Popular Culture in Contemporary China

Catalog description

This rise of China as a global power has drawn critical attention from all over the world from various perspectives. This course will approach this phenomenon from the angle of popular culture. Examining contemporary Chinese popular culture in Mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan, this course considers the process of globalization, cultural exchanges among China, European, America, and Africa, the cultural flows among East Asian popular culture, particularly, with Japan and Korea, as well as interactions among Sinophone communities around the world. This course takes an interdisciplinary methodology, incorporating materials in the form of literature, films, TV series, pop music, reality shows, online forums, video games, and so on, to explore how economic development, technological innovations, and political atmosphere shape the youth culture, gender dynamics, class structure and many other issues on a daily basis.