Graduate

The goal of this sequence is to help students develop advanced proficiency in reading, listening, speaking, and writing. This sequence emphasizes more advanced grammatical structures. We begin with discussion in Chinese on topics relevant to modern China and then shift to authentic Chinese texts in an effort to better prepare students to deal with original Chinese source materials. Discussion in Chinese required. The class meets for five one-hour sessions a week.

Open to both grads and undergrads. This course is designed to prepare students for academic research and activities in Chinese language environment. Besides selected influential Chinese articles, TV and Radio broadcast will be also included among the teaching materials. Students will learn not only general skills of listening and reading but also speaking and writing skill in academic style through the teaching materials and instructor-guided language projects. Class meets for three one-hour sessions each week. Additional two one-to-one tutorial sessions during the quarter will be arranged for each student to prepare for their language projects.

This course involves advanced readings in classical Chinese with selections from philosophical and historical writings.

Open to both graduate and undergraduate students. This sequence introduces a range of essays by journalists and scholars on Chinese cultural and social issues after 2001. Students will not only expand their vocabulary and knowledge of grammatical structures, but also learn sophisticated speaking and writing skills through intensive readings and discussions. Class meets for three one-hour sessions each week. Additional two one-to-one tutorial sessions during the quarter will be arranged for each student to prepare for their language projects.

For both graduates and undergraduates. The goal of this sequence is to help students develop advanced proficiency in reading, listening, speaking, and writing. This sequence emphasizes more advanced grammatical structures, and requires discussion in Chinese on topics relevant to modern China. Over the course of this sequence, the emphasis will shift to authentic Chinese texts in an effort to better prepare students to deal with original Chinese source materials. Class meets for five one-hour sessions each week.

A reading of the Yijing, its commentaries, and the uses to which it is put in Confucianist, Daoist and Buddhist traditions.

This year we will read ritual texts from the Dunhuang cache –yuanwen, zhaiwen, huanwen, etc– in the context of relevant archaeological finds.

This class explores the history and cultural life of Beijing from the Yuan dynasty to the present. First, in what ways did the city develop over the course of the past millennium and how did the material space of the city impact people’s daily life? Using materials from archaeology and architecture, we will track the permutation of the city plan, the process of construction and destruction, and the social and cultural life of urban residents. Second, how was Beijing experienced, understood, and represented in varied literary and art forms from the imperial period to today? Through literature (Lao She, Lin Yutang), art (Xu Bing, Song Dong.), and film (directed by Chen Kaige, Jia Zhangke, Guan Hu) that features Beijing and its people, we will study the city not only as an imagined site of remembrance and nostalgia, but also a political site constructing cultural identities and reflecting social conflicts. This class has a Language across the Curriculum section, and we will read selected novels and poems on Beijing.   Open to MAPH students but not PhD students. 

The seminar will focus on classical, medieval, and modern historiography from China, India, and Tibet seeking answers to three general questions: (1) How are senses of historical time created in Asian historiographies by means of rhetorical figures of repetition, parallelism, dramatic emplotment, frame stories, and interweaving storylines? (2) How are historical persons and events given meaning through use of poetic devices, such as comparison, simile, and metaphor? And (3) How do Asian histories impose themselves as realistic accounts of the past by means of authoritative devices using citation of temporal-spatial facts, quotation of authority, and/or reliance on established historical genres? The methods employed to answer these questions are here adapted from pre-modern Asian knowledge systems of literary theory, poetics, dramaturgy, and epistemology, and thus permit looking at other knowledge formations from within the discourse of the traditions themselves.

This course examines how intellectuals in Preindustrial China maintained their independence, as well as their moral compass, in times of inordinate social and political pressure. Systematic thinking on this topic appears early in China, beginning with Confucius and Mencius, but was by no means limited to the Confucian tradition. Zhuangzi (late 4th c. BCE) devoted an entire chapter to the problem. This course will survey some important meditations on the topic from the Classical period, but will focus on the Song dynasty (960-1278) with its rich body of essays, poems, and paintings touching upon the problem of moral autonomy. To supplement our study of primary sources we’ll read secondary sources on Song law, society, and government, as well as relevant secondary studies of European art. Later in the course we will read reflections on Song period Chinese essays by English radicals of the 18th century, and will wrap up with American classics by Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Wendell Berry. Along the way we will learn how to conduct “close readings” of both written and visual materials for clues to the deep, humanistic themes underlying artistic choice.