Proposal for a "Project Eli 2nd Generation" Project

For JAPANESE 200aG/LITERATURE 175sG, "The Japanese Classics," Fall 2006

Edward Kamens (Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures)

Japanese 200a/Literatures 175a, "The Japanese Classics," is a literature-in-translation course providing an overview of pre-modern Japanese literature (8th through 19th centuries) with extensive in-depth readings and analysis of many canonical works. The course has no pre-requisite; no knowledge of Japanese language is assumed or necessary; it is open to all students (and is cross-listed as a graduate course to accommodate the needs of some Master's programs and doctoral programs in departments other than EALL.) I conceive of it as an introduction to pre-modern Japanese literature that also serves as a means of studying and learning about how to study literature as such, in particular the pre-modern literature of a traditional culture distinct from those of Western Europe and the Americas. The course is required for majors in Japanese and can count toward the requirements of a number of other majors including East Asian Studies and the Literature major. It usually attracts an enrollment of between 15-22 students. The course was last offered in fall 2004; the syllabus from that semester is attached.

The class format is two 75-minute meetings a week, and the class hour is usually a combination of lecture and informal discussion. At some class meetings, students have made pre-scheduled short presentations that served as the focus of discussion; in others, open question/answer period provided the opportunity for student participation. In this way, the class blends both the lecture and seminar formats. There is no mid-term or final. Three papers have been required in the past: 1600 words in the third or fourth week of classes, on an assigned topic; 2200 words in the 10th week of class, on one of several suggested topics; and 3600 words, on any topic (including revision and expansion of an earlier paper) at the end of the term. In some terms, it has been possible to devote one or more class sessions or parts thereof to open classroom discussion of paper topics (referring to completed papers or papers in progress) as a form of workshop. The course usually has a Teaching Fellow (TF 2) assigned to assist in instruction in the course: the TF has usually read and marked papers (I do as well, so each student has received two sets of comments), made himself or herself available for discussion of readings and paper-topics in development, and generally assisted me in communications with students outside of class; occasionally, the TF has given a lecture or led discussion in class.

This course has been designated as one of the Yale College courses that members of the class of 2009 and later can use to fulfill the new writing skills (WR) requirement. There is therefore an expectation for expanded opportunities for students to focus on writing, revision, workshops and other exercises that place an emphasis on writing per se. One of the goals of this proposal will be to incorporate these writing exercises into a more imaginative and innovative set of assignments and opportunities for revising and for workshops in specially scheduled section-like meetings that could be conducted by the TF and/or by me.

The Visual Resources Collection, a division of the Art and Architecture Library, has a substantial inventory of catalogued digital images of works of art, buildings, city plans, gardens, maps and other visual materials that can be used to augment the readings in this course and provide illustrative, orienting, historicizing and contextualizing analogs to the readings. (Many of the works read in the course were originally conceived as multi-media creations involving both "text and image" and/or served in later times as rich subjects and points of reference for visual art in many different media). In addition, the Yale University Art Gallery's collection of Japanese art includes two outstanding works—folding screens dating from the late 17th or 18th century—that represent scenes from two major works studied in the course: The Tale of Genji (11th c.) and The Tale of the Heike (14th c.). Although these works are currently in storage (during the renovation of YUAG), arrangements can be made for students to view these works of art during the term while they are studying these literary texts. Digital images of these works in their entirety and of many details are also available in YUAG databases (and I have some of my own as well), but these are not generally available for or particularly well suited to instructional purposes. (n.b. I am writing an article about these two screens as examples of the use of the screen format for illustration of classical Japanese prose narratives, for publication in a special edition of the Yale University Art Gallery Bulletin in 2007). YUAG also has very rich holdings in wood-block printed ukiyoe art of the early modern period, which could provide another rich source of illustrative and interactive material for the course (corresponding to material covered in the last three weeks of the syllabus), but I am not very familiar with this corpus of works and, to the best of my knowledge, they have not been catalogued in great detail. In addition, there are a number of illustrated books, scroll paintings, and other works of text and visual art in the Beinecke Library and in the rare books division of the East Asia Collection of Sterling Memorial Library that could be added to the base of images used in interaction with the material of this course. I have been working with Ellen Hammond, Curator of the East Asia Collection, on various plans for study and cataloguing of these rare and medium-rare books, and it is possible that some connections between that project and the teaching of these course could be realized.

In past semesters, I have at times used slides and/or digital images of these various visual materials to augment almost every class lecture and discussion, and I have often proposed paper topics that focus on them among the various topics from which students may select. But because of the poor quality of cataloguing in the Insight application, lack of good user support for this application, and other problems with this software and its network-based interface, and also because of a tendency toward allowing discussion of these visual images to dominate discussion of the literary texts, I did not use visual image projection in any but a few of the class sections in fall 2004. I did show video/DVD clips of the Noh plays studied in one session of the class. Japanese film adaptations of two of the literary works read in the final two class sessions listed on the syllabus are available in DVD and/or VHS format, and I have shown clips from these as well. One of the goals for this proposal is to find a more effective and consistent way to work with these materials in class sessions.

It is important to emphasize that the course is not a course in visual studies, art history, or film, so the role of these materials and the form of interaction with them needs careful consideration. Their use in the class has, in any case, always met with positive responses from students. In order to improve use of digital images in the classroom, it will be of great help if the class can be assigned to a classroom with permanently installed projection equipment and screen or "smartboard," and the provision of strong, expert support from the Visual Resources Collection staff will also be needed in order to correct errors in cataloguing, update the image database, and add others. The Council on East Asian Studies has provided a grant to the Visual Resources Collection for a staff person specifically devoted to the cataloguing of digital images of Japanese art, so I would hope that this person could provide such support as I have described here. Without such support, I can't envision that time devoted to re-integration of visual materials into this course would be time well spent.

With the help of the Project Eli 2nd Generation team and its various consultants, I would like to address several goals for change and innovation in the teaching of this course in fall 2006.

  1. develop new conceptions of the writing assignments, with formal provision for revision of some assignments and the incorporation of productive workshops on writing to be scheduled at appropriate dates during the term. This could be done in consultation with the staff of the Writing Center, and could involve special training for both the TF and for me.
  2. develop new ways of integrating selected visual materials in Yale's digital collections and in the Yale University Art Gallery, Beinecke, and SML, and Film Study collections in ways that treat them in meaningful interaction with the literary texts studied in the course
  3. Realization of goals 1 and 2 above might involve, in part, some special outside-of-class sessions in which students enrolled in the class would examine materials in situ in these various collections and then write papers based on observation and interaction with these materials as a form of enrichment of their experience of reading the related literary texts in translation that are assigned in the course. These exercises might also serve to form a bridge between this course and courses taught on Japanese art history, Japanese cinema, and other areas taught by my colleagues in EALL, history of art, and other departments and programs, while maintaining the necessary distinctions among the methodologies for teaching, learning, and research in these respective disciplines.

If support of work toward these goals can be provided, I would be interested in working in these areas at various times during the current term and during the early part of summer 2006 to prepare for teaching of the course in the coming term.