Chinese Language and Literature Courses
The course is designed for students who are of non-Chinese origin and were not raised in a Chinese-speaking environment; or who are of Chinese origin but do not speak Chinese and whose parents do not speak Chinese. The course develops beginning learners’ functional language ability—the ability to use Mandarin Chinese in linguistically and culturally appropriate ways at the beginning level. It helps students acquire communicative competence in Chinese while sensitizing them to the links between language and culture.
The course is designed for students who are of non-Chinese origin and were not raised in a Chinese-speaking environment, or who are of Chinese origin but do not speak Chinese and whose parents do not speak Chinese. The course continues to focus on training students in the four language skills--speaking, listening, reading, and writing with a gradually increasing emphasis on basic cultural readings and developing intercultural competence. Prerequisites: Chinese 1A.
This course is designed specifically for Mandarin heritage students who possess speaking skill but little or no reading and writing skills in Chinese. The course utilizes students’ prior knowledge of listening and speaking skills to advance them to the intermediate Chinese proficiency level in one semester. Close attention is paid to meeting Mandarin heritage students’ literacy needs inmeaningful contexts while introducing a functional vocabulary and a systematic review of structures through culturally related topics. The Hanyu Pinyin (a Chinese Romanization system) and traditional/simplified characters are introduced. Prerequisites: Consent of instructor.
Elementary Cantonese 3A is designed for non-Chinese heritage learners with no prior knowledge of Cantonese, a regional variety of Chinese, introducing students to its use through oral, written and visual texts related to daily life. Topics include meeting people, shopping, leisure activities, telling the time, discussing daily routines, describing people and family members, and transportation, and students will compose texts in Cantonese that show the relationship between language and culture. Finally, the course develops students’ awareness of socio-culturally situated language use and their ability to compare and negotiate similarities and differences between the target culture and their own culture.
This course is designed for native and heritage Mandarin speakers. These students share the knowledge of standard Chinese writing system with Cantonese speakers. They have an interest in speaking Cantonese and learning a Chinese subculture shared among Cantonese speakers. This course will introduce students to its use through oral, written and visual texts related to daily life. Topics include meeting people, shopping, leisure activities, telling the time, discussing daily routines, describing people and family members, transportation, and students will compose texts in Cantonese. Students will focus on vocabulary, linguistic knowledge, culture through expression analysis, and practical use of language. Prerequisites: Consent of instructor.
Elementary Taiwanese is designed to allow learners with no prior knowledge of Chinese language to build familiarity with Taiwanese (or Southern Min), a regional variety of Chinese, through oral, written and visual texts related to daily life. This course is the first part of a two-semester sequence designed to equip students with the basic language skills needed in everyday life situations. There are no prerequisites for this course. The course develops students’ awareness of socio-culturally situated language use and their ability to compare and negotiate similarities and differences between the target culture and their own culture.
The first in a two-semester sequence, introducing students to Chinese literature in translation. In addition to literary sources, a wide range of philosophical and historical texts will be covered, as well as aspects of visual and material culture. 7A covers early China through late medieval China, up to and including the Yuan Dynasty (14th century); the course will also focus on the development of sound writing.
The course is designed for students who are of non-Chinese origin and were not raised in a Chinese-speaking environment, or who are of Chinese origin but do not speak Chinese and whose parents do not speak Chinese. The course deals with lengthy conversations as well as narrative and descriptive texts in both simplified and traditional characters. It helps students to express themselves in speaking and writing on a range of topics and raises their awareness of the connection between language and culture to foster the development of communicative competence. Prerequisites: Chinese 1 or Chinese 1B; or consent of instructor
The course takes students to a higher level of competence in Chinese language and culture and develops students’ critical linguistic and cultural awareness. It surveys social issues and values on more abstract topics in a changing China. Through the development of discourse and cultural knowledge in spoken and written Chinese, students learn to interpret subtle textual meanings in texts and contexts as well as reflect on the world and themselves and express themselves using a variety of genres. Prerequisites: Chinese 10 or Chinese 10B.
