Literary Transformations in Post-Mao China

(4 Credits)

After the death of Mao Zedong and fall of the Gang of Four in 1976, the ideological stranglehold that had suffocated literary production in China during the Cultural Revolution gave way to a flourishing of literary exploration and experimentation. This course will look closely at the trajectories, developments, disjunctions, and transformations of literature beginning with the initial post-Mao period and moving through to the present-day. Reading some of the most important works by contemporary PRC writers, we will ask what they can tell us about the current state of Chinese society and what the future might hold.