This class is intended to provide a survey of literature, literary movements, and debates of twentieth century China from the May Fourth Movement (1915-1925) through to the present day. We will read short stories from the May Fourth period, the socialist realism era beginning from the
1930s through to the Yan’an days in the 1940s, and the rapidly changing literary forms of post- Mao Culture (from the late 1970s to the present).
Prominent topics and themes throughout the course will include: the May Fourth literary movement, gender issues, Communist revolutionary literature, and Post-Mao “scar” literature, experimental literature, and commercial literature, and discuss the impact of history, political ideology, commercialism and globalization on literature. We will read from a variety of texts by both male and female Chinese authors that have helped shaped the discourse on twentieth century Chinese literature. We will look at how literature frames historical and political movements. Background lectures will help to contextualize the literature within a cultural and literary context.
Class Time: Tues/Thurs: 1:30-3:00
Prerequisites:
None
Additional student cost:
None
Attendance policy:
IES does not allow any unexcused absences. Unexcused absences will result in your grade being lowered (i.e. B+ to B-).
Learning outcomes:
By the end of the semester, students should be able to:
• Articulate an understanding and knowledge of twentieth-century modern Chinese literature through the use of narratives, films, and secondary sources.
• Identify key authors and themes in Modern Chinese literature.
• Demonstrate an understanding of gender and sexuality in traditional Chinese culture and demonstrate how this changes over time, for both the individual and society, and how it is represented in Chinese literary works and film.
• Demonstrate an understanding how modern Chinese political and literary movements have profoundly influenced the construction and symbolism of gender and sexuality in Chinese literature.
• Analyze the historical and political contexts in which literary works were produced during the 20th century.
• Through art exhibitions that we visit, articulate the connections between literature and art that reflect a great variety of interpretations of, and responses to, the dramatic changes in current Chinese society.
• Constuct concise analytical papers engaging the themes above.
Method of presentation:
Lecture and Discussion
Required work and form of assessment:
Grading:
Discussion leader—5%
Class Participation—20%
Weekly Response Papers—25%
Midterm—20%
Final Paper Presentations—5%
Final Paper—25%
Discussion Leaders: Every student will be responsible for leading discussion twice during our semester-long course. (5%)
Class Participation: The class is structured as a seminar. I look forward to active class discussions regarding the texts. (20%)
Response Papers:
A response paper will be due every Tuesday (except for Week 1 and Week 13). Every Tuesday please bring a typed page (single-space) of your reactions to the readings. The papers should be analytic rather than descriptive. Please, do not retell the stories. The ideal paper identifies a problem raised by the text, either explicitly or by what it leaves out, and develops your ideas about it. These analytic "reaction pieces" will provide a starting point for class discussions. I will not accept late papers. (25%)
A student who fails to turn in a paper will receive a 0 for that paper; If you have any other problems, please email me directly.
Midterm: The midterm will consist of several essay questions regarding the readings and lectures up to that point. Students will turn in a typed response due Week 7. (20%)
Final Paper:
There is an 8-10 page paper due at the end of the term. The following is an overview of the general requirements for the paper. In your final paper, please choose three narratives that you will analyze. Not all three stories or novels should be from the same time period. For example, one of the texts should be from the pre-Revolution period (pre-1949) and the other two from the post-Mao period, or vice-versa. Your paper should focus on a specific theme that is either implicit or explicit in the stories. Hopefully themes you have developed in your weekly response papers will serve as a starting point for the longer paper. (25%)
I expect every paper to have a clearly expressed thesis that argues an interesting point. Your paper argument should respond to your thesis question and be supported by the texts and information from lectures. I do not want you to use sources from outside this class unless approved by me.
I encourage everyone to come and talk with me during my office hour or send me an email regarding their thesis prior to writing their paper.
content:
Week 1
9/1: Introduction: May Fourth and the Literary Movement
Lu Xun: Preface to “A Call to Arms”
Week 2
9/6: Lu Xun cont.
