's personality or our understanding of the story. Other examples: "A woman who commits adultery should be stoned." "If a man makes a promise it should be kept." "If I have said yes to a marriage proposal your made to me I don't expect to hear later that you've changed your mind." These are all values that predict courses of action and/or offer leverage when wronged by someone (others will agree with the wronged person and bring social pressure to bear).