China, like any venerable, classical civilization, has woven its own web of mythological foundations. As anthropologists and psychoanalysts of the 19th and 20th centuries have insisted, understanding the mysterious and fantastical foundations of civilization is essential to more fully grasping the evolutionary nature of human history. In the case of China, familiarizing ourselves with the legends of great emperors long past and some central, creation myths and aetiologies, allows us to tap into the rich deposits of Chinese historical and imaginary thinking. While avoiding psychoanalyzing these myths (in the way Greek myth is often allegorized) we may miss posing any universal, human substratum to legend that make them transculturally intelligible. However, this avoidance is also an interpretive strategy with its own benefits, by which we hope to attain to a more precise historical nature of the legends and their repeated use throughout a millenial Chinese history. By learning these legends, we immediately become sensitive to the myriad ways in which they are inovked in subsequent texts to specific political ends. Today, we familiarize ourselves with a portion of the quasi-historical or mythological foundations of China that will assist us in understanding later historical moments and discussions in which they arise:
*Yu
*Yi the archer
Important archealogical discoveries of ritualized bronze vessels beginning in the early Han dynasty (206BC-220AD) posed a material site on which to ground Chinese historical and mythological fantasies. These bronze vessels, once used as ritualized containers of foods and wines, from the Han to the modern era became receptacles for a Chinese imagination of its own origins. They were both the proof of cultural intuitions of greatness and uniqueness and the material, fetishized oracle of re-imaginations of the same. Thus, they were the tangible sign of illustrious civilization and the material mandate for future, cultural consolidation and diffusion. A grotesque, but nonetheless telling, example of how the bronze vessel was used to benefit later generations comes at the end of the Southern Song dynasty (960-1127AD). Faced with the invasion of Jurchen tribes and imminent evacuation to the South, the Song court issued a number of imperial edicts requiring the melting down of bronze vessels into coinage--a literal monetization of what had to that point been only commercable, cultural capital. While this act appears to betray the hallowed significance that the bronze vessel seemed to promise to most eras, it actually reveals the true nature of the power relationship between history and the present, by which the past is ultimately at the mercy of current exigensies and interpretations.
Questions:
(1) What initial, social function do you see these mythologies serving? What might they explain?
(2) What are some scenarios in which you imagine these mythologies being invoked?
(3) Why are material discoveries (i.e. bronze vessels) so important to the formation of identity in the present?
(4) Why were bronze vessels important in the first place? (Shaughnessy 175-83)
Maps and links:
(1) The Met's introduction to Shang and Zhou bronzes
(2) The Piece-mold Method
(3) Chinese Discovery Channel Intro. to Bronze Vessels
(4) The Dynasties
(5) Map of Shang
(6) Map of Zhou
Secondary References:
*Treasures from the Bronze Age of China: An Exhibition from the People's Republic of China. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1980.
*Edward L. Shaughnessy. Sources of Western Zhou History: Inscribed Bronze Vessels. Berkeley: U of California P, 1992.
Monday, May 18, 2009
Sunday, May 17, 2009
What does it mean to study "Chineseness'?
In the postscript to her chapter “Against the Lures of Diaspora,” Brown University Professor and leading Chinese scholar Rey Chow summarizes the complexities and pitfalls of speaking of and for China from the space of the First World. She explains:
"What are we doing talking about modern Chinese literature and Chinese women in the North American academy in the 1990s? As such activities of speaking and writing are tied less to the oppressed women in Chinese communities in China than to our own intellectual careers in the West, we need to unmask ourselves through a scrupulous declaration of self-interest. Such declaration does not clean our hands, but it prevents the continuance of a tendency, rather strong among Third World intellectual in diaspora as well as researchers of non-Western cultures in First World nations, to sentimentalize precisely those day-to-day realities from which they are distanced." (41)
Chow’s question and its implications are primarily directed at the diaspora of Chinese intellectuals who now find themselves abroad enjoying particularly advantageous positions (conceptually and professionally) from which to give voice to their homelands which have been treated historically as global afterthoughts, minor literatures and cultures. The situation in which we find ourselves is slightly different. Nonetheless, the need to “unmask ourselves” and scrupulously confess our “self-interests” and monitor our sentimentalization of the Chinese Other is no less crucial to the tasks we pose for ourselves in this course.
