This course is a selective reading of important themes and texts in modern and contemporary Chinese literature by authors hailing from mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Southeast Asia, and Chinese borderlands like Tibet and Xinjiang. We examine how literary authors narrate China through its changes and heterogeneity throughout a tumultuous century, and we interrogate how China emerges in literature as a fluid concept with porous borders and heterogeneous elements. The course has a focus on narrative fiction, and topics explored in the course include modernization, gender relation, revolutions, diasporic culture, economic reform, and ethnic relations. This course assumes no prior knowledge of China or Chinese Language, and all texts will be taught using English translations. |