Rebellious Daughters and Filial Sons of the Chinese Family
Present and Past
Department of Asian Languages
| Winter | Spring | |
|---|---|---|
| Faculty | Ban Wang | Yiqun Zhou |
| Fellows | TBD | TBD |
Selected Texts
Ang Lee. Eat, Drink, Man, Woman (film)
Xi Xi, “A Woman like Me”
Xu Dishan, “The Merchants Wife”
Huo Jianqi, Postman in the Mountain (film)
Ding Ling, “When I was in Xia Village”
Mao Dun, “Spring Silkworm”
Xiao Hong, “Hands”
Ji Junxiang, The Orphan of Zhao
Guan Hanqing, The Injustice Done to Doue
Cao Xueqin, The Dream of the Red Chamber
Shen Fu, Six Records of a Floating Life
Susan Mann and Yu-yin Cheng eds., Under Confucian Eyes: Writings on Gender in Chinese History
Course Description
Leaving home to live in the dorm may be a form of freedom, but this experience also raises the question of disconnection and reconnection with the family. This course will help students think about the family in its enduring role in shaping us as members of a community and citizens of society. Taking the Chinese family as a specific case, we will inquire into the ways the family has been revolted against, broken up, critiqued, and transformed through social and political changes. We will look at the stern authority of the father, nourishing care of the mother, the supportive or antagonistic relations of siblings, and the extension of these relations in kinship community and society. We will consider how the notions of love, emotion, and gender play into the formation of the family and how the family connects with interpersonal and social relations.
The Chinese family is a mix of old and new. The traditional family relations are abandoned, preserved, and re-invented in the modern world. In the winter quarter we will address the modern image of family in 20th century China and the Chinese diaspora in the US. We will consider modernization, colonialism, revolution, dislocation, war, and immigration in disrupting traditional home and family and will read about the poignant attempts to re-build family relations. In the spring quarter we will look backward and delve into the layers of millennial tradition sedimented from the ancient times up to the end of the 19th century. These layers may resurface or submerge in the present, and an awareness of them will deepen our understanding of the modern family. This back-to-the-future view crystallizes in this tension: the modern image of the individual as the sole shaper of self, estranged from the family, is matched by an equally strong pull to restore and preserve inherited family morality and communal relations.
We will further explore these questions: Can self-realization be achieved without ties to family and community? Is the life of independent individuals more meaningful than the one wedded to a network of community and shared values? What is the gender role of men and women in the changing faces of the family? What kinds of stories and links are constructed to bridge the gap between the individual and community? We will use texts of imaginative creation and expression—short stories, novels, films and dramas – to explore the intricacy and possibilities in the tension between individual and community.