“A Madman’s Diary,” pp. 7-18 (LX) “Kong Yi Ji,” pp.3-7 (MC)
“My Old Home,” pp. 11-16 (MC)
9/8: May Fourth: Chinese Tradition and the Intellectual
Lu Xun cont.: “The New Year’s Sacrifice,” pp. 17-26 (MC) “Soap” 33-38 (MC)
“Medicine,” 6-10 (MC)
Week 3
9/13: Female Subjectivity and Gender Roles
Ling Shuhua: “Embroidered Pillows,” pp. 197-199 (MC)
“The Night of Mid-autumn Festival,” pp. 200-205 (MC) “Once Upon A Time”
9/15: Male/Female Subjectivity, Sexuality, and the Chinese Nation
Yu Dafu: “Sinking,” pp. 125-141 (MC)
Ding Ling “Miss Sophia’s Diary,” pp.49-81 (DL)
Week 4
9/20:Film: Xin nüxing
9/22-10-6: No Class—Mobile Learning
Week 5
10/11: The New Woman and the Chinese NationXin nüxing: Discussion
Kristine Harris. "The New Woman Incident: Cinema, Scandal, and Spectacle in 1935
Shanghai” (on-reserve)
10/13: Internal Conflict, Gender, and Tradition
Shen Congwen: “Xiaoxiao” pp. 227-236 (MC)
Mao Dun: “Spring Silkworms,” pp. 144-156 (MC)
Mao Zedong: “Talks on Art and Literature at the Yan’an Forum”
Week 6
10/18: Internal Conflict, Gender, and Illness
Ding Ling: “In the Hospital” pp.279-291 (MC)
“When I Was In Xia Village,” pp. 268-278 (MC) “Thoughts on March 8th”
10/20:
Class, Tradition, and Modernism
Xiao Hong: “Hands,” pp. 456-464 (MC)
Zhang Ailing: “Golden Cangue,” pp. 530-560 (MC)
Week 7
10/25: Midterm Due
Chinese Modernism
Zhang Ailing: “Sealed Off,” pp. 174-183 (Columbia)
Shi Zhicun: “One Evening in the Rainy Season,” pp. 116-124 (Columbia) Documentary: China in the Age of Revolution: The Mao Years
10/27: Post-Mao Scar Literature
Zhang Jie: “Love Must Not Be Forgotten”
Chen Ran: “Sunshine Between the Lips,” pp. 112-129 (Mao) Liu Heng: “Dog Shit Food,” pp. 366-378 (Columbia)
Week 8
11/01: Avant-garde Fiction: The Present through the Past
Mo Yan: “Divine Debauchery,” pp. 1-12 (Wild) “The Cure,” pp. 172-181 (Mao)
11/03: Avant-garde Fiction: Culture and Violence
Yu Hua: “One Kind of Reality” pp.21-68 (Wild) Su Tong: “The Brothers Shu,” pp. 25-66 (Mao)
11/04: Fieldtrip to 798
Week 9
11/08: Misty Poetry
Bei Dao: “Declaration,” pp.576-577 (Columbia) “Resume,” pp. 577 (Columbia)
11/10: Post-Socialist Desires
Discussion: Army Nurse, Dir. Hu Mei, 1986
Shuqin Cui, "Desire in Difference" Chapter 9 in Women Through the Lens: Gender and
Nation in a Century of Chinese Cinema
Week 10
11/15: Nostalgia and the Cultural Revolution
Wang Xiaobo: “2015” In Wang in Love and Bondage: Three Novellas by Wang
Xiaobo
11/17: Wang Xiaobo “The Golden Age” In Wang in Love and Bondage: Three Novellas by
Wang Xiaobo
Week 11
11/22: Memory, Desire, and the Cultural Revolution
Yangguang canlan de rizi (In the Heat of the Sun)
11/24: No Class
Week 12
11/29: Memory, Desire, and the Cultural Revolution
Discussion: In the Heat of the Sun
Article: Braester, Yomi. "Memory at a Standstill: From Mao History to Hooligan History” in
Witness Against History: Literature, Film, and Public Discourse in Twentieth-Century China
12/01: Historical Memory, Consumer Culture, and Politics
Chan Koonchung, The Fat Years (1st half)
Week 13
12/06:
Chan Koonchung, The Fat Years (2nd half)
12/08:
Paper Presentations!
Final Paper Due!
