Topic: Visions of the City

This course investigates images of the city in Chinese cinema from both
critical and historical perspectives.  It covers three geopolitical regions
in Chinese film production--mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan--from
1922 up to 1997.  Weekly topics include the cinema of attractions; urban
corruption
and destruction; metropolitan culture; politicization and masculinization;
cynicism, parody, and tactics of everyday life; primitive passions and the
global market; urban enigma and the crisis of male subjectivity; violence,
nostalgia, and fantasy; the diaspora and postmodernity; the female vision
of the city; spectacle of transnational action; and the global city.

Textbooks:
Lu, Sheldon Hsiao-peng, ed.  Transnational Chinese Cinemas: Identity,
Nationhood, Gender.  Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1997.
Teo, Stephen.  Hong Kong Cinema: Extra Dimensions.  London: BFI, 1997.
Zhang, Yingjin, ed.  Cinema and Urban Culture in Shanghai, 1922-1943.
Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999.
A Course Pack containing required readings.

Requirements (for E333/CMLT C291):
10%	attendance & active participation in class		
10%	1 team project (outline and presentation)	
10%	mid-term exam				
20%	4 journals (1 double-space page each)		
20%	1 term paper (4 double-space pages)
30%	final exam