EA 520

Popular Culture and Film in Twentieth-Century China

Nicole Huang
Assistant Professor
East Asian Languages and Literature
University of Wisconsin
1116 Van Hise
1220 Linden Drive
Madison, WI 53706

Phone: 608.262.9876
Fax: 608.265.5731
Email: nhuang@facstaff.wisc.edu

Fall 2000 | Descriptions | Requirements | Materials | Schedule and Assignments | Links | 

Fall 2000

Class Meetings: Thursdays 2:25-4:55, 383 Van Hise
    [Film screenings will be scheduled separately.  Please note the time and classroom changes from published course catalog.]

Office Hours: Tuesdays 2-4, 1116 Van Hise

Descriptions

This new course provides a historical narrative of popular cultures from the earlier twentieth-century to contemporary China, Taiwan,
Hong Kong, and other transnational Chinese communities.  We will discuss several important themes in Chinese literary and cultural
history of the last hundred years, including the dynamics between cultural production, media technology, and political discourses,
the shifting boundaries between the 'serious' and the 'popular,' the correlation between literature and other cultural genres, and media
cultures in a transnational context.  Offered in seminar format in a multimedia environment.

Junior, senior, or graduate standing, and consent of instructor.  No previous knowledge of Chinese is required or assumed, although
any previous course work in literature, culture, history, or critical theories will be helpful.

Requirements

Active class participation, timely completion of reading assignments, and attendance at all film screenings are imperative to a
satisfactory completion of course requirements.  Individual project and presentation, two take-home exams, and one 10-15 page
final paper make up the actual requirements.  The semester grade will be based on the following criteria: attendance and participation,
10%; two take-home exams, 30%; individual presentation, 30%; paper, 30%.

Materials

The following required textbooks will be available for purchase at the University Bookstore at the beginning of the semester.  They
will also be on reserve at the College Library:

     Zhang Henshui, Shanghai Express
     Wang Chen-ho, Rose, Rose, I Love You
     Michael Dutton, Streetlife China

In addition, a course reader, which contains most of the required readings, will be ready for purchase at the Social Science Copy Center
(6120 Social Science Building) during the first week of instruction.
 

Schedule and Assignments

Week 1 (9/7) Organization meeting

                Section I: Chinese Popular Cultures: A Historical Perspective

Week 2 (9/14) Imaging Modern China or a Cinematic China

Virtual tour 1:  A photographic history of early modern China;
Reading:  Lu Xun, "Preface to Cheering from the Sidelines"; Rey Chow, "One Newsreel Helped to Change Modern Chinese History";
Walter Benjamin, "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction"; Marie-Claire Quiquemelle, "The Introduction of the
Camera to China"; Lee Daw-Ming, "How Cinema Came to China: Some Theories and Doubts"

Week 3 (9/21) Listening to Modern China or the Gramophone in China

Listening: Earliest Peking Opera recordings (on audio tapes and CDs);
Reading: Jashua Goldstein, "Mei Lanfang and the Nationalization of Peking Opera, 1912-1930"; Andrew F. Jones, "The Gramophone
in China"; Theodore Adorno and Max Horkheimer, "The Culture Industry as Mass Deception"

Week 4 (9/28) Leftist Film-making in the Chinese Jazz Age (Shanghai, 1930s)

Screening: "Street Angel" (1937, on video tape);
Listening: Voices from the Chinese Jazz Age (on audio tapes and CDs)
Reading: Andrew F. Jones, "The Sing-Song Girl and the Nation: Music and Media Culture in Shanghai, 1927-1937"; Ma Ning, "The
Textual and Critical Difference of Being Radical: Reconstructing Chinese Leftist Films of the 1930's"

Week 5 (10/5) Mandarin Ducks and Butterflies: A Tale of Two Cities (Shanghai and Beijing, 1930s)

Virtual tour 2:  Popular print in 1930s Shanghai (research collection);
Web: Ling Lung, a Women's Magazine, at http://www.columbia.edu/dlc/linglung/;
Listening: More from the Chinese Jazz Age (on audio tapes and CDs)
Reading: Zhang Henshui, Shanghai Express; Michael Dutton, "Traditional Chinese Architecture and Hierarchy," "On Beijing,"
"Beijing: The City as Compound," "Clans, Gifts, Architecture," and "Traditional Chinese Architecture as Symbolic Hierarchy,"
all in Streetlife China (pp. 196-208)