The social, cultural and linguistic distances that separate us from the Chinese objects of our study is an immense expanse of creative space created by our privilege as so-called First World investigators. However, it is important to realize that this position while it carries with it in name and truth real power, is ultimately delusional as an imagined, exalted height. In other words, the privileged space we occupy is largely an outgrowth of our own ignorance and lack of experience with Chinese languages and cultures. Thus, it behooves us as we study throughout the semester to remind ourselves constantly that our desires, interests, opinions and readings of the history and arts of China are not only underwritten by our own American self-interests but more importantly our fundamental ignorance of our subject. The embrace of this realization will help us to avoid trivializing, essentializing and sentimentalizing Chinese culture as we diligently study and formulate our own critical positions.
Questions:
(1) What are some of your assumptions about what it means to be Chinese?
(2) What are your motives in seeking to define the image of Chineseness?
(3) What are some of our assumptions in feeling empowered, entitled to study this subject?
Introductory Video Clips:
(1) SpongeBob in China
(2) Tom Carter's Portrait of a People
Secondary texts:
*Gayatri Spivak. "Can the Subaltern Speak?" Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture. Ed. Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1988. 271-313. (esp. 275)
*Xiaomei Chen, "Introduction," Occidentalism (New York: Oxford UP, 1995), 17.
"What are we doing talking about modern Chinese literature and Chinese women in the North American academy in the 1990s? As such activities of speaking and writing are tied less to the oppressed women in Chinese communities in China than to our own intellectual careers in the West, we need to unmask ourselves through a scrupulous declaration of self-interest. Such declaration does not clean our hands, but it prevents the continuance of a tendency, rather strong among Third World intellectual in diaspora as well as researchers of non-Western cultures in First World nations, to sentimentalize precisely those day-to-day realities from which they are distanced." (41)
Chow’s question and its implications are primarily directed at the diaspora of Chinese intellectuals who now find themselves abroad enjoying particularly advantageous positions (conceptually and professionally) from which to give voice to their homelands which have been treated historically as global afterthoughts, minor literatures and cultures. The situation in which we find ourselves is slightly different. Nonetheless, the need to “unmask ourselves” and scrupulously confess our “self-interests” and monitor our sentimentalization of the Chinese Other is no less crucial to the tasks we pose for ourselves in this course.
The social, cultural and linguistic distances that separate us from the Chinese objects of our study is an immense expanse of creative space created by our privilege as so-called First World investigators. However, it is important to realize that this position while it carries with it in name and truth real power, is ultimately delusional as an imagined, exalted height. In other words, the privileged space we occupy is largely an outgrowth of our own ignorance and lack of experience with Chinese languages and cultures. Thus, it behooves us as we study throughout the semester to remind ourselves constantly that our desires, interests, opinions and readings of the history and arts of China are not only underwritten by our own American self-interests but more importantly our fundamental ignorance of our subject. The embrace of this realization will help us to avoid trivializing, essentializing and sentimentalizing Chinese culture as we diligently study and formulate our own critical positions.
Questions:
(1) What are some of your assumptions about what it means to be Chinese?
(2) What are your motives in seeking to define the image of Chineseness?
(3) What are some of our assumptions in feeling empowered, entitled to study this subject?
Introductory Video Clips:
(1) SpongeBob in China
(2) Tom Carter's Portrait of a People
Secondary texts:
*Gayatri Spivak. "Can the Subaltern Speak?" Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture. Ed. Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1988. 271-313. (esp. 275)
*Xiaomei Chen, "Introduction," Occidentalism (New York: Oxford UP, 1995), 17.
