Chinese Studies Commons^™

Translated Literature In The Narrative Of Modern Chinese Literary History, Binghui Song

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

Since around the turn of 19th century, China has seen a large corpus of translated literature, and its great influence on Chinese literature has led to the intensive discussion of its classification, its relationship to local literature and its entrance into Chinese literature from the perspective of comparative studies, translation and cultural studies, and Chinese literary history studies. The paper starts from literary "categorical concepts," "mediation", and "indeterminacy" to clarify some literary conceptual premises to prepare for the literary historical narration of translated literature.

Yan'an Lu Xun College Of Art Before And After "The Rectification Movement", Siyun Zhao

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

"Yan'an Rectification Movement" has become an important watershed in Yan'an period and the 20th Century Chinese history. The education policy, aesthetic idea and mores of Lu Xun College of Art changed drastically after rectification movement, and it became the miniature of literature education under wartime conditions. As Yan'an in 1930s is a typical society of wartime communism modal, Lu Xun College of Art focuses on political disciplines more than cultural inheritance. The purpose of education is not to cultivate academic talent with an independent spirit of scientific and truth pursuit, but to develop the better tools of war. The way …

Book Review: Dream Of Ding Village By Yan Lianke, Mike Frick

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Unsurprisingly, the Chinese government levied a “three nos” ban—no sales, no distribution, and no promotion—against Dream of Ding Village after its publication in 2005. Though the storytelling relies heavily on dream sequences, Yan takes little poetic license when exposing the depth of the state’s culpability in spreading HIV among poor, medically-naïve farmers. He is just as uncompromising when detailing how officials denied responsibility for the ensuing AIDS epidemic, even as they profited from its human tragedy. No one in Ding Village receives medical care, mental health counseling, food assistance, or a chance to hold the blood heads legally accountable. Cast …

Philosophical Influences In The Art Of War Found In The Romance Of The Three Kingdoms, Nathaniel Ethan Clark

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

“Philosophical Influences in The Art of Warfound in The Romance of the Three Kingdoms” is an examination of Sunzi’s philosophy about leadership in The Art of War as applied to the moral character, or lack thereof, of historical Han Dynasty leaders, Liu Bei and Cao Cao. In Luo Guanzhong’s The Romance of the Three Kingdoms, the two are fictionalized with oppositional personalities and corresponding philosophical bases. I explore the ways in which their actions embody or reject the philosophy found in Sunzi’s The Art of War.

Whisper Out Loud: Forbidden Topics In China, Meng Shui

Renée Crown University Honors Thesis Projects - All

Whisper Out Loud, Forbidden Topics in China, is an exhibit of art works based on forbidden topics in China mostly around 2010 and 2011. The exhibited collection consisted of two paintings, three sculptures and two installations. The reflective essay talks about the creation of each piece, the stories and meanings behind them, as well as the inspiration, organization and impact of the show as a whole, including images and documentations of the art works.

Chinese International Students' Cross-Cultural Adaptation And Online Communication, Chen Wei Wu

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study explored Chinese international students' computer mediated communication with both Americans and Chinese during their studying in the U.S. based on a Cross-Cultural Adaptation theory. The specific purpose of this study was to test five theorems of the theory with a sample of Chinese international students and to explore how Chinese international students' intercultural transformation, adaptive personality, host communication competence, and their interpersonal and mass communication with both host and ethnic groups associate together.

Does Race Influence Executive Compensation In Chinese Firms?, Elizabeth Mahoney

Business and Economics Honors Papers

In this study, we considered the effects of Chinese cultural and political influences on executive compensation in Chinese firms. The chief focus of this study is on whether the race of executives or the racial composition of the compensation committee affects the average compensation of executives, though other factors such as sales, industry, and compensation committee size were also included in the model. Data was collected from Chinese firms listed on the New York Stock Exchange, with data for the companies gathered for the year 2009 and executive salaries collected for the year 2010.

Changsha: Photographs By Rian Dundon, Rian Dundon

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Rian Dundon, whose photographs have previously appeared at China Beat, will soon be releasing a new book of photography on China, Changsha. Dundon’s book will feature a forward written by friend of the blog Gail Hershatter and includes his photos of and essays on the Hunan province city of Changsha. For more information, and to pre-order a copy of the book, see the book’s website (pre-sales of the book are part of a crowd-funding campaign raising funds for its first run with the publisher, Emphas.is). Below is a special teaser of Changsha material that Dundon has prepared for China Beat …

Pure Land And The Social Order In Twelfth-Century China: An Investigation Of "Longshu’S Treatise On Pure Land", Trevor Davis

Student Work

A 2012-2013 William Prize for best essay in East Asian Studies was awarded to Trevor Davis (Saybrook College '13) for his essay submitted to the History Department, “Pure Land and the Social Order in Twelfth-Century China: An Investigation of Longshu’s Treatise on Pure Land.” (Valerie Hansen, Professor of History, advisor.)

