Admission requirements
None.
Description
This course aims to explore views of the body, health and disease in Japanese history, with a particular focus on early modern or Edo-period Japan (1600-1868). What did people consider a ‘healthy’ life-style? How did they tackle epidemics and disease? What did they know about the body’s workings? What kind of medicine was practiced and who could practice it? These are some of the issues that we will tackle based on readings of primary and secondary sources; topics to be discussed include the female body and pregnancy; health and food; anatomy and ‘Dutch medicine’; traditional Chinese healing methods; and diseases from measles to syphilis. Students will have the opportunity to reflect on how seemingly ‘natural’ biological concepts such as the body, health and disease need to be understood as cultural categories that may have very different meanings across time.
Students of the BA Japanstudies, in addition to this seminar, are required to take a writing tutorial to support them in the process of writing papers (unless this tutorial has been previously completed or is already being taken at another seminar).
Course objectives
Students will be able to
Identify key paradigms of the medical body, health and disease in early modern Japan.
Critically analyse historical sources and secondary materials on the subject.
Independently conduct research on a topic of their choice.
Learn how to articulate evidence-based arguments in discussions and in writing a research paper.
Marshal basic analytical and theoretical tools to approach the body in history.
Reflect on the cultural trappings of their own attitudes towards the body.
Timetable
The timetables are available through My Timetable.
Mode of instruction
Seminar
Assessment method
Assessment
Participation (40%) - Students are expected to participate actively in discussions, quizzes and group exercises and prepare weekly readings.
Research Paper (60%)
Weighing
The final mark for the course is established by determination of the weighted average.
Resit
There is a two-deadline policy for all papers; for those who miss this deadline, this means they have failed on the first attempt. Those who fail on the first attempt—whether by not submitting a paper by the first deadline, or by submitting an inadequate paper—will have one more (second and last) chance to submit their paper by the second deadline.
Inspection and feedback
How and when an exam review will take place will be disclosed together with the publication of the exam results at the latest. If a student requests a review within 30 days after publication of the exam results, an exam review will have to be organized.
Reading list
The required readings are either available as ebooks via the Library Catalogue or in the course reader.
Registration
Enrolment through uSis is mandatory.
General information about uSis is available on the website.
Contact
For substantive questions, contact the lecturer listed in the right information bar.
For questions about enrolment, admission, etc, contact the Education Administration Office Herta Mohr
Remarks
Not applicable.