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EAS419H1 Chinese Cultural Studies Seminar: May 4

This document provides information for a course on the May Fourth Movement in Chinese cultural studies. The course will examine the literary, aesthetic, epistemological, and political implications of the seismic May Fourth Movement through intensive cultural and intellectual debates. Students will participate in discussions, complete reading assignments, make five discussion posts, deliver a presentation, submit a close reading response paper and final project on a topic of their choice related to the Movement. The course will cover topics such as the rise of new culture, youth, print culture, drama, folklore, science, medicine, soundscape, art and cinema during this period. Requirements will be evaluated for a final grade.

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93 views5 pages

EAS419H1 Chinese Cultural Studies Seminar: May 4

This document provides information for a course on the May Fourth Movement in Chinese cultural studies. The course will examine the literary, aesthetic, epistemological, and political implications of the seismic May Fourth Movement through intensive cultural and intellectual debates. Students will participate in discussions, complete reading assignments, make five discussion posts, deliver a presentation, submit a close reading response paper and final project on a topic of their choice related to the Movement. The course will cover topics such as the rise of new culture, youth, print culture, drama, folklore, science, medicine, soundscape, art and cinema during this period. Requirements will be evaluated for a final grade.

Uploaded by

dsfkj
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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EAS419H1

Chinese Cultural Studies Seminar: May 4th


TUESDAY 11:00-13:00
FE 324

Instructor: Yurou Zhong Office Hour: Tuesday 2:30-4:30pm


Email: [email protected]
Office: Robarts Library 14087

Course Description:
Few events in the twentieth century have exerted more lasting impact on the formation,
transformation, and self-consciousness of modern Chinese culture than the May Fourth
Movement. What is May Fourth and why does it matter? On the one hand, May Fourth
ushered in an age of everything new—new culture, new science, and new revolution—
jettisoning all things old and Chinese; on the other, it sought to reinvent a form of
Chinese nationalism that would not only salvage the nation in peril but also maintain a
certain continuity with what was understood to be Chinese. Imagining ourselves as the
“new youth” of that new era, we take this seminar as a discursive center where intense
cultural, intellectual and political debates took place and we seek to understand the
literary, aesthetic, epistemological, and political implications of this seismic events that
came to be defined as the May Fourth Movement, rethinking its legacy, challenges, and
unfulfilled promises.

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Prerequisite:
EAS209 or the consent of the instructor.

Requirements:
- Participation:
You are expected to complete all reading assignments before class, attend each session
and participate in all meetings. Participation (2% per session between Week 2 and 12)
entails raising questions, engaging in debates, and challenging your classmates as well as
your instructor.

- Presentation:
You are invited to choose one week of your interest (from Week 2 to Week 12) and do a
ten-minute oral presentation on the materials covered in that week. Assuming that
everyone has read the material, please avoid devoting your entire presentation to
summarizing the readings. Instead, raise critical and interesting questions to lead a
meaningful discussion.
* Note that your presentation cannot overlap with your close reading response or your
final project.

- Quercus Postings:
Between Week 2 and 10, you are required to post a total of FIVE TIMES onto the course
site. For your postings, you are required to raise at least one critical question regarding
that week’s materials. All postings for a particular week should be posted by Monday
9pm onto Quercus before that week’s class. Late postings do not count.

- Close Reading Response and the Final Project:


You are asked to:
1) Come and see me during my office hour at least once and discuss your chosen close
reading fiction/drama/song/painting/film. Keep in mind: you will need to develop your
final project based on your chosen close reading “text”; Write up a close-reading
response (5 pages, double-space), which will be due in class in Week 8.
2) Prepare a five-minute presentation on your final project—a research paper, a piece of
literary criticism or film review, a piece of creative writing, or a short film or art project
developed from your close-reading response. Turn in your final projects in class (and/or
online) in Week 13 and be proud of yourself.

Marking Scheme:
Participation: 20%
Presentation: 10%
Postings: 5x6%=30%
Close reading response (in anticipation of your final project): 20%
Final Project: 20%

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Required Texts:
All texts will be made available to you through the course Quercus site. Please make
them available to you either in print or electronic form during class.

Policy on Turning in Late Assignments


There will be a 5% penalty for each day that an assignment is late.

Writing Help
For resources to improve your writing, consult the U of T Writing Centre website:
http://www.utoronto.ca/writing/advise.html

Academic Integrity
Papers must represent the work of the student and cite all sources in a recognized format
(eg. MLA or Chicago). To take credit in any way for work that is not one’s own without
acknowledging the source(s) counts as plagiarism and cheating. All suspected cases will
be forwarded to the Office of Student Academic Integrity according to FAS rules. For
more specific ways to avoid this, consult the following webpage:
http://www.writing.utoronto.ca/advice/using-sources/how-not-to-plagiarize

Accessibility Needs
Uof T is committed to accessibility. If you require accommodations or have any
accessibility concerns, please visit http://studentlife.utoronto.ca/accessibility ASAP.

Class Schedule:

Week 1 (01/07) Introduction: Why May Fourth?

Week 2 (01/14) New World


Chow Tse-tsung, The May Fourth Movement: Intellectual Revolution in Modern China
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1960), Chs. I and IV.
Xu Guoqi, China and the Great War (New York: Cambridge University Press), 114-130.
Yurou Zhong, “‘Sacred, the Laborers’: Writing Chinese in the First World War,” Cross-
Currents: East Asian History and Culture Review 6, no. 1 (May 2017): 296-324.

