SYLLABUS
WEEKLY READING SCHEDULE
Note: please keep an eye on the online syllabus as it may be modified slightly over the course of the semester. Books and anthologies from which chapters and essays have been copied for e-reserves also are available on main reserve. See reserve list (link can be found at top of each page of the course website).
INTRODUCTION: BASIC DEFINITIONS AND QUESTIONS ABOUT THE TERMS OF THE COURSE: Visuality, Modernity, and East/West
Week One : Perspectives on Modern China
Blog #1: time for introductions! Please post to our class blog a picture of a thing (a painting, a movie, a toothbrush) that when you first saw it stopped you in your tracks and made you think about seeing and vision with a few notes about why (it doesn't need to be profound; simply think about what it was about the picture or object that gave you pause). Please post by conference on Tuesday; we'll discuss them in conference that day. Our blog is http://www.shanghaimodern.blogspot.com PLEASE POST A PICTURE!
Sept 1 - (Tu): Introduction to Critical Terms
- discussion of terms of course: VISION & VISUAITY
- Marita Sturken and Lisa Cartwright, "Introduction to Practices of Looking," in Visual Culture, eds. J. Morra and M. Smith (New York: Routledge, 2006), 1: 27-33. (main reserve and PDF)
Sept 3 - (Th): What is "Modern Chinese Art?" A Case Study of Chang Dai-chien's Painting Practice
- discussion of terms of course: MODERN & CHINESE
- Rosalind E Krauss,"The Originality of the Avant-Garde" in The Originality of the Avant-Garde and Other Modernist Myths (Cambridge, MA and London: MIT Press, 1989), 151-170. (main reserve)
- OPTIONAL: Fu Shen, Challenging the Past: The Paintings of Chang Dai-chien (Seattle and London: University of Washington Press in association with Sackler Gallery, 1991), chpt 3 "Painting Theory," 32-47. (e-reserves and doc file).
- I will screen a section of Carma Hinton's documentary "Abode of Illusion: The life and art of Chang Dai-chien (1899-1983)" (1993) during conference
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PART ONE: VISUAL MODERNITY IN LATE IMPERIAL CHINA (ca. 1800-1911): INCURSIONS OF "THE WEST" INTO CHINA AND CHINESE RESPONSES
Week Two: Chinese Views, Chinese Spaces
Blog #2:
This week we are going to try to get some sense of what made late 19th-century Shanghai "Chinese;" what is particularly Chinese about the city (if anything). This will aid us in mapping changes to the city over the coming decades. The first two articles, however, do not address Shanghai specifically, but instead discuss larger cultural beliefs and practices of seeing. On Thursday we turn to the architecture of the city of Shanghai, "Paris of the Orient," and how it was different and similar to Paris. For your blog assignment, please consult the contentDM image database, using the search terms "Shanghai architecture," and select two buildings to compare which you think help to give Shanghai its distinctive profile as a city. Due Wednesday by 10 pm.
Sept 8- (Tu) : Vision and Visuality in Early Modern China
- Norman Bryson, "The Gaze in the Expanded Field" in Vision and Visuality, ed. Hal Foster (New York: The New Press, 1988), 86-113. (e-reserves).
- Anne Burkus-Chasson, "'Clouds and Mists That Emanate and Sink Away': Shitao's Waterfall on Mount Lu and Practices of Observation in the Seventeeth Century," Art History 19, no. 2 (June 1996): 168-90. (search Reed library database under journal title; available in electronic form through Academic Search Premier).
Sept 10- (Th) : Shanghai, "Paris of the East"
- Jonathan Hay, "Painting and the Built Environment in Late Nineteenth-Century Shanghai," Chinese Art Modern Expressions, ed Maxwell Hearn (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2001), 61-101. (main reserve and PDF)
- Walter Benjamin, "Paris, Capital of the Nineteenth Century," excerpted in Rethinking Architecture: A Reader in Cultural History, ed. Neil Leach (London: Routledge, 1997), 33-40. (PDF)
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Week Three: Ren Bonian (Ren Yi) and the Late Nineteenth-Century Shanghai School of Painting (haipai)
Blog #3: Our focus this week is on the Shanghai celebrity artist Ren Bonian (also known as Ren Yi). Chose one of his paintings, either from an article on from the content DM database, and do a formal analysis of it with an eye to passages of visual ambiguity, the things that beg for further analysis and questions. Due Wednesday by 10 pm.
