Contemporary Chinese Popular Culture

3 units

This course surveys a century of Chinese popular media and culture—from left-wing and socialist cinema to social media platforms, short video, indie rock, and AI-driven image generation. Along the way, we’ll ask big questions: How do popular media shape what “modern life” feels like? How do they mobilize revolution and war? How do they produce, normalize, and contest identities (national, racial/ethnic, gendered)? And how do they reflect and remake socialism/post-socialism, colonialism/neo-colonialism, and global capitalism? We’ll move across cinema, animation, music, and today’s platform media, studying Chinese popular culture in global and comparative perspective across mainland China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong. You’ll practice close analysis of how media works (technology, form, aesthetics) and what it does (ideology, sensory experience, and everyday interactive use). Screenings and discussions will feature key works such as Street Angel (Yuan Muzhi), Dislocation (Huang Jianxin, 1986), A Bright Summer Day (Edward Yang, 1991), Comrades, Almost a Love Story / Tian Mi Mi (Peter Ho-sun Chan, 1996), Lust, Caution (Ang Lee, 2007), and Dragonfly Eyes (Xu Bing, 2017). Beyond film, we’ll also examine contemporary media practices and phenomena including C-pop, fandom, TikTok/Douyin short video, digital filters, AI and robotics, and multimedia art installations. Classes combine lectures, discussion, and screenings. No prior coursework in Chinese studies or Chinese language is necessary. Alongside writing and discussion, you’ll have opportunities to experiment with multimedia artmaking as a form of critical thinking and creative expression. Fulfills modern elective for EALC major.