Professor Tsai teaches in the Department of Comparative Literature, the Department of East Asian Languages and Culture, and the Program in Ancient Studies. His research areas include "East"-"West" comparative studies, Roman epic, the ancient Greek novel, and traditional Chinese fiction and drama. With all this great literature available to him, he has decided to write a book on the very, very worst play in Chinese history, banking on the likely hope that he will never be subjected to a performance.
Courses
Human Nature from Plato to The Sopranos
Have you ever tried to change for your boy/girlfriend? Did it work? Drawing from classical traditions East and West, this course explores two fundamental questions of the humanities: what is human nature, and can it be changed? Stoicism and Confucianism have both answered in the positive, and we will examine their conception of human nature and undertake a practical exercise to try out their methods for self-cultivation. In the second week, with Plato as our guide and literary and artistic materials as our data, we turn to sexuality in our inquiry of human nature-is there such a thing as a "natural" sexual preference? In the final week, the hit HBO series The Sopranos will provide us with fertile ground for testing the philosophical claims about personal change. Can Tony become a better man with his therapist's help? Moral psychology will help furnish an alternative, scientific perspective to what seems like an essentially humanistic question of ethical transformation.
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