Final Paper

A reminder that the Term Paper is due on April 7th. The criteria are detailed in the course syllabus. The topic, covering any or all of our primary texts, is entirely open. I do recommend that you email me or visit an Office Hour well in advance of the due date with an outline, or to discuss a possible direction.

Keeping in mind the possibility of publication of your term paper as a chapter in a book on Genji in the modern West, you may wish to consider framing your paper around the question of the portrayal of Genji and his variety of ladies as a means of expressing female power in an erotic æsthetic created by Lady Shikibui's intense prescient sensibility to a uniquely Japanese mode of though, articulated by scholars, critics and artists in subsequent Japanese centuries under terms such as mono no aware, mujokan, miyabi and sabi.