Fall 2005

ANS 381 • Republican China: Society and Culture

Course Description

This course focuses on China in the years between the fall of the imperial system (1911) and the establishment of the Communist regime (the People's Republic of China) in 1949. It is in this period that the Chinese attempted to transform China into a modern republican nation, able to restore domestic social stability and economic prosperity and rise to a position of power in the international environment. The republican years of China are particularly important for understanding the formation of a Chinese social and cultural identity outside of both the imperial tradition and communist discourse. This course will specifically focus on the transformation of China's social, cultural, and intellectual life that characterize these years, including issues of changing gender roles, emerging perceptions of scientific modernity, the transformation of the family system, the development of an urban cosmopolitan culture, and the impact of Western trends on China's intellectuals.

Texts

Frank Dikotter. Sex, Culture and Modernity in China: Medical Science and the Construction of Sexual Identities in the Early Republican period Lee, Leo Ou-fan. Shanghai Modern: The Flowering of a New Urban Culture in China, 1930-1945. Wakeman, Frederic E., Policing Shanghai, 1927-1937. Selected articles and essays.

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