New Spring 2019 Course: Everyday China

 

At present, China is often represented by the mass media as an inscrutable, yet imminently significant, rising “superpower,” a nation that cannot be ignored and yet somehow continues to elude our understanding. While this framing may be useful for politicians and others who attempt to situate China as a straw man in global affairs, it does little to aid our knowledge of what life is like for the 1.3+ billion people living in the country. This course foregrounds a cultural and ethnographic perspective on the study of China today, emphasizing everyday experiences, changing subjectivities and identities, and shifting desires in post-1949 China. We will critically analyze the radical transformations that have occurred in rural and urban China, with a focus on the years since “Reform and Opening” in the late 1970s and the “rise” of China in the global world order. In particular, we will examine the influences of film and media, domestic and international migration, economic “liberalization,” and social memory on the lives of contemporary Chinese citizens through the lenses of gender, ethnicity, imaginaries, and intimacy.

 

Recommended Preparation:

This course is open to advanced undergraduates and MA students. It is recommended that all students have taken at least one or two relevant courses on East Asian and/or Chinese history, society, and politics (in EALC, History, Anthropology, IR, Sociology, Political Science, Communications, or another related discipline). Graduate students will be required to complete additional independent research for full credit.