Topic: Interrogating Modernities

This course is designed to develop critical understanding of modern Chinese
literature in its cultural, historical, and political context.  By
exploring a variety of stories from the 1890s to the 1990s, we aim (1) to
trace the emergence, divergence, and sometimes convergence of
representative trends in modern Chinese fiction and (2) to investigate how
different generations of Chinese writers conceptualize, articulate, and
interrogate issues of modernity over the course of the twentieth century.

Knowledge of the Chinese language is desired but not required.  All
required readings are available in English, although some recommended
readings will be in Chinese.

REQUIREMENTS

10% Attendance and active participation in class
20% 4 position papers (1 single-space page each) plus presentations in class
15% 1 mid-term annotated bibliographical project (3-4 single-space pages)
5% 1 outline with the thesis statement for a research paper (3 single-space
pages).
50%  1 research paper (15 double-space pages)

Required Readings (a sample list of primary and secondary texts)

Hanan, Patrick, trans.  The Sea of Regret: Two Turn-of-the-Century Chinese
Romantic Novels.  Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1995.
Lau, Josep, and Howard Goldblatt, eds.  The Columbia Anthology of Modern
Chinese Literature.  New York: Columbia University Press, 1996.
Mao Dun.  Rainbow.  Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992.
Wang, Jing, ed.  China's Avant-Garde Fiction: An Anthology.  Durham, N.C.:
Duke University Press, 1998.
Chow, Rey.  Woman and Chinese Modernity: The Politics of Reading Between
West and East.  Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press, 1991.
Lee, Leo Ou-fan.  Shanghai Modern: The Flowering of a New Urban Culture in
China, 1930-1945.  Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1999.
Liu, Lydia H.  Translingual Practice: Literature, National Culture, and
Translated Modernity--China, 1900-1937.  Stanford: Stanford University
Press, 1995.
Tang, Xiaobing.  China Modern: The Heroic and the Quotidian.  Durham, N.C.:
Duke University Press, 2000.
Wang, David Der-wei.  Fin-de-Siècle Splendor: Repressed Modernities of Late
Qing Fiction, 1849-1911.  Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997.

Recommended Readings (a sample list)

Hockx, Michel, ed.  The Literary Field of Twentieth-Century China.  London:
Curzon Press, 1999.
Yan Jiayan.  Zhongguo xiandai xiaoshuo liupai shi (A History of the School
of Modern Chinese Fiction).  Beijing: Renmin wenxue chubanshe, 1989.