Sept 15- (Tu): Borders and Contact Zones in Shanghai School Painting (haipai)
- Yu-chih Lai, "Remapping Borders: Ren Bonian's Frontier Paintings and Urban Life in 1880s Shanghai," The Art Bulletin 86, no. 3 (September 2004): 550-572 (available through Academic Search Premier, not yet available through JSTOR).
Sept 17 - (Th): Between Camera and Paintbrush
- John Thomson, Through China with a Camera (Westminster: A Constable & Co, 1898), excerpt: 29-31 "Chinese Artists" (e-reserves)
- Richard Vinograd, "Satire and Situation: Images of the Artist in Late Nineteenth-Century China," Phoebus 8 (1998): 110-131. (e-reserves)
- Zhang Hongxing, "From Slender Eyes to Round: A Study of Ren Yi's Portraiture in the Context of Contemporary Photography" (1994 manuscript)
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Week Four: China Design Now: the City
Blog #4: We will read Wu Hung's overview of phoeography in China from the Maoist era (1949-1976) and the Cultural Revolution (1966-76) through today. Select one of the photographs by Hu Ying from the "Shanghai Living" section of the China Design Now catalog (please scan and upload to the blog). Consider: what is the political resonance of "realism" in Chinese photographic art traditions? What is the formal relationship of the photograph you selected with photographs dating to the Cultural Revolution? Why include Hu's photograph in a show about Shanghai as a "Dream City?" Due Monday by 10 pm.
Note: for a schedule of films on China being screened at the Pacific NW Film Center in conjunction with the "China Design Now" show at the Portland Art Museum, click here.
Sept 22 (Tu) - Picturing Everyday Life
- China Design Now catalog, Lauren Parker and Zhang Hongxing's introduction, 18-31; Yin Zhixian, "Home: A Chinese Middle-Class Concept," 102-105; Lauren Parker, "Shanghai: Dream City," 90-100; Hu Ying, "Shanghai Living," 115-126. (main reserve)
- Wu Hung and Christopher Phillips, Between past and future : new photography and video from China (Chicago: Smart Gallery, 2004), 11-36. (4 copies on main reserve).
Sept 24 (Th) - Youth Culture
- China Design Now catalog; Li Wen, "Live and Loud: A Tour of 21st-Century Urban Youth Culture," 110-114. (main reserve)
- Susan Fernsebner, "A People's Playthings: Toys, Childhood, and Chinese Identity, 1909-1933." Post-Colonial Studies 6, no. 3 (Novermber 2003): 269-93. (online at Academic Search Premier)
- China Design Now: Yue-sai Wa wa and Lie Bao concept car (Rebecca)
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PART THREE: EXPANSION AND INTENSIFICATION OF THE DEBATE ON MODERNITY IN REPUBLICAN-ERA CHINA (1911-1949)
Week Five: China Design Now: Fashion
Blog #5: Shanghai is characterized as a "Dream City" on the V&A website (click here), where "fashion and lifestyle" are traces of those dreams. On this website or the PDF from PAM, select one or two of the images of fashion from today and from the Republican era, and question through comparison how they speak to this idea of life as a "dream" through fashion. Due Wednesday by 10 pm.
Sept 29 - (Tu): Fashioning Modernity: Qipao Dresses and Unbound Feet
- Dorothy Ko, "Jazzing into Modernity: High Heels, Platforms, and Lotus Shoes," in China Chic: East Meets West, ed. Valerie Steele and John Major (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1999), 140-153. (main reserve)
- Bao Mingxin, "Shanghai Fashion in the 1930s," Shanghai Modern (Munich: Museum Villa Stuck, 2004), 318-334. (main reserve)
- China Design Now catalog, Bao Mingxin and Lu Lijun, "A Brief History of Fashion Design," 106-109.