Sunday, May 3, 2009
Words to Live By
The Four Books of Confucianism was a collection designated by Song dynasty intellectual Zhu Xi as the foundation of Confucianism and the basis for the civil service examinations. It contained the words of Confucius and his closest disciples (and later commentators), including his famed successor Mencius. The Four Books include: The Great Learning, The Golden Mean, The Analects and The Mencius.
The first two are actually chapters from the classical text, The Book of Rites, purportedly written by Confucius himself. The Great Learning and The Golden Mean place learning, virtue, and self-cultivation well within the scope of the interests of society and the pursuit of ideas of dialectical and social harmony. In a sense, unlike a radical Grecian or Christian truth that promises to destabilize society, a Confucian truth tends to harmonize all facets of personal and collective existence. The last two books, The Analects and The Mencius, are the Chinese equivalents of Platonic dialogues in which the master Confucius and his disciples (principally Mencius) are shown conversing with important political leaders and their own followers in which they convey proper behavioral and ethical codes. These books were the cornerstones of learning, ethics and courtesy in China for millenia. Their wisdom and stories are part of the Chinese collective memory and still on the tip of many tongues.
Readings:
The Great Learning
The Golden Mean
The Analects
The Mencius
Questions:
(1) Find evidences where personal cultivation and social harmony meet.
(2) How do you negotiate the dynamic between the wisdom of tradition and the virtue brought to bear by the individual?
(3) What does a web of learning look like? And what is meant by man's resting place within it?
(4) What are the attributes of a learned, virtuous man as defined by these texts?
Links:
(1) The Classic of Poetry as the anchor of Confucianism (LiJi 29)
Secondary readings:
*Wing-Tsit Chan. "Neo-Confucianism: New Ideas on Old Terminology" Philosophy East and West vol.17, no. 1/4 (1967): 15-35.
The first two are actually chapters from the classical text, The Book of Rites, purportedly written by Confucius himself. The Great Learning and The Golden Mean place learning, virtue, and self-cultivation well within the scope of the interests of society and the pursuit of ideas of dialectical and social harmony. In a sense, unlike a radical Grecian or Christian truth that promises to destabilize society, a Confucian truth tends to harmonize all facets of personal and collective existence. The last two books, The Analects and The Mencius, are the Chinese equivalents of Platonic dialogues in which the master Confucius and his disciples (principally Mencius) are shown conversing with important political leaders and their own followers in which they convey proper behavioral and ethical codes. These books were the cornerstones of learning, ethics and courtesy in China for millenia. Their wisdom and stories are part of the Chinese collective memory and still on the tip of many tongues.
Readings:
The Great Learning
The Golden Mean
The Analects
The Mencius
Questions:
(1) Find evidences where personal cultivation and social harmony meet.
(2) How do you negotiate the dynamic between the wisdom of tradition and the virtue brought to bear by the individual?
(3) What does a web of learning look like? And what is meant by man's resting place within it?
(4) What are the attributes of a learned, virtuous man as defined by these texts?
Links:
(1) The Classic of Poetry as the anchor of Confucianism (LiJi 29)
Secondary readings:
*Wing-Tsit Chan. "Neo-Confucianism: New Ideas on Old Terminology" Philosophy East and West vol.17, no. 1/4 (1967): 15-35.
Saturday, May 2, 2009
Hooking-Up in Antiquity
A dominant trend in Shijing scholarship over the past century has taken a markedly anthropological approach to the interpretation of these some 300 classical, Chinese poems. The collection's poems deal most directly with concerns, activities, rituals and histories intimately connected to the lives of the common folk. Their origins in a pre-literate, oral reality, combined with their later, overtly Confucian overlay, have lead many sinologists to emphasize the social, ritualized significance of the verses. One of the dominant topics of the Shijing, love and courtship, continues to fascinate anthropologists seeking to piece together the habits of the ancient enamored.