Week 3 (01/21) New Youth


Vera Schwarcz, Chinese Enlightenment: Intellectuals and the Legacy of the May Fourth
Movement of 1919 (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1986), Chapter 1.
Fabio Lanza, Behind the Gate: Inventing Students in Beijing (New York: Columbia
University Press, 2010), Chapter 1.

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Lu Xun, “Preface,” “Madman’s Diary” (New Youth, Vol. 4, No. 5) and “Kong Yiji” (New
Youth, Vol. 6, No. 4), Selected Stories of Lu Hsun (New York: W. W. Norton &
Company, 2003), 7-18, 19-24.

Week 4 (01/28) New Printculture


Chao Yuen Ren, “The Problem of the Chinese Language,” The Chinese Students’
Monthly, 1916, Vol. 11(8), 572-593.
Chen Duxiu, “On Literary Revolution.”*
Lin Shu, “Nightmare.”*
John Crespi, “Form and Reform,” in The Columbia Companion to Modern East Asian
Literature, eds. Joshua Mostow, Kirk Denton, Bruce Fulton, Sharalyn Orbaugh (New
York: Columbia University Press, 2003), Ch. 65.
Recommended:
Leon Trotsky, Literature and Revolution, “Introduction”
Michael G. Hills, Lin Shu, Inc (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), Chapter 7
(ebook available).

Week 5 (02/04) New Drama


Chen Xiaomei ed., The Columbia Anthology of Modern Chinese Drama (New York:
Columbia University Press, 2014), 1-20.
Hu Shi, The Main Event in Life (1919), ibid, 57-65.
Ouyang Yuqian, After Returning Home (1922), ibid, 115-136.
Liu Siyuan, “Paris and the Quest for a National Stage in Meiji Japan and Late-Qing
China,” Asian Theatre Journal, Vol. 26, No. 1 (Spring, 2009): 54-77.
Joshua Goldstein, Drama King: Players and Publics in the Recreation of Peking Opera,
1870-1937 (Berkeley: California University Press, 2007), Chapter 4 (ebook available).

Week 6 (02/11) New Folk(lore)


Chinese Folk and Popular Literature, eds., Victor H. Mair and Mark Bender (New York:
Columbia University Press, 2011), selected chapters.
Hung Chang-tai, Going to the People (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center,
1986), Chapter 3.
Haiyan Lee, “Tears That Crumbled the Great Wall: The Archaeology of Feeling in the
May Fourth Folklore Movement,” Journal of Asian Studies 64, no. 1 (February 2005):
35-65.

Week 7 (02/18) Reading Week


No class. Keep reading!

Week 8 (02/25) New Science and Religion


William T. De Bary, “The Debate on Science and the Philosophy of Life,” in Sources of
Chinese Tradition, Volume 2 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999), 370-377.
Lu Xun, “New Year’s Sacrifice,” Selected Stories of Lu Hsun, 125-143.

*Readings marked by * indicate that they are taken from Modern Chinese Literary Thought: Writings on
Literature 1893-1945, ed. Kirk Denton (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1996).

4
Lydia Liu, “Life as Form: How Biomimesis Encountered Buddhism in Lu Xun," Journal
of Asian Studies 68, no. 1 (February 2009): 21-54.
• Close-Reading Response due in class.

Week 9 (03/03) New Medicine


Lu Xun, “Preface to Call to Arms.”
Shigehisa Kuriyama, The Expressiveness of the Body and the Divergence of Greek and
Chinese Medicine, Chapter 1.
Sean Hsiang-lin Lei, Neither Donkey nor Horse: Medicine in the Struggle over China’s
Modernity, Chs. 4 and 5.

Week 10 (03/10) New Soundscape


Frederick Lau, “Nationalizing Sound on the Verge of Chinese Modernity,” in Nation,
Modernity, and the Restructuring of the Field of Cultural Production in China: Beyond
the May Fourth Paradigm, eds., Wing-kai Chow, Tze-ki Hon, Hong-yuk Ip (Lanham,
MD: Lexington Books, 2008), 209-226.
Andrew F. Jones, “Black Internationale: Notes on the Chinese Jazz Age,” in Jazz Planet,
ed. E. Taylor Atkins (Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi, 2003), 225-243, 254-
255.
Listen:
Selected pieces from Li Jinhui and Zheng Jinwen.

Week 11 (03/17) New Art


Cai Yuanpei, “Replacing Religion with Aesthetic Education.”*
Eugene Y. Wang, “Sketch Conceptualism as Modernist Contingency,” in Chinese Art
Modern Expressions, eds., Maxwell K. Hearn and Judith G. Smith (New York: The
Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2001), 103-161.
Tang Xiaobing, Origins of the Chinese Avant-garde: the Modern Woodcut Movement,
selected chapters.
Selected paintings and woodcut prints.

Week 12 (03/24) New Cinema


Bao Weihong, Fiery Cinema: The Emergence of an Affective Medium in China, 1915-
1945 (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2015), Chapter 3.
Kristin Harris, “The New Woman: Image, Subject, and Dissent in 1930s Shanghai Film
Culture,” Republican China 20, 2 (April): 55-79.
Watch:
New Women (1935)

Week 13 (03/31) Final project presentations


• Final projects due in class and/or online.

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