Required readings:
Texts:
Lu Hsun: Selected Stories. Translated by Yang Hsien-yi and Gladys Yang, Norton Library, 1977 (LX)
Modern Chinese Stories and Novellas 1919-1949, ed. C.T. Hsia, J. Lau, L. Lee, Columbia
University Press, 1981 (MC),
I Myself Am A Woman: Selected Writings of Ding Ling, ed. Tani Barlow and Gary J. Bjorge, Beacon
Press, 1989 (DL)
Love Must Not Be Forgotten. San Francisco: China Books, 1986
Chairman Mao Would Not Be Amused, Ed. Howard Goldblatt, Grove Press, 1995 (Mao)
Running Wild: New Chinese Writers, ed. David Wang and Jeanne Tai, Columbia University Press,
1994 (Wild)
The Fat Years, Chan Koonchung
Wang In Love and Bondage: Three Novellas by Wang Xiaobo, Wang Xiaobo. Translated by
Hongling Zhang and Jason Sommer, State University of New York Press, 2007 (Wang)
Other Resources:
Films
Xin nüxing, Dir. Cai Chusheng (1935) with Ruan Lingyu
Nüer lou, Dir. Hu Mei (1986)
Yangguang canlan de rizi, Dir. Jiang Wen (1994)
The IES library does have the Chinese texts for most of the stories. I encourage students to try and read the stories in the original Chinese.
Brief Biography of Instructor:
Eileen Vickery has a Master’s degree in Asian Studies (1997) and a doctorate in Chinese Literature and Languages (2004) from the University of Oregon. She studied intensive Chinese at the Stanford Center at Taiwan University in Taipei from 1997-1998 and at Nankai University in Tianjin in 1996. Eileen first came to China in 1992 to teach English at Qufu Teachers’ University in Shandong. Her research focuses on the dilemmas of identity of the modern Chinese woman and representations of illness in modern Chinese fiction. She has been the recipient of several academic awards, notably the Esterline Prize for best academic paper at Asian Studies Pacific
Coast Conference and the UC Berkeley Institute for East Asian Studies for Academic Excellence. Her article on Wei Hui’s Shanghai Baobei was published in the ASPAC Journal and her letters from China while teaching in Shandong, were included the book, Dear Alice: Letters Home from Teachers Living in China, UC Berkeley Press. Eileen also taught for IES in Beijing during the 2005-2006 academic year.
Introduction To Modern Chinese Literature
This class is intended to provide a survey of literature, literary movements, and debates of twentieth century China from the May Fourth Movement (1915-1925) through to the present day. We will read short stories from the May Fourth period, the socialist realism era beginning from the
1930s through to the Yan’an days in the 1940s, and the rapidly changing literary forms of post- Mao Culture (from the late 1970s to the present).
Prominent topics and themes throughout the course will include: the May Fourth literary movement, gender issues, Communist revolutionary literature, and Post-Mao “scar” literature, experimental literature, and commercial literature, and discuss the impact of history, political ideology, commercialism and globalization on literature. We will read from a variety of texts by both male and female Chinese authors that have helped shaped the discourse on twentieth century Chinese literature. We will look at how literature frames historical and political movements. Background lectures will help to contextualize the literature within a cultural and literary context.
Class Time: Tues/Thurs: 1:30-3:00
None
None
IES does not allow any unexcused absences. Unexcused absences will result in your grade being lowered (i.e. B+ to B-).
By the end of the semester, students should be able to:
• Articulate an understanding and knowledge of twentieth-century modern Chinese literature through the use of narratives, films, and secondary sources.
• Identify key authors and themes in Modern Chinese literature.
• Demonstrate an understanding of gender and sexuality in traditional Chinese culture and demonstrate how this changes over time, for both the individual and society, and how it is represented in Chinese literary works and film.
• Demonstrate an understanding how modern Chinese political and literary movements have profoundly influenced the construction and symbolism of gender and sexuality in Chinese literature.
• Analyze the historical and political contexts in which literary works were produced during the 20th century.
• Through art exhibitions that we visit, articulate the connections between literature and art that reflect a great variety of interpretations of, and responses to, the dramatic changes in current Chinese society.
• Constuct concise analytical papers engaging the themes above.
