Chinese 109H Chinese Popular Literature: Culture and Text

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1 Course Syllabus - Winter 2011 Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures, UC Davis Chinese 109H Chinese Popular Literature: Culture and Text Instructor: Emily Wilcox emily.e.wilcox@gmail.com Office Hours: Mondays and Wednesdays 4:30pm-5:30pm [location] Course Description: This course explores the relationships between literature and popular culture in modern and contemporary China. Dealing with a range of unconventional materials -- Taoist temple scriptures, popular music, propaganda art, and sex manuals, to name a few -- it asks us to challenge traditional notions of what popular literature has been and can be, as well as the different ways in which popular literature becomes embedded in people s daily lives, bodies, values, and consciousness. Some of the themes we will address include the use of texts in Chinese popular religion, representations of the human body in martial arts literature and medical manuals, performance as text and the technologies of musical modernity, populist ideologies and the literary world of communist propaganda, and literatures of consumption in commercial cultures of food and sex. Course Objectives: Become familiar with major themes in popular literature and popular culture in modern and contemporary China Engage in rigorous readings of challenging scholarly texts on aspects of Chinese popular literature in historical and cultural context Think critically and creatively about the genre of popular literature, including both its significance in daily life and as a subject of academic research Learn about different disciplinary approaches to popular literature, including literary theory, cultural studies, media studies, social history, anthropology, and folklore studies Course Textbooks (Required): Reader for Chinese 109G, at Davis Copy Shop, 231 Third St., phone: Schipper, Kristofer (1993) The Taoist Body. Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press. Jones, Andrew (2001) Yellow Music: Media Culture and Colonial Modernity in the Chinese Jazz Age. Durham and London: Duke University Press. William Hinton. Fan Shen: A Documentary of Revolution in a Chinese Village

2 Cushing, Lincoln and Tompkins, Ann (2007) Chinese Posters: Art From the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. San Francisco: Chronicle Books, Farquhar, Judith (2002) Appetites: Food and Sex in Post-Socialist China. Durham and London: Duke University Press. Course Expectations: Attendance and in-class participation are mandatory. Students are expected to fully engage in the class discussion, by paying attention, asking questions, and sharing comments. Attendance will be taken at the beginning of each class. Students arriving after 30 minutes will be marked absent. Attendance and in-class participation (including two in-class group presentations) will count for 25% of the final grade. Students are expected to complete all assigned readings before class. Please bring the assigned readings with you to class, along with any response papers due that day. Office hours will take place on Mondays and Wednesdays 4:30-5:30pm, in Sproul 410. Students are strongly recommended to attend office hours, as this is an opportunity to talk oneon-one with the instructor, regarding the course, future plans, or other topics related to college life and academics. Assignments: Reading assignments are to be completed before class on the assigned day. Response papers will be due once a week, except on exam weeks. For due dates, see the Course Schedule. Each student will participate in two group presentations during the quarter. Group presentations will count toward your attendance and participation grade for the course. Response Papers: Response papers should be 1-2 pages in length, 12 pt. New Times Roman font, double-spaced, with 1-inch margins. They must be typed. Response papers will be due at the beginning of section, but you may hold on to them during section to use for your own reference. I may ask you to share your response paper with a partner, to read a small part of your response paper or to summarize ideas from it during class discussion. Response papers are an opportunity for you to collect and reflect on your reactions to the readings before we discuss them in class. Questions you may answer include: What is the subject of this reading and what is the author s argument? What types of popular literature are mentioned in this reading and how does the author go about accessing and interpreting them? What is most interesting to me about this reading and why? How does this reading relate to other topics covered in this class? Your response papers will be graded on the following criteria: Evidence that you have read completely the assigned section of the text Evidence of original thought and reflection Ability to make connections between the text and concepts covered in class If you cannot come to class for some reason, please your response paper to me before the beginning of section. Late response papers will not be accepted.

3 Exams: There will be two exams for this course, a midterm and a final, each worth 25% of the final grade. The midterm exam will take place in class on Wednesday, Feb 2nd and will last for the entire class time. It will be composed of short answer and essay questions covering all readings and lectures from the first five weeks of class. The final exam will be a take-home exam due by at 12:00 midnight on Thursday, March 17th. The final exam will be composed of three essay questions, which will ask you to synthesize materials from the entire course. The final exam will be cumulative (including materials from the entire quarter), however emphasis will be on readings and lectures from after the midterm. No extensions or late exams will be accepted. Plagiarism: Plagiarism is strictly forbidden. All work you turn in must be your own. You may refer to ideas or wording from other authors work or the Internet only with proper citation. Plagiarism is an act of academic dishonesty and will be taken extremely seriously. If you have questions about how to cite other people s work properly, please ask in class or in office hours before the due date of the first written assignment. Be advised that I sometimes only check my once a day and that you should expect to wait about 24 hours to hear back from me. Questions that will take more than a few sentences to answer should be brought up in class or in office hours. Special Accommodations: If you have any special circumstances, such as university athletic participation, childcare duties, or disability that require special accommodations, please provide written copies of your special accommodations request by Monday, Jan 10th. If you have a health-related or other emergency during the semester that requires you to miss class, please me an explanation and provide written proof within one week of your absence so that your absence can be excused. Excused absences or absences due to special accommodations will not count against your grade. Grade Breakdown: Attendance and Participation 25% -Group presentations 10% -Attendance and discussion 15% Response Papers 25% Midterm Exam (in class) 25% Final Exam (take-home) 25%

