Chinese Modernism in International Context

1

Chinese Modernism in International Context

CHIN 136B. Spring 2015. MW 2:00-3:20, Olin-Sang 104

Pu Wang

Department of GRALL

Mandel 118

Course Description:

This course interrogates the origins, recurrences, and metamorphosis of modernistic styles and movementsin twentieth-century Chinese literature, culture, and intellectual discourse. The central concern is to understand Chinese modernism/modernity both in it own terms and in deep relations to various international trends. In reading literary works, visual representations, and critical discourses spanning from the New Culture Movement to the current post-socialist era, this courseseeks to redefine Chinese modernism in its intense dialogue with tradition, with sociopolitical changes both at home and abroad, and with the global aesthetic regime (primarily the concepts of novelty, desire, selfhood, revolution, and the “absolute modern”).

Readings for this course, therefore, falls roughly into two categories: the “work” of Chinese modernism, that is, literary, filmic, and intellectual texts that can be read as manifestations of the experience of Chinese modernity; and the analysis of modernism produced by theorists, critics and cultural historians.

In particular, “five faces” of Chinese modernism/modernity will be closed examined: Lu Xun the modernist; “Shanghai modern;” Maoism and the avant-garde; modern Chinese poetry; the end of revolution and the cultural politics of postsocialism.

The authors we will therefore be focusing on include: Lu Xun (1881-1936), Guo Moruo (1892-1978), Mao Zedong (1893-1976), Bian Zhilin (1910-2000), Dai Wangshu (1905-1950), Mu Dan (1918-1977), Shi Zecun (1905-2003), Feng Zhi (1905-1993), Zhang Ailing (1920-1995), Bei Dao (1949-), Duo Duo (1951-), Chen Kaige (1952-), Hai Zi (1964-1989), Mo Yan (1955-) and Wang Hui.

The course is taught in English and all readings are in English (films with English subtitles). There is NO requirement of Chinese reading knowledge.

Requirements and Grading:

Grading will be based on attendance (10%), participation in class discussions (20%), a midterm paper (6 pages; 30%) and a final paper (9 pages; 40%).

Attendance and Participation:

Commitment is required in terms of: a) coming to class and being on time; b) doing your readings before the class and always bringing your reading materials to the classroom; c) active (or militant!) participation in all in-class discussion; d) Lateness and absence from class will both affect your attendance grade. You are allowed three unexplained or unexcused absence. Other absences can be excused for religious reasons—with an email notification in advance—or by your illness for which a note from your doctor is required.

Writing Assignments:

Grading of the papers will be focused on effectiveness of argumentation, skills of critical thinking and close reading, organization of evidence and textual examples, writing skills, and research capabilities.

For due dates, see the Weekly Schedule below. Before each writing assignments, grading criteria will be discussed, and sample theses or suggested topics will be distributed. However, students are encouraged to come up with their own choice of topics.

Weekly Schedule (including readings and screenings):

Part One Introduction

Week 1 (Jan. 12): Modernity/Modernism: historical background and theoretical context

Marshall Berman, All that is Solid Melts into Air: The Experience of Modernity (Penguin, 1988), pp. 15-36.

Suggested readings:

Leo O. Lee, “Literary Trends: The Quest for Modernity, 1895 -1927,” in Lee et al. ed., An Intellectual History of Modern China (Cambridge UP, 2002), pp. 141-95. (This reading is to be finished by the midterm recess)

Shu-Mei Shih, “The Global and Local Terms of Chinese Modernism,” in Shih, The Lure of the Modern:Writing Modernism in Semicolonial China, 1917-1937 (University of California Press, 2001), pp. 1-48. (This reading is to be finished by the midterm recess)

Part Two Lu Xun as Modernist

Week 2 (Jan. 19): Modernity/Modernism continued; Lu Xun as Modernist

Lu Xun, “Diary of a Madman,” and “The True Story of Ah Q,” in Diary of A Madman and Other Stories, trans. W. A. Lyell (Honululu: U of Hawi’i Press, 1990).

Fredric Jameson, “Third-World Literature in the Era of Multinational Capitalism,” Social Text, No. 15 (Autumn, 1986), pp. 65-88.

Week 3 (Jan. 26): Lu Xun’s remembrances as “national allegory”

Two more short stories: Lu Xun, “Upstairs in a Wineshop” and “The Loner.”

Lu Xun’s autobiographical essays: “Preface to Cheering from the Sidelines,” “Achang,” “The Fair of the Five Fierce Gods,” “Father’s Illness,” “Mr. Fujino” and “Fan Ainong.”

From Lu Xun, Diary of a Madman and Other Stories (trans. William Lyell, Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1990), and Selected Works, vol. 1 (trans. Yang Xianyi and Gladys Yang, Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 1959).

Week4 (Feb. 2): Lu Xun and prose poetry

Lu Xun, Wild Grass/ Yecao (Bilingual Edition; University of HK Press, 2003).

Week 5 (Feb.9):Lu Xun, zawen and the Shanghai left

Excerpts from Selected Works, vol. 4 (trans. Yang Xianyi and Gladys Yang, Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 1959).

Midterm Recess (Feb. 16)

Part Three Shanghai Modern

Week 6 (Feb. 23): “Shanghai Modern:” urban space, sexual psychology, and the flâneur

Shi Zhecun, One Rainy Evening, trans. Rosemary Roberts (Chinese Literature Press, 1994).