- China Design Now: garments (Manny), cover designs for Vision Magazine (Olivia)
Oct 1 - (Th): The Modern Woman and Consumer Culture
- Francesca Dal Lago, "Crossed Legs in 1930s Shanghai: How 'Modern' the Modern Woman?" East Asian History 19 (June 2000): 103-144. (e-reserve)
- essay about consumer culture TBA
- Liang You: The Young Companion
- China Design Now: Wang Shya's Pearl of the Orient and Yue-sai's cosmetic set (Marvin), The Four Great Things (Evelyn), furniture (Becky)
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Week Six: Exhibiting Modernity
Blog #6: This week we will be discussing what Heidegger aptly calls the "world of the picture" or exhibition culture; a new modern world in which pictures come to define that very notion of newness and modernity, especially through display and exhibitions. More specifically, we will consider the views of China that reformers at the turn of the 20th century encouraged at the exhibition (in print or on museum grounds). For your blog entry, however, I would like you to consider choices made by the curators of China Design Now about how they want to present China in the catalog. What kind of visual argument are they trying to make? Due Wednesday.
OCTOBER 5 MONDAY meeting with docents at 9 am, Portland Art Museum
Oct 6 - (Tu): China's First Museum
- Lisa Claypool, "Zhang Jian and China's First Museum," Journal of Asian Studies 64, no. 3 (August 2005): 567-604. (JSTOR)
Oct 8 - (Th): The Exhibitionary Impulse
- Peter de Bolla, "The Visibility of Visuality" in Vision in Context, eds. Teresa Brennan and Martin Jay (New York and London: Routledge, 1996), 65-79. (PDF)
- Lisa Claypool, "Seeing the Nation: Chinese Painting in the National Essence Journal (1905-1911), Exhibition Culture, and Experiments in National Vision" (manuscript PDF).
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Week Seven: Shifting Modes of Representation: Print Culture
Blog #7: chose a lithograph for discussion from the translated set at Lisa's office door, and post to the blog your thoughts about the kind of viewing experience it encourages.
Oct 13 - (Tu): The Nineteenth-Century Lithograph Revisited
- Laikwan Pang, "The Pictorial Turn: Realism, Modernity, and China's Print Culture in the Late Nineteenth Century," Visual Studies 20, no. 1 (April 2005): 16-36 (Academic Search Premier)
- Don Cohn, Vignettes from the Chinese: Lithographs from Shanghai in the Late Nineteenth Century (Hong Kong: Renditions Paperback, 1987). Copy at Lisa's office, Lib 321.
Oct 15 - (Th): Photography's Magical Modernity
- Laikwan Pang, "Magic and Modernity in China," positions 12, no 2 (2004): 299-327 (Project Muse)
- Don Slater, "Photography and Modern Vision: The spectacle of 'modern magic,'" in Visual Culture, ed. Chris Jenks (London and New York: Routledge, 1996), 218-37. (e-reserves)
- Long Chin San, "Composite Pictures and Chinese Art (1942)," Shanghai Modern (Munich: Museum Villa Stuck, 2004), 154-73. (main reserve)
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Oct 17-25 Fall Break
Weeks Eight-Nine: Spectatorship, Power, and Knowledge: Cinema in Shanghai
This week I would like you to think about cinema and violence, as it is expressed in the notion of the "gaze." We will compare violence in a 1930s movie with contemporary representations of the city, leading up to a discussion of Li Ning's video work for our show. From now through November 11, we will use the blog for sharing information about the show we are curating. There will not be weekly blog "assignments" per se, but I do expect you to post your thoughts, ideas, and relevant information on the blog. I want to underscore this point: since we are on a short clock, you must share your thoughts and be aware of what others are posting for us to pull the show together.
OBJECTS IN SHOW:
physical and psychological violence: Li Ning's video works
the "youth generation:" designer toys (design your toys in response to Li Ning's video works?)
books as spaces for represenation of violence: artist's books in Special Collections and Lisa's collection: Ai Weiwei, Xu Bing, Wang Chao, Zhang Xinmin
censorship/propaganda as violence: slogans from the Beijing Olympics, Shanghai 2010 World Expo (example: "Better City, Better Life" 城市让生活更美好 which will be printed as vinyl cutouts and put on the windows
Oct 27- (Tu): The Cinematic Gaze
- Laura Mulvey, "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema," in Visual and Other Pleasures (New York: Macmillan, 1989). (e-reserves).