Our readings of the Shijing poems (mainly from the opening Guofeng section) will address the potential social functions indicated by the above anthropological method as well as the later Confucian interpretations and allegorizations that solemnized the poems as guides for ethical, proper behavior in civilized, courtly society (v.s. Large and Small prefaces).
Readings:
Odes Of Zhou (1-11)
Odes of Shao (12-25)
Questions:
(1) What is the tone of the various poetic voices in these poems?
(2) What do the poems convey to you about romantic or marital relationships in (pre-) classical China?
(3) How does the fact that the poems were written by men about women's relationships affect our understanding of what is conveyed in the poems?
Links:
(1) Great Preface
(2) Guan-guan
(3) Virginia's dual-language Shijing etext
Secondary references:
* Kern, Martin. "Shijing Songs as Performance Texts: A Case Study of 'Chu ci'." Early China 25 (2000): 49-111.
*Shaugnessy, Edward L. "From Liturgy to Literature: The Ritual Contexts of the Earliest Poems in the Book of Poetry." Before Confucius: Studies in the Creation of the Chinese Classics. Albany: SUNY Press, 1997. 165-197.
* Granet, Marcel. Festivals and Songs of Ancient China. New York: E.P. Dutton & Co., 1975.
Our readings of the Shijing poems (mainly from the opening Guofeng section) will address the potential social functions indicated by the above anthropological method as well as the later Confucian interpretations and allegorizations that solemnized the poems as guides for ethical, proper behavior in civilized, courtly society (v.s. Large and Small prefaces).
Readings:
Odes Of Zhou (1-11)
Odes of Shao (12-25)
Questions:
(1) What is the tone of the various poetic voices in these poems?
(2) What do the poems convey to you about romantic or marital relationships in (pre-) classical China?
(3) How does the fact that the poems were written by men about women's relationships affect our understanding of what is conveyed in the poems?
Links:
(1) Great Preface
(2) Guan-guan
(3) Virginia's dual-language Shijing etext
Secondary references:
* Kern, Martin. "Shijing Songs as Performance Texts: A Case Study of 'Chu ci'." Early China 25 (2000): 49-111.
*Shaugnessy, Edward L. "From Liturgy to Literature: The Ritual Contexts of the Earliest Poems in the Book of Poetry." Before Confucius: Studies in the Creation of the Chinese Classics. Albany: SUNY Press, 1997. 165-197.
* Granet, Marcel. Festivals and Songs of Ancient China. New York: E.P. Dutton & Co., 1975.
Wednesday, April 8, 2009
Introduction to Chinese Culture, Cinema and Literature
Welcome to CHNS260. This course will be fast and furious and with your participation, maddeningly entertaining. I've posted the syllabus for your perusal and am confident you'll find a number of topics that will both interest and befuddle you. The idea of the course is to introduce familiar, stimulating and controversial topics on China on a daily basis in a salon-like format. Daily readings are the foundations for open, lively discussion on a given topic for that day. Your informed, intelligent opinions (and occasional rants) are urgently solicited. I look forward to meeting and hearing from you all soon.COURSE DESCRIPTION
Informed by cutting-edge approaches to the study of China, this multimedia-enhanced course introduces students to classical and modern Chinese literature, culture and cinema. Topics integral to the history and perception of China guide daily discussion and include: kungfu, nationalism, hiphop, buddhism, basketball, gender, sexuality, insanity, the rickshaw, etc. As students deepen their understanding of the historical significance of these topics they will continuously be challenged to formulate what it means to be Chinese and to interrogate how and why they define it in such ways.
COURSE OBJECTIVES
(1) To increase specific and general knowledge of China’s artistic and cultural history;
(2) To enhance skills to analyze the different artistic genres and cultural phenomena of the Chinese-speaking world;
(3) To learn to produce different kinds of evaluative literature of the arts: (a) collegiate essay, (b) film review, (c) book review, (d) presentation(s);
(4) To develop appropriate, professional communication skills through writing assignments, class discussion and presentations.
