Alexei Kamran Ditter
Medieval and late imperial Chinese prose, poetry, and fiction; Chinese literary theory; Chinese literary history. On sabbatical 2014–15.
Jing Jiang
Modern Chinese literature and culture, theories of modernity, nationalism, subjectivity, gender studies, film studies.
Hyong G. Rhew
Classical Chinese literature, Chinese literary theory, Chinese intellectual history, Korean literature.
Kevin Tsai
Chinese fiction and drama, translation, rhetoric, gender, and Roman poetry.
The Chinese department offers courses that provide training in the Chinese language and in the critical appreciation of Chinese literature, both classical and modern.
Language instruction in the first two years emphasizes a solid grounding in the basic skills of speaking, listening, reading, and writing. The focus of the third year of Chinese class is on students’ acquisition of near-native fluency in spoken Chinese, competence in reading a variety of contemporary texts (with a dictionary), and the ability to employ different registers and genres of Chinese in their writing. A semester course in classical Chinese is also offered to 300-level students so they will be able to read classical texts in the original. Another semester course in the fourth year completes the cycle of Chinese language training at the undergraduate level.
The literature offerings are designed to provide students with opportunities to read with critical insight all the major genres of Chinese literature in the historical, cultural, and theoretical contexts of the relevant texts. The courses are taught in English, using texts in translation. Students may enroll in the courses as either literature or Chinese. An additional conference hour will be arranged for students wishing to read the original texts. Courses in related subjects, such as Chinese intellectual history, are also offered.
The department participates in the interdisciplinary humanities course (Humanities 230) Foundations of Chinese Civilization, which is a required course for Chinese majors. A description of the course can be found in the humanities section of this catalog.
The Chinese House, a residence hall, is the center of extracurricular activities for students interested in Chinese culture. The resident Chinese language scholar offers tutoring, conversation sessions, and other assistance to students taking Chinese.
Study Abroad
The importance of a period of total immersion in a target-language environment cannot be overemphasized for learners of Chinese. Chinese majors are strongly encouraged to apply to Reed-sponsored study programs in China. The Chinese department assists in the arrangement of such study trips and assesses the transcripts brought back from overseas for credit transfer.
Prerequisites for the Major
Students who wish to major in Chinese must have at least second-year language proficiency.
Junior Qualifying Examination
Students must initiate the junior qualifying examination process by contacting a Chinese department faculty member at least one semester prior to the time of the intended completion of the qualifying examination.
Requirements for the Major
- A minimum of five units at the 300 and 400 levels, including one unit of third-year Chinese, one unit of classical Chinese, and one unit of either classical Chinese literature or modern and contemporary Chinese literature.
- Humanities 230—Foundations of Chinese Civilization.
- A minimum of one unit in Chinese history, Chinese art history, Chinese anthropology, or Chinese religious thought, to be taken in the relevant departments.
- Chinese 470—thesis.
Recommended (but not required) for the major: an additional unit in Chinese history, Chinese art history, Chinese anthropology, or Chinese religious thought, or any other Asia-related course that the college may offer.
Chinese 110 - First-Year Chinese
Full course for one year. A beginner’s course in standard (Mandarin) modern spoken and written Chinese, aimed at building a solid foundation in all its aspects: pronunciation (especially the tones), syntax, and basic vocabulary. Attention is given to a balanced development of all the basic skills of the language: listening and reading comprehension, speaking, and writing. Pinyin is the romanization system used in this and all other Chinese language courses. Both the traditional and simplified characters are taught. Students are expected to read both and write one of the two versions. Lecture-conference.
Chinese 210 - Second-Year Chinese
Full course for one year. This course is designed to build the skills of students who have studied at least one year of Chinese (or equivalent) to achieve intermediate-level proficiency in the oral and written use of the language through speaking, listening, reading, and writing. Emphasis in the course will be placed on learning to recognize and reproduce the natural flow of the spoken language, expanding vocabulary, and learning to write short essays in Chinese. Prerequisite: Chinese 110 or acceptance through placement test. Lecture-conference.