- Leo Oufan Lee, Shanghai Modern: The Flowering of a New Urban Culture in China, 1930-1945 (Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press, 1999), 190-231 "Face, Body and the City: The Fiction of Liu Na'ou and Mu Shiying" (5 copies on main reserve)
Oct 29 - (Th): discussion of research projects and labels
NOV 1 - (Sun): Wong Kar-wai, "In the Mood for Love" (2000), 4-6 pm. Psychology 105
Nov 3 - (Tu): Shanghai at the movies
discussion of "The Goddess," "In the Mood for Love," "Shanghai Triad" during first half of conference; discussion of show during second half
- Zheng Dongtian, "Films and Shanghai," Shanghai Modern (Munich: Museum Villa Stuck, 2004), 298-307. (main reserve)
- Hu Die, "A Tour of a German Film Studio," Shanghai Modern (Munich: Museum Villa Stuck, 2004), 308-315. (main reserve)
- Laikwan Pang, "Women's Stories On-Screen versus Off Screen," in Building a New China in Cinema: The Chinese Left-wing Cinema Movement, 1932-1937 (New York and Oxford: Rowman & Littlefield). (PDF)
Nov 5 - (Th): Li Ning, video work
Week Ten: Curating The Cleaners and Mass Media
Nov 8 (Mon): Mark Swislocki, Reed '92, Brown University, will speak on Shanghai food culture at 5 pm, Biology 19. ATTENDANCE REQUIRED.
Nov 9 - (Tu): generating questions for Li Ning, and making propaganda
Nov 10- (W): XU BING AT THE PORTLAND ART MUSEUM 5:30-6:30 on WEDNESDAY
Nov 11 (Th): Calligraphy and Typography
- Lothar Ledderose, "Aesthetic Appropriation of Ancient Calligraphy in Modern China," Chinese Art Modern Expressions (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2001), 213-245. (main reserve)
- Judy Andrews and Shen Kuiyi, excerpt from "Commercial Art and China's Modernization," in A Century in Crisis: Modernity and Tradition in the Art of Twentieth Century China (New York: Guggenheim Museum, 1998), 184-195. (main reserve)
- WJT Mitchell, "Word and Image," in Critical Terms for Art History, 2d ed., eds. Schiff and Nelson (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001), PDF.
- dicussion of Xu Bing's presentation and work. See his website xubingdotcom
Week Eleven: Curating the Cleaners and Mass Media, continued
Nov 16
- (Tu): (Th): From China to Germany and Back: Woodcut Prints
We will to look at Käthe Kollwitz prints from the Reed Collection in conference. They include: 1990.087 Head of a man, from Galeries St. Etienne label, 1922, woodcut on rice paper, 2 3/4" x 2 5/8"; 1990.088 Inspiration, 1905, etching, 21 3/4" x 12 1/8"; 1990.089 Parents, 1919, lithograph, 13 1/2" x 19 1/2"; 1990.086 Four Men in a Tavern, date unknown, etching
- Shen Kuiyi, "The Modernist Woodcut Movement in 1930s China," Shanghai Modern (Munich: Museum Villa Stuck, 2004), 262-289. (main reserve)
- Lu Xun, "Written in the Deep of the Night: On Käthe Kollwitz (7 April 1936)," Shanghai Modern (Munich: Museum Villa Stuck, 2004), 290-291. (main reserve)
- Lu Xun, "A Defence of 'Picture Books' (1932)," Shanghai Modern (Munich: Museum Villa Stuck, 2004), 292-295. (main reserve)
- Alessandra Comini, "Kollwitz in Context" in Käthe Kollwitz (Washington, DC: National Gallery of Art, 1992), 89-114. (e-reserve)
Nov 18 - final preparation for the exhibit
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Week Twelve: Ruan Lingyu Now
Nov 24 - (Tu): watch "Center Stage"
November 25-29 Thanksgiving Vacation
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Week Thirteen: Modern Shanghai in Contemporary China
Dec 1- (Tu): "Center Stage" continued
- readings TBA
Dec 3 - (Th): The Legacy of the Modern in Post-Mao 1980s China
- Martina Köppel-Yang, Semiotic Warfare: The Chinese Avant-garde, 1979-1989, A Semiotic Analysis (Hong Kong: timezone 8, 2003), pp. 22-27; 66-74; 76-91; 132-151 (for PDF files, click here: Yang1, Yang2, Yang3).
- Richard Vinograd, "Relocations: Spaces of Chinese Visual Modernity," in Chinese Art, Modern Expressions (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2004), 162-181 (main reserve)
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Dec 5 - (Tu): The Legacy Continues: Course wrap-up