This course advances students’ linguistic and cultural competence through the development of critical literacy skills. It guides students to become more sophisticated language users equipped with linguistic, pragmatic, and textual knowledge in discussions, reading, writing, and translation. Students reflect on the world and themselves through the lens of the target language and culture and become more competent in operating between English and Chinese and between American culture and Chinese culture. Students learn to recognize a second version of Chinese characters. Prerequisites: Chinese 10X; or consent of instructor
The course is designed to further develop students’ advanced-mid level language proficiency and intercultural competence. It uses authentic readings on Chinese social, political, and journalistic issues, supplemented by newspaper articles. To develop students’ self-learning abilities and help them to link the target language to their real world experience, students’ agency in learning is promoted through critical reading and rewriting and through comparing linguistic and cultural differences. Prerequisites: Chinese 100B or Chinese 100XB; or consent of instructor.
This course is an introduction to the history of Buddhism in China from its beginnings in the early centuries CE to the present day. Through engagement with historical scholarship, primary sources in translation, and Chinese Buddhist art, we will explore the intellectual history and cultural impact of Buddhism in China. Students will also be introduced to major issues in the institutional history of Buddhism, the interactions between Buddhism and indigenous Chinese religions, and the relationship between Buddhism and the state. Previous study of Buddhism is helpful but not required.
The primary goal of this course is to provide students with the tools for in-depth reading of one of the most famed of Chinese novels, The Story of the Stone (Honglou meng). Our focus this semester is how this novel treats character, both major and minor. Honglou meng's rich world is composed of hundreds of characters, a bewildering array that forms a sharp distinction to the more condensed worlds of the contemporary novels that have formed our habits of reading. We will ask how the novel structures relationships among this cast of hundreds, and how as it progresses it spotlights different aspects of its complex social world. Most importantly, we will ask how the novel both encourages and discourages interpretation.
Modern Chinese literature was, from the very start, a revolutionary project. In reinventing the Chinese language, 20th century writers such as Lu Xun attempted to fundamentally rewrite Chinese social and political realities. It was also a pedagogical project: instructing readers not only about how to be "Chinese" in a time of imperial incursion and political turmoil, but how to be "modern" in all aspects of their lives, from growing up, to falling in love, to changing the world, to dying. To a shocking degree, the project succeeded. In this course, we will explore the historical world out of which modern Chinese literature emerged; and how this linguistic revolution helped to produce modern China, focusing in particular on the problems of gender, youth, and social marginality. We will read short stories and essays in Chinese by many of the greatest writers and public intellectuals of the twentieth century, including Lu Xun, Shen Congwen, Ding Ling, Eileen Chang, and others. We will also watch and analyze a select group of cinematic masterworks from the same period. We will conclude the semester with a set of stories and films produced in the aftermath of war and the communist revolution of 1949 that reveal the continuing resonance, as well as showing the tragic limits of this project's utopian aspirations, and perhaps even questioning the coherence of "China" and "Chineseness" as its organizing principle.
Vernacular fiction in late imperial China emerged at the margins of official historiography, traveled through oral storytelling, and reached sophistication in the hands of literati. Covering the major genres and masterpieces of traditional Chinese novels including military, martial arts, libertine, and romantic stories, this course investigates how shifting boundaries brought about significant transformations of Chinese narrative at the levels of both form and content. Prerequisites: None.
Course description coming soon
This seminar is an intensive introduction to various genres of Buddhist literature in classical Chinese, including translations of Sanskrit and Central Asian scriptures. Chinese commentaries, philosophical treatises, hagiographies, and sectarian works. It is intended for graduate students who already have some facility in classical Chinese. It will also serve as a tools and methods course.
In recent years, the proliferation and ubiquity of screens across the globe has raised new questions about the ontology, archaeology, and ecology of media. What is a screen? Is it a technical device, a material surface, an optical portal, a spatial construct, or a living environment? Or is it a psychic mechanism, a social interface, a cultural articulation, and a political instrument? How are these questions considered beyond the dominant scope of Europe and North America?