This course introduces students to linguistic, historical, and cultural features of the three dominant writing systems of East Asia: Chinese, Japanese, and Korean. The three open a perfect window into fundamental questions about the nature of writing, since each of them represents language according to a distinct logic: logographic (Chinese), syllabic (Japanese), and alphabetic (Korean). Over the centuries, writing in China, Japan, and Korea has become inextricably intertwined with the political and cultural worlds of their users, providing key touchstones for the expression of individual and collective identities. Chinese, Japanese, and Korean continue to play this role today, even while communication platforms with a global reach have helped transform them into a digital phenomenon, often driven by innovations developed in East Asia (e.g. emoji, created by a Japanese engineer in 1998). We will closely investigate these historical and cultural dynamics throughout the program.