150103 VO Chinese Cultural Spaces (2023S)

In this lecture, students are introduced to the histories and cultures of the Chinese-speaking region as well as aspects of global Sinophone cultural production. Selected theoretical issues on questions of what constitutes “China” and “Chinese culture(s)” and on the relationship between the cultures of mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and other local or diasporic Chinese cultures and identities will be illustrated by examples across various cultural domains such as literature, film, the performing and visual arts, media, and popular culture. The focus will be on cultural developments since the twentieth-century. At the end of the course, students will have acquired a basic understanding of the main socio-historical phenomena that have shaped Chinese cultural communities in Asia and globally, also in relation to parallel developments in mainland China. They will have gained a critical perspective on questions of identity, ethnicity, migration, transnationalism, multiculturalism, multilingualism, and on the formation of cultural memory across the Chinese-speaking world. They will, moreover, be familiar with academic debates on relevant concepts such as diaspora, Chineseness, and the Sinophone.