HIS 2240 - Modern China in Film

Credits: 4.00
This is a course on Modern Chinese history (1749-2008). We are going to look at films as a historian would. Students will gain a broad understanding of modern China’s historical development, from the mid-eighteenth century to the 2008 Olympic Games to the present. We will focus on the connection between an opium-war-inflicted China and a cacophonous post-socialism China. Movies will include Good Earth, Once Upon a Time in China, Early Spring in a Town, Lin Family’s Shop, To Live, Please Vote Me, Not One Less, Chinese Odyssey, Still Life, and Young and Restless in China. Using films as texts, we will look at social and cultural transformation in modern China and representations of modern Chinese history presented in films. By exploring modern China in films, the course encourages critical reflection on historical interpretations of modern China.
McDaniel Plan: International Nonwestern; Social, Cultural, and Historical Understanding