AAAS 454 - Unresolved Issues:Wars in Asia

Credits: 4

This seminar undertakes a multidisciplinary study of modern warfare in Asia. Seminal theoretical works on perpetrator/victim/survivor psychology, the lived experience and aftereffects of psychological trauma and the politics of private and public memory will be studied and utilized to analyze three representative unresolved issues: the Nanjing Atrocities, ‘comfort women’ and the atomic bombing of Hiroshima /Nagasaki. Artistic representations of these events will also be examined to determine the unique insights they can afford into the psychodynamics, human costs, and consequences of ideological indoctrination, the shift from ‘sensory’ reality to ‘mythic’ reality worldviews, objectification/dehumanization of the enemy/other, and mass historical violence and victimization. No prerequisites. Offered bi-annually.