TEXTS
To save you money most of the primary readings are made available online (as PDF files or HTML files) through the course websites and library e-Reserves. You need to access the texts well in advance in case there are problems with the websites. There are also two other inexpensive books that you will need to purchase for the course:
(1) Gascoigne, Bamber. The Dynasties of China. London: Constable & Robinson, Ltd., 2003. (~$12)
(2) Berry, Christopher J. and Mary Ann Farquhar. China on Screen: Cinema and Nation. New York: Columbia UP. 2006. (~$20)
TENTATIVE SCHEDULE:
(***The instructor withholds the right to adjust the syllabus at any time.)
Week I : Cultural Foundations
5/18 M Introduction to Course: What does it mean to study “Chineseness”?
5/19 T Bronze Vessels and Brazen Kings (read The Dynasties of China)
5/20 W Hooking-Up in Antiquity (Selections from the Shi Jing)
5/21 Th Words to Live By (Selections from the Great Learning and the Middle Way)
Week II: The Rise of the Intellectual
5/26 M Confucian Cortegiani (Selections from the Analects, the Mengzi, the Laozi and the Zhuangzi)
5/27 T On Fluttering Sages (Selections from the Liezi and the Biography of Transcendents)
5/28 W Heroic Portraits (Selections from Records of the Grand Historian)
*Book Review (The Dynasties of China, ANGEL)
Week III: Life On the Margins
6/2 T How to be a Hermit (Selections from Tao Yuanming, Xie Lingyun, Meng Haoran, Wang Wei)
6/3 W My Zen Teacher is Nuts! (Selections from The Platform Sutra and Recorded Conversations of Zen Master Yi Xuan)
6/4 Th So I Married an Axe Murderer (Selections from Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio and Sketches from the Cottage)
* Presentations (ANGEL)
Week IV: The Art of Governance
6/9 T Presentations
6/10 W Palace Politics (Selections from Story of the Stone)
6/11 Th Monkeys Rule (Selections from Journey to the West)
* Test 2 (Week 4, ANGEL)/* Collegiate Essay (ANGEL)
Week V: Modernity and Liberation
6/16 T Insanity (Selections from Lu Xun’s short stories and essays)
6/17 W “Iron Women and Foxy Ladies” (Selections from Mao’s Red Book, the Historic Liberation of Chinese Women, The White Haired Girl)
6/18 F Selling Punches and Puns: Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan
*Film Review (Raise the Red Lantern)
Week VI: China and the West; a Remix
6/23 F Zhang Yimou and His Girls (Watch Raise the Red Lantern, Media Center)
6/24 M Shakespeare, the Sonnet and China (Watch The Banquet, Media Center)
6/25 W Yao Ming and Olympic Dreams (Selections from People’s Daily)
Final
6/29 M *Test 2 (On China on Screen: Cinema and Nation and what it means to be “Chinese”)
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
CHN 120 日記
中文120
2011 年 3 月 11 號
活動總結：
今天我們不做什麼──開玩笑──嚴格的說，我們作了好多事，可是它們不算是典型的而已。 不要看書，我們聽孔子的話，看一篇關於日本8。8級強震的新聞報告，還有看了馬龍魚的網頁──那個傢伙真有病。誰要變成一隻美人魚？！ 拜託！
然後，我們看 Griffin 和 Karly 唱卡拉ok。他們很棒，是不是？ 麥克風 (microphone) 的冠軍 (champ)! 呵呵！"Juliette, 我們結婚吧！"
2011 年 3 月 11 號
活動總結：
今天我們不做什麼──開玩笑──嚴格的說，我們作了好多事，可是它們不算是典型的而已。 不要看書，我們聽孔子的話，看一篇關於日本8。8級強震的新聞報告，還有看了馬龍魚的網頁──那個傢伙真有病。誰要變成一隻美人魚？！ 拜託！
然後，我們看 Griffin 和 Karly 唱卡拉ok。他們很棒，是不是？ 麥克風 (microphone) 的冠軍 (champ)! 呵呵！"Juliette, 我們結婚吧！"
Sunday, January 11, 2009
Chinese Cinema: Imaginative Modes for Engendering a Nation
COURSE DESCRIPTION
This course provides answers to three broad questions:
(1) What and (2) How does Chinese cinematic history tell us about the quest for national (and transnational) identities?;
(3) What are the changing strategies, modes and contents of particular visual narrations of said identities?
