Environment and Society in Modern Chinese Literature & Visual Culture

This course covers the most important topics and texts in both environmental humanities and modern Chinese literature, film, and culture. Thematically, this course focuses on deforestation, chemical pollution, climate change, ethnicity, toxic waste, and the extinction of species. The readings include literature, film, popular culture, environmental history, and new media. We will also read important theories as analytical tools by Rob Nixon, Karen Thornber, Ursula Heise, Dipesh Chakrabarty, Anna Tsing, William Cronon, etc. Each thematic topic is paired with a key concept in environmental humanities so that students can situate their study within the scholarship of environmental humanities. We will also explore Chinese environmental imaginations and realities from East Asian, comparative, global, as well as interdisciplinary perspectives.

All materials in English; No Chinese language required. Class discussions in English.

Beyond Earth: Reaching into the Cosmos through Science, Science Fiction, and Language

The aim of the course is to foster in students a planetary perspective, to see Earth in its context of the cosmos and to see humans in their relation to real or possible forms of life in the universe. The obsession with outer space is found among scientists, business people and politicians, in deed and story, in film, and even computer games. If we are to fully appreciate the potential of space, we must also consider the search for intelligent life in its scientific and societal aspects, and investigate how we could adapt our systems of communication to reach species across distances that may be physically insurmountable. This interdisciplinary course will be taught by scholars from distinct cultural and linguistic backgrounds. Course materials will be taken from scientific literature, the history of science, and science fiction. We will explore scientific writing and reasoning, the space race between global powers, space travel, and colonization, and the promise and pitfalls of interspecies and interspace communication. A planetary perspective, once achieved, can change the way one sees other inhabitants of this planet – as partners in survival in a universe which sets enormous odds against it, or as unwelcome intruders grasping for scant resources within this thin epidermis of soil, air, and water which surrounds Earth and makes our lives possible.

(Co-taught with Prof. Tom Werner)

Elementary Chinese 

This course is for students with no prior experience in Chinese. Using a proficiency-oriented approach, students will develop contextually appropriate interpersonal communication skills in both written and spoken Chinese, develop reading and listening skills through various media, understand fundamental grammar, acquire vocabulary, and gain a basic understanding of Chinese cultures through class and extracurricular activities. Regular homework, quizzes, tests, and participation in class are mandatory (four in-class hours per week). Students will learn the phonetic transcriptions of Chinese (Pinyin) for speaking and listening as well as Chinese characters for reading and writing. The elementary level is also designed to help students learn to reflect and draw upon strategies used by good language learners in their second language study.