Global Literatures 305: Youth & Revolution in Contemporary Chinese Literature & Culture

Nearly all important literary experiments and movements in contemporary Chinese culture and literature refashion the image of the young generation.  This image often serves as the vehicle for cultural revolution and offers a window into major genres and structures within contemporary Chinese culture. This course explores the conceptions and formulations of the “new generation” through selected writers, playwrights, and artists, and in relation to larger socio-historical, cultural and geopolitical movements. This course will expand students’ understanding of youth culture to include a wide array of aesthetic and political appropriations within different frameworks, developing a nuanced understanding of changing cultural constructions of the youth beyond the traditional binary of the alternative and the oppositional. May be taken for credit toward the South Asian and Middle Eastern Studies major or the Chinese minor.