Must I Be a Man?: Gender, sexuality, and desire

4.0 credits

This course examines representations and expressions of gender, sexuality, and desire in works of Chinese literature from the late 19th- early 21st centuries. What were normative gender expectations and sexual mores? How did they change over time and in shifting socio-political currents? We will read a broad range texts, which include a radical proposal to abolish gender hierarchies in the late Qing; critiques of patriarchal social structures and representations of same-sex desire and the new woman in the early 20th c.; depictions of revolutionary romance and sexual repression under socialism; and the more organic depictions of desire and gender identity that reemerged in the post-Mao era.