In this course, we examine the major cinematic modes, genres and themes of Chinese film invested in the construction of national identities from the cinema’s infancy in the late Qing (1905) to the present. Through the investigation of various historical, operatic, realistic and combative modes of cinematic narration, we come to a detailed understanding of Chinese cinematic history and how it participates directly in efforts to imagine various Chinese communities whose roots are in the national. Because such imaginations on screen are visually and rhetorically unique, we approach our analysis of these films with the realization that a coherent national identity can not be taken for granted. In fact, that these films artfully narrate their tales in unique ways is a testament to the continuing evolutionary and pluralistic nature of Chinese national and transnational identities. It is our privilege to experience and to analyze these numerous visual displays of what it can mean to be Chinese in a modern world.
COURSE OBJECTIVES
(1) To enjoy the spectacle of 100 years of Chinese cinema;
(2) To become an educated reader of Chinese cinematic history;
(3) To learn the major cinematic modes, genres, themes and gendered imaginations of Chinese productions in their endeavors to define the national;
(4) To become a proficient writer of the collegiate essay and professional film review;
(5) To inspire you to enjoy the next 100 years of Chinese cinema.
TEXTS
Assignments for the course will consist of a combination of film viewing and the reading of critical, secondary literature. Required films for the course are available on reserve in the library’s media center. All secondary literature is retrievable online (as PDF files or HTML files) through the course websites and library e-Reserves. You need to access the texts online well in advance in case there are problems with the websites.
SCHEDULE
*The instructor may adjust the syllabus at any time. Be sure to refer often to the course website.
Opium War Films 鸦片影片: Historicizing a National Wound
Unit 1
*Rosenstone, Robert A. “The Historical Film: Looking at the Past in a Postliterate Age.” The Historical Film: History and Memory in the Media. New Brunswick: Rutgers UP, 2001. 50-67.
*Chow, Rey. “Introduction: On Chineseness as a Theoretical Problem.” Boundary 2 25.3 (1998): 1-24.
Unit 2 *Bu Wancang’s 卜万苍 Eternal Fame 万世流芳 (1943)
Unit 3 *Zheng Junli’s 郑君里 Lin Zexu and the Opium War林则徐 (1959)
Unit 4 *Li Quanxi’s 李泉溪 The Opium War 鸦片战争 (1963)
Unit 5 *Xie Jin’s 谢晋The Opium War 鸦片战争 (1997)
*First film review due
Shadow Opera 影戏: Staging the Nation as Spectacle
Unit 6
*Gunning, Tom. “The Cinema of Attractions: Early Film, Its Spectator and the Avant-Garde.” Early Cinema: Space—Frame—Narrative. Eds. Thomas Elsaesser and Adam Barker. London: British Film Institute, 1990. 56-62.
*Chen Xihe. “Shadowplay: Chinese Film Aesthetics and Their Philosophical and Cultural Fundamentals.” Chinese Film Theory: A Guide to a New Era. Eds. George S. Semsel, Xia Hong, and Hou Jianping. Trans. Hou Jianping, Li Xiaohong, and Fan uan. London: Praeger, 1990. 192-204.