4 COURSE SCHEDULE Note: Readings should be completed before class on that day they are listed. WEEK 1 - Chinese Mythology Unit One: Mythologies and Cosmologies Monday, Jan 3 Introduction to the course. No assigned readings. Wednesday, Jan 5 Lihui Yang and Deming An. Introduction in Handbook of Chinese Mythology, Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 1-62, in Reader **Response paper on week 1 readings due in class. WEEK 2 - Taoism and Chinese Cosmology Monday, Jan 10 Isabelle Robinet. Introduction: Definitions and Controlling Concepts in Taoism: Growth of a Religion. Phyllis Brooks, trans. Stanford: Stanford University Press, pp. 1-23, in Reader Wednesday, Jan 12 Kristofer Schipper. Author s Note and Chapters 2-5 in The Taoist Body. Karen Duval, trans. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, pp. xix-xx, **Response paper on week 2 readings due in class. WEEK 3 - Texts in Popular Taoism Monday, Jan 17 Martin Luther King, Jr. Day Holiday **NO CLASS** No assigned readings. Wednesday, Jan 19 Kristofer Schipper. Chapters 6-end in The Taoist Body. Karen Duval, trans. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, pp (includes photos) **Response paper on week 3 readings due in class. Unit Two: Music and Urban Culture in the Republican Era WEEK 4 - Shanghai Cosmopolitanism and Music Technology

5 Monday, Jan 24 Andrew Jones. The Orchestration of Chinese Musical Life and The Gramophone in China in Yellow Music: Media Culture and Colonial Modernity in the Chinese Jazz Age. pp , Wednesday, Jan 26 Andrew Jones. The Yellow Music of Li Jinhui in Yellow Music: Media Culture and Colonial Modernity in the Chinese Jazz Age. pp **Response paper on week 4 readings due in class. WEEK 5 - Authorship and Creativity During Revolution Monday, Jan 31 Andrew Jones. Mass Music and the Politics of Phonographic Realism in Yellow Music: Media Culture and Colonial Modernity in the Chinese Jazz Age. pp Wednesday, Feb 2 **MIDTERM EXAM in class. No make-up exams.** No response paper due. Unit Three: Populism and the Maoist Literary World WEEK 6 - Sources of Chinese Communism Monday, Feb 7 William Hinton. Preface, Prologue, and Chapters 1-5 in Fan Shen: A Documentary of Revolution in a Chinese Village. New York: Monthly Review Press, 2008 [1966]. pp. xxi-xxv, 1-68 **Response paper on week 6 readings (Monday readings only) due in class. Wednesday, Feb 9 William Hinton. Chapters 13-15, 21, in Fan Shen: A Documentary of Revolution in a Chinese Village. New York: Monthly Review Press, 2008 [1966]. pp , , WEEK 7 - Ideology and Nation-Building Monday, Feb 14 Chang-tai Hung. Introduction in Mao s New World: Political Culture in the Early People s Republic. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, pp. 1-21, in Reader Mao Zedong (Mao Tse-tung) Foreword to the Second Edition by Lin Biao (Piao) and Selections in Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-Tung all selections, in Reader **Response paper on week 7 readings (Monday readings only) due in class.

6 Wednesday, Feb 16 Chang-tai Hung. Devils in the Drawings in Mao s New World: Political Culture in the Early People s Republic. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, pp , in Reader WEEK 8 - Maoist Visual Culture Monday, Feb 21 Presidents Day Holiday **NO CLASS** No assigned readings. Wednesday, Feb 23 Chang-tai Hung, New Year Prints and Peasant Resistance, in Mao s New World: Political Culture in the Early People s Republic. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, pp , in Reader Lincoln Cushing and Ann Tompkins. Study images and read short introductions to each section (longer introduction and preface not required). Chinese Posters: Art From the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution **Response paper on week 8 readings due in class. Unit Four: Literatures of Commercialism in the Reform Era WEEK 9 - Writing the Self During and After the Cultural Revolution Monday, Feb 28 Ding Ling Du Wanxiang in I Myself Am a Woman: Selected Writings of Ding Ling. Tani Barlow, trans. Boston: Beacon. pp , in Reader Judith Farquhar. Preamble to Part II Du Wanxiang: the Rosy Glow of the Good Communist in Appetites: Food and Sex in Post-Socialist China. Durham and London: Duke University Press, pp **Response paper on week 9 readings due in class. Wednesday, March 2 Judith Farquhar. Chapter 4 Writing the Self: the Romance of the Personal in Appetites: Food and Sex in Post-Socialist China. Durham and London: Duke University Press, pp WEEK 10 - Sex, Consumerism, and Censorship Monday, March 7 James Farrer. Introduction: Sex and the Market and True Stories: From Romance to Irony in Opening Up: Youth Sex Culture and Market Reform. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, pp. 1-21, in Reader.

7 **Response paper on week 10 readings due in class. Wednesday, March 9 Perry Link. Hand-Copied Entertainment Fiction from the Cultural Revolution in Unofficial China: Popular Culture and Thought in Socialist China. Boulder: Westview Press, pp , in Reader Wei Hui. Selections from Shanghai Baby. Bruce Humes, Trans. New York: Pocket Books, 2001, in Reader WEEK 11 - Globalization and Technologies of Representation Monday, March 14 Louisa Schein Neoliberalism and Hmong/Miao Transnational Media Ventures in Privatizing China: Socialism from Afar. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, pp , in Reader No response paper due. **Final Exam due by at 12:00 midnight on Thursday, March 17th**

Gross, Robert A. The Minutemen and Their World. New York: Hill and Wang, 1976.

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