Mao's China on the Page and on the Stage

Catalog description

The Chinese Communist movement was entwined from the beginning with the arts and particularly with literature. Mao Zedong, himself a poet, believed deeply in the transformative power of art, and the party he led for four decades leveraged literature, theater, film, and other media to help remake the world. This course examines the role of literature and the arts in the development of Chinese Communism; in the implementation of Maoism as a way of life from the 1930s through the 1970s; and in the cultural reckoning with the Maoist legacy that has taken place in China and the Chinese diaspora in the past half-century. Through analysis of poetry, fiction, memoirs, plays, films, and visual art, this course will help students explore the ways artists and writers have engaged with Communism in China as well as the impact of their work.