Chinese 311 - Third-Year Chinese
Full course for one semester. This course is designed for students who have completed at least two years of Chinese language (or equivalent). The course will focus on student acquisition of near-native fluency in spoken Chinese, competence in reading a variety of contemporary texts (with a dictionary), and employment of different registers and genres of Chinese in students’ writing. Prerequisite: Chinese 210 or acceptance through placement test. Conference.
Chinese 316 - Classical Chinese
Full course for one semester. Intensive introduction to the grammar of classical Chinese through the study of selections from ancient literary, historical, and philosophical texts. Readings include the Analects, Mencius, Zhuangzi, Shiji, and Tang-Song prose essays. Conducted in Chinese. Prerequisite: Chinese 210 or equivalent. Conference.
Chinese 324 - Genres of Memory in Medieval China
Full course for one semester. This course will examine how genres and generic conventions structured the construction and reception of memory (of place, event, or person) within Chinese literature of the third through tenth centuries. Both primary and secondary materials are in English. Students who take the course for Chinese credit meet for additional tutoring to read parts of the texts in the original. Prerequisite: sophomore standing. Conference. Cross-listed as Literature 324.
Not offered 2014—15.
Chinese 325 - Songs to Lost Music: Readings in Ci-Poetry
Full course for one semester. This course investigates the rise and the development of ci-poetry, a genre related closely to music. The formal features and their emotional qualities, major modes of expression, and different stages of its development from the ninth to the thirteenth century are the foci in the close reading of selected poems. Prerequisite: sophomore standing. Conference. Cross-listed as Literature 325.
Not offered 2014—15.
Chinese 326 - The Knight-Errant Tradition in Chinese Literature and Film
Full course for one semester. This course surveys the literary and filmic representations of the Chinese knight-errant (wuxia) from antiquity to the present day. If ancient philosophers regarded the knight-errant as super-moral, transgressive, and anti-authoritarian, this portrait evolved in historiography, fiction, and film to assimilate a wide range of gender, social, and literary issues within its framework of the heroic narrative. As such, the representations of the knight-errant offer a unique vantage point for Chinese society and culture. The course will examine the knight-errant in classical tales and in early modern vernacular novels, and move on to explore the knight-errant in modernity, including topics such as the birth of the Cantonese school of wuxia fiction, Jin Yong and his debt to Cervantes, and the explosion of popular Hong Kong action cinema, as well as art house films by Won Kar-wai and Zhang Yimou. Prerequisite: Sophomore standing or consent of the instructor; for students enrolling in Chinese credit, Chinese 210 or equivalent. Conference. Cross-listed as Literature 326.
Chinese 328 - The Aesthetics of Medieval Chinese Poetry
Full course for one semester. This course examines the golden ages of Chinese poetry—the Tang and Song Dynasties. How do issues such as gender, literati identity, historical consciousness, etc. contribute to medieval poets’ aesthetic visions? What is Chan poetry all about? As aesthetics is party later construction, we will also explore how critics and writers made sense of Tang-Song poetry, including Late Imperial critics and American modernist poets. This course will be rounded out by creative exercises in English to develop a greater sense of form and style. Students who take the course for Chinese credit meet for additional tutoring to read parts of the texts in the original. Prerequisite: Sophomore standing or consent of the instructor. Conference. Cross-listed as Literature 328.
Chinese 333 - The Powerful Women of Early and Medieval China in History, Fiction, and Modern Media
Full course for one semester. This interdisciplinary course examines portrayals of ruling-class women who lived during the medieval period in China and who have become a part of the Chinese literary-historical tradition. The goal is to foster critical thinking in terms of history as a developing narrative, subject to transformation and reinterpretation. Following a chronological timeline based on the dates of the women in question, the course examines premodern accounts and modern transformations in a variety of media. Readings are in English. Students who take the course for Chinese credit meet for additional tutoring to read parts of the text in the original. Prerequisite: sophomore standing. Conference. Cross-listed as Literature 333.
Not offered 2014—15.
Chinese 334 - The Yijing: Text and Tradition of the Book of Changes
Full course for one semester. The Yijing, or Book of Changes, is a text of limitless possibilities. This course explores various strategies of reading the text and examines philosophical, religious, historical, and literary critical implications of the text and the tradition associated with it. The system and the language of the 64 hexagrams and various layers of attached verbalization are the focus of investigation. Readings are in English. Students who take the course for Chinese credit meet for additional tutoring to read parts of the text in the original. Prerequisite: sophomore standing. Conference. Cross-listed as Literature 334.