Lecture and Discussion
Grading:
Discussion leader—5%
Class Participation—20%
Weekly Response Papers—25%
Midterm—20%
Final Paper Presentations—5%
Final Paper—25%
Discussion Leaders: Every student will be responsible for leading discussion twice during our semester-long course. (5%)
Class Participation: The class is structured as a seminar. I look forward to active class discussions regarding the texts. (20%)
Response Papers:
A response paper will be due every Tuesday (except for Week 1 and Week 13). Every Tuesday please bring a typed page (single-space) of your reactions to the readings. The papers should be analytic rather than descriptive. Please, do not retell the stories. The ideal paper identifies a problem raised by the text, either explicitly or by what it leaves out, and develops your ideas about it. These analytic "reaction pieces" will provide a starting point for class discussions. I will not accept late papers. (25%)
Grading scale for papers:
√+ = 95%
√ = 85%
√ - = 75%
A student who fails to turn in a paper will receive a 0 for that paper; If you have any other problems, please email me directly.
Midterm: The midterm will consist of several essay questions regarding the readings and lectures up to that point. Students will turn in a typed response due Week 7. (20%)
Final Paper:
There is an 8-10 page paper due at the end of the term. The following is an overview of the general requirements for the paper. In your final paper, please choose three narratives that you will analyze. Not all three stories or novels should be from the same time period. For example, one of the texts should be from the pre-Revolution period (pre-1949) and the other two from the post-Mao period, or vice-versa. Your paper should focus on a specific theme that is either implicit or explicit in the stories. Hopefully themes you have developed in your weekly response papers will serve as a starting point for the longer paper. (25%)
I expect every paper to have a clearly expressed thesis that argues an interesting point. Your paper argument should respond to your thesis question and be supported by the texts and information from lectures. I do not want you to use sources from outside this class unless approved by me.
I encourage everyone to come and talk with me during my office hour or send me an email regarding their thesis prior to writing their paper.
Week 1
9/1: Introduction: May Fourth and the Literary Movement
Lu Xun: Preface to “A Call to Arms”
Week 2
9/6: Lu Xun cont.
“A Madman’s Diary,” pp. 7-18 (LX) “Kong Yi Ji,” pp.3-7 (MC)
“My Old Home,” pp. 11-16 (MC)
9/8: May Fourth: Chinese Tradition and the Intellectual
Lu Xun cont.: “The New Year’s Sacrifice,” pp. 17-26 (MC) “Soap” 33-38 (MC)
“Medicine,” 6-10 (MC)
Week 3
9/13: Female Subjectivity and Gender Roles
Ling Shuhua: “Embroidered Pillows,” pp. 197-199 (MC)
“The Night of Mid-autumn Festival,” pp. 200-205 (MC) “Once Upon A Time”
9/15: Male/Female Subjectivity, Sexuality, and the Chinese Nation
Yu Dafu: “Sinking,” pp. 125-141 (MC)
Ding Ling “Miss Sophia’s Diary,” pp.49-81 (DL)
Week 4
9/20:Film: Xin nüxing
9/22-10-6: No Class—Mobile Learning
Week 5
10/11: The New Woman and the Chinese NationXin nüxing: Discussion
Kristine Harris. "The New Woman Incident: Cinema, Scandal, and Spectacle in 1935
Shanghai” (on-reserve)
10/13: Internal Conflict, Gender, and Tradition
Shen Congwen: “Xiaoxiao” pp. 227-236 (MC)
Mao Dun: “Spring Silkworms,” pp. 144-156 (MC)
Mao Zedong: “Talks on Art and Literature at the Yan’an Forum”
Week 6
10/18: Internal Conflict, Gender, and Illness
Ding Ling: “In the Hospital” pp.279-291 (MC)
“When I Was In Xia Village,” pp. 268-278 (MC) “Thoughts on March 8th”
10/20:
Class, Tradition, and Modernism
Xiao Hong: “Hands,” pp. 456-464 (MC)
Zhang Ailing: “Golden Cangue,” pp. 530-560 (MC)
Week 7
10/25: Midterm Due
Chinese Modernism
