Under the current #MeToo movement around the globe, women in East Asia also speak out their stories of sexual harassment against celebrities. Yet, East Asian countries have their unique battlegrounds where perceptions of good/bad sexual behaviors have been deeply rooted in past histories. To better understand complicated sexual politics in space and across time, this course surveys a wide range of sexual practices and their intersection with law, labor, leisure, reproduction, money, health, science, and warfare from 1600 to the present in China, Japan, and beyond. We will ask questions such as: who can have sex and who can not? What did legal and illicit sex look like? Did people in this most populous region practice birth control? How did East Asian people receive Western sexology? Why are "comfort women '' still controversial among Japan, Korea, and China nowadays? Following a chronological order, the course will finally turn towards a futurist perspective: how to make gendered and intimate relations better in the East Asian world.
Course Attributes: EN H; BU BA; BU IS; AS HUM; FA HUM; AR HUM