The opening chapter of Mao Dun, Midnight (Peking : Foreign Language Press, 1979).

Suggested readings:

Leo Ou-fan Lee, Shanghai Modern: The Flowering of a New Urban Culture in China, 1930 -1945 (Harvard UP, 1999), pp. 3-43 and pp. 120-89.

Walter Benjamin, “The Paris of the Second Empire in Baudelaire,” in The Writer of Modern Life: Essays on Charles Baudelaire (Belknap/Harvard, 2006), pp. 46-133.

Week 7(March 2, midterm paper due): “Shanghai Modern:” the female selfhood and the urban history

Ding Ling, “Miss Sophie’s Diary,” in I Myself Am A Woman: Selected Writings of Ding Ling, trans. Tani E. Barlow (Boston: Beacon Press, 1989).

Lydia Liu. “Saying I as a Woman,” in Liu, Translingual Practice:Literature, National Culture, and Translated Modernity, China, 1900-1937 (Stanford UP, 1995), pp. 172-179.

Zhang Ailing, “Sealed Off,” in J. Lau et al. ed., The Columbia Anthology of Modern Chinese Literature (Columbia UP, 1995).

Leo Lee, Shanghai Modern, pp. 267-303.

Excerpts from Wang Anyi, An Everlasting Song of Sorrows (Columbia UP).

Xudong Zhang, Postsocialism and Cultural Politics (Duke UP, 2008), Chapter Four.

Part Four Maoism and the Avant-Garde

Week 8 (Mar. 9) and Week 9(Mar. 16) : The Maoist avant-garde: “model plays” and modernized “national forms”

Screening: The Red Detachment of Women (revolutionary ballet, premiered in 1964).

Mao Zedong, Poems (Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 1976), pp. 30-52.

Alain Badiou, “The Cultural Revolution: The Last Revolution?” trans. Bruno Bosteel, positions: east asia cultures critique, 13: 3 (Winter 2005), pp. 481-514.

Part Five Modern Chinese Poetry

Week 10 (March 23): Modernist poetry in the Republican era and the “anxiety of influence”

Poems of Dai Wangshu, Fei Ming, Bian Zhilin, Feng Zhi, and Mu Dan: all in Michelle Yeh ed., Anthology of Modern Chinese Poetry (Yale University Press, 1994).

Suggested readings:

T. S. Eliot, “Tradition and the Individual Talent” (1919), in Selected Prose (Mariner, 1975), pp. 37-44.

W. H. Auden, In Time of War: A Sonnet Sequence With a Verse Commentary, in Auden and Christopher Isherwood, Journey to a War (London: Random, 1939).

Passover and Spring Break

Week 11 (Mar. 30): The Reappearance of modernist poetry: The Menglong shi (Misty Poetry) movement and the sunset of socialism

Excerpts from Bei Dao, The Rose of Time: New and Selected Poems (Bilingual Edition), ed. Eliot Weinberger (New Directions, 2010).

Excerpts from Duo Duo, The Boy Who Catches Wasps: Selected Poetry of Duo Duo, trans. Gregory Lee (Zephyr Press, 2002).

Selected works from Hai Zi, Over Autumn Rooftops.

Suggested reading: Yibing Huang, “Duo Duo: An Impossible Farewell, or, Exile between Revolution and Modernism,” in Huang, Contemporary Chinese Literature: From the Cultural Revolution to the Future (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), pp. 19-62.

Part Six The End of Revolution and the Cultural Politics of Postsocialism

Week 11 (Mar. 30): the 1980sCultural Fever: the discourse of modernity

Screening: The Yellow Earth (dir. Chen Kaige, 1984).

Xudong Zhang, Chinese Modernism in the Age of Reforms (Duke UP, 1997), pp. 143-199.

Wang Hui, “The 1989 Social Movement and the Historical Roots of China’s Neoliberalism,” Part 1. In Wang Hui, China’s New Order: Society, Politics, and Economy in Transition (ed. Theodore Hunters, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard UP, 2003).

Week 13(April 20):Contemporary China

Excerpts from Mo Yan, The Republic of Wine: A Novel (Arcade Publishing, 2001).

Xudong Zhang, Postsocialism and Cultural Politics (Duke UP, 2008), Intro and Chapter Six.

Wang Hui, “The 1989 Social Movement and the Historical Roots of China’s Neoliberalism,” Parts 2 and 3.

Week 14 (April 27): Coda

Wang Hui, “Depoliticized Politics: from East to West.” New Left Review, issue 41 (2006)

Final paper due on the last day of Study Week.

Other possible topics:

1 The “Root Searching” movement and “magical realism”

Ah Cheng, The King of Trees: Three Novellas, trans. by Bonnie S. MacDougall (New Directions, 2010).

2 Experimental fiction: Yu Hua and Ge Fei

Excerpts from Yu Hua, The Past and the Punishments: Eight Stories (University of Hawaii Press, 1996).

Ge Fei, “Remember Mr. Wu You,” “Green Yellow,” and “Whistling,” all in Jing Wang ed., China’s Avant-Garde Fiction: An Anthology, trans. by Howard Goldblatt et al. (Duke UP, 1998), pp. 15-68.