Nature and Disaster in East Asia

Catalog description

This course explores how societies across East Asia have contended with earthquakes, flooding, pollution, typhoons, and tsunamis from pre-modern times through the present. Did people understand these events as part of nature—“natural disasters”—or as unnatural aberrations? What might responses to destruction teach us about scientific and political authority? How did communities protect themselves, and how did people re-make their lives in post-disaster wreckage? Through textual, visual, and audio sources, we will examine case studies drawn from across China, Korea, and Japan. Students will learn to apply critical perspectives drawn from disaster studies, environmental history, and the history of science and technology.