Chinese 345 - Self, Stage, and Society: An Excursion into Chinese Drama
Full course for one semester. This course introduces students to representative works of Chinese drama from the mid-imperial era (approximately from the tenth to fourteenth century) to the period of cultural revolution (1966–76). The justification for spanning the conventional divide between the premodern and modern periods is the lasting appeal of the early theatrical masterpieces through the ages, in terms of both dramatic forms and thematic matters. This course will enable students to break out of the confines of the rigid dichotomy between tradition and modernity to see the powerful resonance between the two, and to understand how the educated class through the ages has carved out their own identity through projecting their aspirations for an ideal society or their indignations over an imperfect one. Readings include works by Guan Hanqing, Wang Shifu, Tang Xianzu, Guo Moruo, Ouyang Yuqian, Cao Yu, and Tian Han, among others. Readings are available in English translation. Students taking the course for Chinese credit will meet for an additional hour of reading in the original language. Prerequisite: Sophomore standing or consent of the instructor. Conference. Cross-listed as Literature 345.
Not offered 2014—15.
Chinese 346 - Post-Mao Chinese Fiction and Film
Full course for one semester. This course investigates interactions between literary production (focusing primarily on fiction) and filmmaking since the end of the Cultural Revolution in 1976. Issues to be explored include the shared sociohistorical context that conditioned the production of these two cultural forms, and the multivalent differences between them in terms of intended audience, narrative modes, and thematic concerns. Readings are in translation, and films selected are subtitled in English. No Chinese language training is required. Readings in the original Chinese and additional instruction will be offered for students taking this course for Chinese credit. Prerequisite: sophomore standing. Conference. Cross-listed as Literature 346.
Not offered 2014—15.
Chinese 355 - Early Chinese Philosophical Texts
Full course for one semester. This course examines various philosophical discourses in the early period leading to the unification in 221 BC. It is a selective discussion of a few major philosophical texts and schools of thought. We investigate the predominant interest in human nature and cultivation, the epistemological models for understanding such emphases, and the implications of Chinese epistemology. Readings in translation. Students taking the course for Chinese credit will meet for additional hours for the guided reading of selected texts in the original Chinese. Conference. Cross-listed as Literature 355.
Not offered 2014—15.
Chinese 360 - The Social Life of Poetry in the Tang Dynasty (618–907)
Full course for one semester. This course will examine the role poetry played in Tang society, as well as how broader social changes—changing composition of the reading public, new technologies of writing, and developing economies of textual circulation—influenced the ways in which poetry was written, for whom, and with what aims. Both primary and secondary materials are in English. Students who take the course for Chinese credit meet for additional tutoring to read parts of the texts in the original. Prerequisite: sophomore standing. Conference. Cross-listed as Literature 360.
Not offered 2014—15.
Chinese 369 - Modernizing Sentiments, Sentimentalizing Modernity
Full course for one semester. Modern Chinese literature, burdened from its inception with the task of nation building, is often read in terms of national allegories, but the extent to which imaginations of new collective and individual identities are articulated in emotive terms merits critical attention. Writers of all kinds share the belief that for China to transform successfully into a modern nation the sentiments of its subjects must be properly reeducated. This course looks at successive models of affective modernity that are valorized or rejected at various junctures of the twentieth century and seeks to understand their vicissitudes in literary history. It also asks at what point nation and emotion part ways and render untenable the assertion that works of modern Chinese literature are always necessarily national allegories. Readings for this course include fiction, supplemented occasionally by poetry and drama, from the late Qing period to contemporary China. An additional hour of class of guided readings in the original will be offered for students taking this course for Chinese credit. Readings are in English. Prerequisite: Sophomore standing. Cross-listed as Literature 369.
Chinese 412 - Selected Topics in Chinese Literature
Full course for one semester. Topics vary, selected from Chinese literature. Readings and instruction in Chinese. Prerequisite: third-year level of Chinese proficiency. Conference.
Chinese 470 - Thesis
One-half or full course for one year.
Chinese 481 - Independent Study
One-half or full course for one semester. Prerequisite: approval of instructor and division.