Abstract

This essay discusses the benefits to student learning when we integrate the study of Japanese literature and Japanese history through the curricular model of "linked courses." The essay begins by examining the process of linking an introductory Japanese literature course and introductory Japanese history course, and continues by explaining its pedagogical advantages. Specifically, the collaboration of literary and historical study provides students greater access to the material and, subsequently, the opportunity for deeper analysis. Students can better understand how historical context informs the literature and how literary representation enhances historical knowledge. But in addition, this teaching model provokes broader questions about the production of knowledge itself: the disciplinary integration creates a learning environment in which we can ask how we know what we know, or in this case, how we come to understand both the "story" and the "history" of Japan.

Highlights

  • “combine or work in at least two fields within Japanese studies, such as literature and history, literature and visual arts, literature and religion, or literature and linguistics.” In the end, he argued, “literary study independent of history will not exist in the future.”[3]

  • 1 Citing both a general shift in the humanities toward modern studies and a specific shift in student interest toward contemporary Japan, he lamented what he saw as a diminishing focus on Japan’s past. Even if these changes helped undermine Orientalist tendencies, Shirane found that, as theoretical and comparative inquiry came to dominate Japanese studies, students and scholars began to ignore the evolutionary development of Japanese literature and, overlook important connections between pre-modern/early modern and modern/contemporary literary enterprises

  • If we look at recent collections of Japanese literature, we find that Shirane himself and other scholars follow the argument he established in presenting Japanese literature to readers

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Summary

Introduction

“combine or work in at least two fields within Japanese studies, such as literature and history, literature and visual arts, literature and religion, or literature and linguistics.” In the end, he argued, “literary study independent of history will not exist in the future.”[3].

Results
Conclusion

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