Cultural Chinas: 20th Century Chinese Literature and Film

This course serves as a thematic introduction to modern Chinese literature and cinema in China, Hong Kong, Taiwan and other transnational Chinese communities in the twentieth century. By discussing a wide range of key literary and filmic texts, this class looks into major issues and discourses in China's century of modernization: enlightenment and revolution, politics and aesthetics, sentimental education and nationalism, historical trauma and violence, gender and sexuality, social hygiene and body politics, diaspora and displacement, youth sub-culture and urban imagination.