Chinese 223, Fall 2020,
Classroom: Kauke 038
Time: TR 3:45—5:05
Wednesday and Sunday 7-9 pm for screening in classroom or in streaming online
Taught in English, the course studies 25 narrative films of Chinese, Taiwanese and Hong Kong cinemas, produced in the last three decades. The thematic focus is cultural identity as shaped and reinvented in these texts of self-representation. No detailed knowledge of Chinese civilization or history is expected other than how history and philosophy meet in film to produce symbols of a new Chinese humanity. By analyzing these narrative films, we find out Chinese attitudes to equality and democracy as key values of their cultural identity.
The course is open to interested native speakers as well. All the lecture notes, paper assignments, and quizzes are also available in Chinese. Comments made in Chinese are welcome in class discussion, and the ability to comprehend the films in the original language (and local dialects) is a plus. If written in Chinese, your essays are graded according to the same criteria and standards of excellence as in English: clarity, articulation, diction, organization, development and coherence.