Zhang Ailing: “Sealed Off,” pp. 174-183 (Columbia)
Shi Zhicun: “One Evening in the Rainy Season,” pp. 116-124 (Columbia) Documentary: China in the Age of Revolution: The Mao Years
10/27: Post-Mao Scar Literature
Zhang Jie: “Love Must Not Be Forgotten”
Chen Ran: “Sunshine Between the Lips,” pp. 112-129 (Mao) Liu Heng: “Dog Shit Food,” pp. 366-378 (Columbia)
Week 8
11/01: Avant-garde Fiction: The Present through the Past
Mo Yan: “Divine Debauchery,” pp. 1-12 (Wild) “The Cure,” pp. 172-181 (Mao)
11/03: Avant-garde Fiction: Culture and Violence
Yu Hua: “One Kind of Reality” pp.21-68 (Wild) Su Tong: “The Brothers Shu,” pp. 25-66 (Mao)
11/04: Fieldtrip to 798
Week 9
11/08: Misty Poetry
Bei Dao: “Declaration,” pp.576-577 (Columbia) “Resume,” pp. 577 (Columbia)
11/10: Post-Socialist Desires
Discussion: Army Nurse, Dir. Hu Mei, 1986
Shuqin Cui, "Desire in Difference" Chapter 9 in Women Through the Lens: Gender and
Nation in a Century of Chinese Cinema
Week 10
11/15: Nostalgia and the Cultural Revolution
Wang Xiaobo: “2015” In Wang in Love and Bondage: Three Novellas by Wang
Xiaobo
11/17: Wang Xiaobo “The Golden Age” In Wang in Love and Bondage: Three Novellas by
Wang Xiaobo
Week 11
11/22: Memory, Desire, and the Cultural Revolution
Yangguang canlan de rizi (In the Heat of the Sun)
11/24: No Class
Week 12
11/29: Memory, Desire, and the Cultural Revolution
Discussion: In the Heat of the Sun
Article: Braester, Yomi. "Memory at a Standstill: From Mao History to Hooligan History” in
Witness Against History: Literature, Film, and Public Discourse in Twentieth-Century China
12/01: Historical Memory, Consumer Culture, and Politics
Chan Koonchung, The Fat Years (1st half)
Week 13
12/06:
Chan Koonchung, The Fat Years (2nd half)
12/08:
Paper Presentations!
Final Paper Due!
Texts:
Lu Hsun: Selected Stories. Translated by Yang Hsien-yi and Gladys Yang, Norton Library, 1977 (LX)
Modern Chinese Stories and Novellas 1919-1949, ed. C.T. Hsia, J. Lau, L. Lee, Columbia
University Press, 1981 (MC),
I Myself Am A Woman: Selected Writings of Ding Ling, ed. Tani Barlow and Gary J. Bjorge, Beacon
Press, 1989 (DL)
Love Must Not Be Forgotten. San Francisco: China Books, 1986
Chairman Mao Would Not Be Amused, Ed. Howard Goldblatt, Grove Press, 1995 (Mao)
Running Wild: New Chinese Writers, ed. David Wang and Jeanne Tai, Columbia University Press,
1994 (Wild)
The Fat Years, Chan Koonchung
Wang In Love and Bondage: Three Novellas by Wang Xiaobo, Wang Xiaobo. Translated by
Hongling Zhang and Jason Sommer, State University of New York Press, 2007 (Wang)
Films
Xin nüxing, Dir. Cai Chusheng (1935) with Ruan Lingyu
Nüer lou, Dir. Hu Mei (1986)
Yangguang canlan de rizi, Dir. Jiang Wen (1994)
The IES library does have the Chinese texts for most of the stories. I encourage students to try and read the stories in the original Chinese.
Eileen Vickery has a Master’s degree in Asian Studies (1997) and a doctorate in Chinese Literature and Languages (2004) from the University of Oregon. She studied intensive Chinese at the Stanford Center at Taiwan University in Taipei from 1997-1998 and at Nankai University in Tianjin in 1996. Eileen first came to China in 1992 to teach English at Qufu Teachers’ University in Shandong. Her research focuses on the dilemmas of identity of the modern Chinese woman and representations of illness in modern Chinese fiction. She has been the recipient of several academic awards, notably the Esterline Prize for best academic paper at Asian Studies Pacific
Coast Conference and the UC Berkeley Institute for East Asian Studies for Academic Excellence. Her article on Wei Hui’s Shanghai Baobei was published in the ASPAC Journal and her letters from China while teaching in Shandong, were included the book, Dear Alice: Letters Home from Teachers Living in China, UC Berkeley Press. Eileen also taught for IES in Beijing during the 2005-2006 academic year.