Unit 7 *Zhang Shichuan’s 张石川The Classic Daughter 女儿经 (1934), *Fei Mu’s 费穆 Remorse at Death 生死恨 (1948)
Unit 8 *Wang Bin’s王滨The White-haired Girl 白毛女 (1950)
Unit 9 *Xie Tieli’s 谢铁骊Azalea Mountain 杜鹃山 (1973)
Unit 10 *Chen Kaige’s 陈凯歌Farewell, My Concubine 霸王别姬 (1993)
Unit 11 *Ang Lee’s 李安Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon 卧虎藏龙 (2000)
*First essay due
Socialist Realism现实主义: A Focus on the Family
Unit 12
*Elaesser, Thomas. “Tales of Sound and Fury: Observations on the Family Melodrama.” Home is Where the Heart Is: Studies in Melodrama and the Woman’s Film. Ed. Christine Gledhill. London: BFI, 1987.
*Chow, Rey. “Introduction.” Sentimental Fabulations, Contemporary Chinese Films. New York: Columbia Up, 2007. 1-25.
Unit 13 *Yuan Muzhi 袁牧之 Street Angel 马路天使 (1937)
Unit 14 *Sang Hu 桑弧New Year’s Sacrifice 祝福 (1956)
Unit 15 *Allen Fong’s 方育平 Father and Son 父子情 (1981)
Unit 16 *Chen Kaige 陈凯歌Yellow Earth 黄土地 (1984)
Unit 17 *Zhang Yimou 张艺谋 Raise the Red Lantern 大红灯笼高高挂 (1990)
*Second film review due
Kung-fu Flicks and New Violence武侠片: Experimentations in Loyalty
Unit 18
*Louie, Kam. Theorizing Chinese Masculinity: Society and Gender in China. New York: Cambridge UP, 2002. 1-22.
*Tasker, Yvonne. Spectacular Bodies: Gender, Genre, and the Action Cinema. London: Routledge, 1993.
Unit 19 *Lo Wei’s 罗维Fists of Fury 精武门 (1972)
Unit 20 *Gordon Chan’s 陈嘉上 Fist of Legend 精武英雄 (1994)
Unit 21 *Ronny Yu’s于仁泰Fearless霍元甲 (2006)
Unit 22 *Chang Cheh’s 張徹 Five Shaolin Masters 少林五祖 (1974)
Unit 23 *Lau Kar-leung’s刘家良Drunken Master II醉拳二 (1993)
Unit 24 *Zhang Yimou’s 张艺谋Hero 英雄 (2002)
*Second essay due
COURSE REQUIREMENTS
(1) 2 FILM REVIEWS (10% EACH; 20% TOTAL): Two one-page popular film reviews that address the history, plot and opinions of a production will be required during the course of this session. Any film within a proper category may be selected for this assignment. These reviews will roughly be based upon the conventions of New York Times film reviews, which will be explained in a detailed handout in the first week of the course. All assignments will be typed, single-spaced, in 12-point Times New Roman font, and handed in at the beginning of class on the final day of each categorical unit.
(2) 2 COLLEGIATE ESSAYS (10% EACH, 20% TOTAL): Two one-page essays that address, question, or complicate issues raised by the films and assigned readings will be required during the course of this session. The instructor will state the topic and set the critical parameters of the essay a week before the assignment is due. All assignments will be typed, single-spaced, in 12-point Times New Roman font, and handed in at the beginning of class on the final day of each categorical unit.
(3) 4 QUIZZES (5% EACH; 20% TOTAL): Four pop-quizzes will be administered that will test the student’s knowledge of the films assigned in each category. Quizzes will vary in length from 5-10 questions. All questions will require short answers.
(4) FILM PROJECT (40%): As an alternative to the standard final, this course allows for the creative synthesis and expression of the larger themes of this course. Any group of 3-4 students may combine their efforts to produce a short film (5-10m) and present it (script and all) at an end-of-the-semester film festival. Three components of the project will be graded: (1) the script (10%); (2) the cuts (initial and edited)(10%); (3) engagement of themes of the course (10%).
or, FINAL EXAM (40%): The final will be a comprehensive examination consisting of three sections (short answers, short essays and long essays) that review the specific details of Chinese cinematic history and the broad questions proposed in the course description. The details of the final exam will be confirmed by the instructor.
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