An introductory course that teaches the skills of listening comprehension, speaking, reading, and writing in Mandarin Chinese. Emphasis is on pronunciation, vocabulary, grammar, and communication. Computer programs for pronunciation, listening comprehension, grammar, and writing Chinese characters will be used extensively.

Further training in listening comprehension, oral expression, reading, and writing.

Further training in listening comprehension, oral expression, reading, and writing.

The Ming (1368) was a glorious dynasty, and its fall was “heard round the world." The course approaches its glory and fall through novels (such as The Water Margin and The Plum in a Golden Vase), short stories (by Feng Menglong and others), and dramas like Peach Blossom Fan. Elsewhere in East Asia, too, the Ming was a theme in literature, especially at the time of its fall. Works by Chikamatsu (Japanese) and Ho Kyun (Korean) serve as illustrations. Additionally, dramas from Holland and England provide some measure of the impact of this event in Europe. In the last third of the course we will survey this group of writings by non-Chinese and use them to show how reactions varied, depending on the nationality of the observer. Finally, we will read a Cantonese opera composed in the twentieth century. It is one sign of the topic's continuing currency throughout the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911), and it highlights south China's longstanding resistance to the Qing.

This course is designed to further expand students' comprehension, speaking, reading, and writing skills. Reading materials will be selected from newspapers, short stories, essays, and films. Students will study Chinese and China from different perspectives. In addition to authentic audio and videotapes, Chinese learning APPs will also be used as study aids. The class is conducted in Chinese.

Variously known in English as Dream of the Red Chamber, A Dream of Red Mansions, and The Story of the Stone, Honglou meng is the most widely discussed Chinese novel of all time. Written in the mid-eighteenth century, the novel offers telling insight into Chinese culture as it once was and as it remains today. The novel is still wildly popular due to its tragic love story, its sensitive depiction of the plight of the talented woman in late imperial culture, and its narrative intricacies. The goal of the course is to understand the novel both as a literary text and as a cultural phenomenon. Optional extra sessions will accommodate those who wish to read and discuss the novel in Chinese. This course may be taken as CHIN 211 or, with additional assignments, as CHIN 311.

What does it mean to live life to its fullest capacity - personally, socially and ethically? What does it mean to succeed? To fail? To love? To fight? To dream? In search of answers to these questions, we read the classic foundational texts of China, Japan, and Korea from Confucian and Taoist philosophy to romantic tales, harrowing diaries and exquisitely crafted haiku. Bringing our knowledge as a China and a Japan specialist to bear, we formulate critical perspectives on key works with the goal of understanding East Asian culture as a whole and as different regional expressions. Join us as we explore the complexities of East Asian identity while discovering something about the big questions we all confront today wherever - and whomever - we are.

An introductory course that teaches the skills of listening comprehension, speaking, reading, and writing in Mandarin Chinese. Emphasis is on pronunciation, vocabulary, grammar, and communication. Computer programs for pronunciation, listening comprehension, grammar, and writing Chinese characters will be used extensively.

Further training in listening comprehension, oral expression, reading and writing.

Further training in listening comprehension, oral expression, reading, and writing.

Confucius in the Analects asserts that “The Master never spoke of the strange, the violent, the disorderly, and the numinous.” Yet “recording the strange” was a thriving literary genre in classical and imperial China—one collection of supernatural tales was in fact entitled What the Master Never Spoke Of. How do we understand this contradiction? This course is a survey of stories and essays on ghosts, spirits, talking animals, and spooky events, beginning from the earliest Chinese writings incised on turtle shells to the twentieth century. We will examine changing worldviews and religious practices during these three millennia, retracing the storylines retold around East Asia and across media ancient and modern.

This seminar guides students to explore the political, cultural, and epistemological changes represented in Chinese science fiction. It contextualizes the genre’s evolution in the intellectual history of modern China, where imagining the future of China is often the focus of contending ideologies and intellectual trends. The course introduces students to three booms of Chinese science fiction, which all happened when China went through drastic changes. The contemporary new wave of science fiction particularly presents a subversive vision of China’s pursuit of power and wealth, a dystopian counterpart to the government-promoted “Chinese dream.” This course examines the cutting-edge literary experiments that characterize the new wave, and studies the transgression of gender, class, and nation in science fiction that evokes sensations ranging from the uncanny to the sublime, from the corporeal to the virtual, and from the apocalyptic to the transcendent.