Week 6 (10/12) Women, War, and Popular Culture (Shanghai, 1940s)

Virtual tour 3:  War and domesticiy in media cultures of occupied Shanghai (research collection);
Reading: Eileen Chang, "A Chronicle of Changing Clothes," "Blockade," "From the Ashes"; Nicole Huang, "Introduction" and
chapter 1 "Fashioning Public Intellectuals" in Written in the Ruins: War and Domesticity in Literary and Media Cultures of Occupied
Shanghai (1941-1945) (book manuscript)

Week 7 (10/19) Mass Culture and Revolutionary Theory (1940s-60s)

Listening: Revolutionary songs (on audio tapes)
Reading: Mao Zedong, "Talks at the Yan'an Forum on Art and Literature"; Isabel Wong, "Geming gequ: Songs for the Education of
the Masses"; Michael Dutton, "Revolutionary Culture," "What's in a Name: Revolutionary China and the New Cosmology of the Name,"
and "What's in a Name: Traditional Chinese Cosmology and Naming," all in Streetlife China (pp. 165-171)

[the first take-home exam due by noon, Monday, October 23]

Week 8 (10/26) The Culture of the Cultural Revolution (1966-76)

Virtual tour 4:  Poster art from the Cultural Revolution;
Screening: "Red Detachment of Women" (on VCD);
Listening: Revolutionary songs (on audio tapes);
Web: "Virtual Museum of the Cultural Revolution" at http://www.cnd.org/CR/;
Reading: Nicole Huang, selections from Urban Mass Culture from the Cultural Revolution (work in progress)

                Section II: The Making of a 'Transnational China'

Week 9 (11/2) "Native Soil" Fiction and the New Taiwanese Cinema (1970s-80s)

Individual presentations
Screening: "Buddha Bless America," a film by Wu Nien-jen (on video tape);
Listening: Taiwanese campus songs and protest music from the 1970s (on audio tapes and CDs);
Reading: Wang Chen-ho, Rose, Rose, I Love You; Jenny Sharpe, "Figures of Colonial Resistance"

Week 10 (11/9) Cultural Politics in Post-Mao China (1980s-90s)

Individual presentations
Screening: "Yellow Earth," a film by Chen Kaige (on DVD);
Listening: Chinese rock music and protest songs (on audio tapes and CDs);
Reading: Geremie Barme, eds., "Yellow Earth" in Seeds of Fire; Leo Ou-fan Lee, "On the Margins of the Chinese Discourse: Some
Personal Thoughts on the Cultural Meaning of the Periphery" in The Living Tree: The Changing Meaning of Being Chinese Today

Week11 (11/16) Streetlife in Post-Mao China (1980s-90s)

Individual presentations
Web: Subway advertisements in cities of Taiwan and China at http://www.ruf.rice.edu/~tnchina/subwayads/subwayads.htm;
Reading: Michael Dutton, Streetlife China

Week 12 (11/30) Bruce Lee and Hong Kong Cinema Outside Hong Kong (1970s-80s)

Individual presentations
Screening: "Fists of Fury" (on video tape);
Reading: Hsiung-Ping Chiao, "Bruce Lee: His Influence on the Kung Fu Genre"; Yvonne Tasker, "Discourses of Race and
Masculinity in the Martial Arts Cinema"

Week 13 (12/7) Hong Kong and a Culture of Disappearance (1980s-90s)

Individual presentations
Screening: "Chungking Express" (on VCD);
Listening: Popular songs by Faye Wang and others (on CDs);
Reading: Ackbar Abbas, "Culture in a Space of Disappearance"; Wu Hung,  "The Hong Kong Clock: Public Time-Telling
and Political Time/Space"

[the second take-home exam due by noon, Monday, December 11]

Week 14 (12/14) Diaspora and Immigrant Saga

Screening: "Comrades: Almost a Love Story" (on VCD);
Web: Angel Island and Chinese immigrant experiences at http://www.angel-island.com/;
Listening: The transnational reception of Teresa Teng (on audio tapes and CDs);
Reading: Arjun Appadurai, ėDisjuncture and Difference in the Global Cultural Economyî

[final paper due by noon, Sunday, December 17]
 

Links

  • Department of East Asian Languages and Literature, UW Madison
  • East Asian Studies Program, UW Madison
  • Modern Chinese Literature and Culture
  • Ling Lung, 1931-1937
  • Beijing Scene

    • back to beginning

    Late updated: April 26, 2000