Advanced Topics in Chinese Literature and Culture (300-0-20)
Topic
Sinophobia, Yellow Peril, and other Fantasies of C
Instructors
Corey Byrnes
847/467-3314
1880 Campus Drive, Kresge Hall, Office 4-548
Office Hours: Varies quarter to quarter, please check with instructor.
Meeting Info
Kresge 4438 Asian LC Sem Rm: Tues, Thurs 2:00PM - 3:20PM
Overview of class
AY24 China has long been an object of fascination and anxiety in the Euro-American imagination. In recent decades, a politicized and racialized discourse of a "rising" China has constructed that nation as an existential threat to America's global hegemony. As a figure of possibility rather than probability, threat refers not to what is likely to happen but to what could conceivably happen. Threat, like risk, requires acts of the imagination, speculative fictions designed not simply to create fear but to inspire action. This course offers both a critical history of those speculative and often sensational visions of a threatening China (in literature, film, visual culture, and other media) as well as an introduction to key theoretical texts that allow us to better understand how China has been constructed as an object of imagination from the19th century to the present day. Rather than simply centering on "Western" imaginaries, however, this course stages a broad dialogue between global visions of China and expressions of cultural, environmental, and political threat from within the Sinophone world. It asks how shared anxieties manifest in competing discourses of threat within and outside of China.
Teaching Method
Discussion
Evaluation Method
Tentative Evaluation Breakdown
Participation and Preparation (15%)
Short Essays: 30%
Final Essay Proposal: 10%
Final Essay: 45%
Class Materials (Required)
Ling Ma, Severance (ISBN 1250214998)
Class Attributes
Advanced Expression
Literature and Arts Foundational Discipline
Literature & Fine Arts Distro Area
Global Perspectives on Power, Justice, and Equity