BA French and Chinese / Course details

Across Chinese cultural history, issues on gender and sexuality are closely entangled with complex power dynamics throughout. To begin with, the canonical literary and cultural traditions of China have largely marginalised the writings of female writers and those by as well as on gender minorities. This course unit will first and foremost enlarge the voice of these marginalised communities by foregrounding cultural productions by, for, and on them. Through closer examinations of relevant academic debates, moreover, this course unit will tease out the power dynamics at crucial intersections where issues pertinent to gender and sexuality interact and negotiate with political, legal, medical, and religious discourses. Drawing on shared concerns from other East Asian cultural traditions, the course unit will further feature comparative perspectives on topics pertinent to gender and sexuality. In sum, students will gain a more comprehensive view of the cultural productions on Chinese conceptions of gender and sexuality, as well as a more situated understanding of such productions’ interaction with different power fields. All readings will be in English translation, but students with high Chinese proficiency are encouraged to refer to the source texts.
 

The unit aims to:

• draw students’ attention to cultural works produced by historically marginalised groups and gender minorities;
• provide students with an overview of important academic debates on issues related to gender and sexuality in Chinese culture;
• enable students to appreciate alternative literary and cultural traditions to canonical works, especially women’s writings and cultural production concerned with queer feelings;
• afford students intersectional perspectives on issues concerned with gender and sexuality in Chinese culture, and their implications for power dynamics in various discursive fields;
• foster students’ ability to critically engage with a wide range of cultural genres produced in China on gender and sexuality.

 
Below is a list of sample topics to be potentially covered in the course unit:

-Courtesan Culture

-Female Playwrights

-Same-Sex Desire

-The Cult of Chastity

-Law and Sexuality

-Footbinding

-Masculinities in China

-Transgender Histories

-Early Chinese Feminist Writings

-Nationalism and Feminism
 

This course will employ mixed lecture-seminars (1-hour lecture and 2-hour seminar per week), directed readings, and asynchronous Blackboard activities.

By the end of this course students will be able to: 

• Gain a comprehensive and deeper understanding of women’s cultural productions and those by, for, and on gender minorities in China.
• Become familiar with a range of cultural genres and multimedia materials that feature the issues related to gender and sexuality.
• Approach discursive interactions and negotiations in a critical, situated, and contextualised manner.

By the end of this course students will be able to:

• Analyse and interpret primary materials with enhanced critical and cross-cultural acumen.
• Demonstrate sharpened sensitivity to cultural motifs and themes related to gender and sexuality in China and East Asia.
• Critically assess concepts and arguments presented in secondary scholarship on gender and sexuality in China.
• Articulate original and cogent arguments in both speech and writing.

By the end of this course students will be able to: 

• Cultivate engaging and interactive discussion skills.
• Improve critical reading, thinking, and writing competencies.
• Acquire research skills for in-depth and contextualised analysis.

By the end of this course students will be able to: 

• Foster interpersonal and collaborative skills through online discussions, seminar participation, and group activities in lectures.
• Develop skills for time management and resource organisation through the processes of pacing reading and searching for coursework.
• Increase multimedia literacy and presentation skills.
• Approach issues and topics in Chinese and East Asian cultures with critical perspectives and independent thinking.

All assigned materials will be available through Blackboard and the library catalogue. 

Sample Course Materails:

1. Brownell, Susan, and Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom, eds. Chinese Femininities, Chinese Masculinities: A Reader. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002.
2. Chen Kaige, dir. Farewell My Concubine.
3. Idema, Wilt, and Beata Grant. The Red Brush: Writing Women of Imperial China. Cambridge: Harvard University Asia Center, 2004.
4. Ko, Dorothy. Cinderella’s Sisters: A Revisionist History of Footbinding. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005.
5. Vitiello, Giovanni. The Libertine’s Friend: Homosexuality and Masculinity in Late Imperial China. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011.