Davis' essay makes a powerful argument about the Pure Land Buddhist Wang Rixiu's understanding of Southern Song (1127-1279) society. Although Pure Land Buddhism is often thought to be egalitarian - or at least to challenge traditional hierarchies - Trevor shows that for Wang Rixiu, an egalitarian Pure Land coexists …

The Human Flesh Search Engine: Democracy, Censorship, And Political Participation In Twenty-First Century China, Vincent Capone

Graduate History Conference, UMass Boston

The Human Flesh Search Engine is a recent, unique phenomenon on the Chinese internet. Comprising of thousands of forum, micro-blog, and entertainment websites and mobilizing the overwhelming number of Chinese internet users, or netizens, the search engine is able to quickly find obscure information and identify seemingly anonymous internet personalities. These websites allow netizens to have their voices heard in an otherwise restrictive government, however these websites also become a hotbed for dissent, with web users highlighting stories and figures which they deem harmful to society. Through clever investigative work, netizens hunt down an individual's identity with the goal of …

Chinese Diasporic Culture Studies In The "Post-National" Age: The Politics Of Discourse And Theoretical Transformation, Feng Lan

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

Under the impact of post-theories, Chinese diasporic culture studies has exhibited a tendency to resist or transcend the political domination of the nation-state. This essay examines the sources of and the relationships between three major theories in this field, seeking to clarify their ideological orientations as well as historical limitations. The paper concludes that the connection between the Chinese diaspora and the sociopolitical process of modern China necessitates a methodologically critical application of Western formulations of post-nationalist theories into Chinese diasporic culture studies.

Jacques Ranciere's Regimes Of Art And Contemporary Political Art, Hongsheng Jiang

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

This paper examines the three regimes of art proposed by Jacques Ranciere: the ethical regime of images, the representative/poetic regime of art, and the aesthetic regime of art which implies a politics of equality and democracy. For Ranciere, "dissensus" is the articulating point between art and politics. This paper focus on Ranciere's criticism on contemporary political art: how the "critical art" takes the wrong track toward the "testimony art" and "relational art"; how the "critical art" was polluted by the logic of global consumerism; and how the ethical turn of contemporary art constitutes a deconstruction of both the autonomy and …

A Probe Into The Mode OfZhuanWriting InThe Literary Mind And The Carving Of Dragons, Xianpei Wang

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

The paper proposes that the mode of "zhuan (chronicle)" writing should be considered as an important literary concept in ancient Chinese narratology. The mode of chronicle refers neither the commentaries on the classics as scripture nor the biographical writings, which have all been using the same Chinese character of "zhuan." The "zhuan" here refers to the literary and historical narrative mode as created in The Chronicles of Zuo and developed and matured by Sima Qian and Ban Gu. In order to resolve the difficulties in long narratives, Liu Xie proposed two narrative techniques of "zonghui (summarization)" and "quanpei (measured arrangement)" …

The Futures Of Comparative Literature, Lezra Jacques

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

Comparativism, this essay argues, should respond to the phenomenon of globalization by producing a critique of the concepts of literary value and universality. A polemical genealogy of the discipline of Comparative Literature shows "literary theory" in the post-war period to have emerged as a threat to disciplinary boundaries in the university, and for this reason to have always been regulated by a Cold-War humanism grounded in an Arnoldian belief in concepts like "the world." Comparativism should militate against such concepts rather than adopt them; it should take up the tasks of producing difference, of guarding untranslatability, of recapturing the discipline’s …

Paul Ricoeur's Narrative Explanation Concerning The Issue Of Time, Feixiong Fu

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

Paul Ricoeur not only sees the signs of language as linguistic grammatical system but also reduces them into the discourse communication of "speech act" and into the signification of human existence. They function both as a mediator and as a truth-deliverer. Ricoeur's phenomenological hermeneutics is based on general narrative semiotics, implements the inadequacy of formalistic theories such as structuralism, and effectively enunciates "narrative practice." "Narrative practice," as the basic human cultural phenomenon, is a kind of "mimetic activity" centered round "emplotment," the probable condition of which is the time structure of human action. As the nature of time is aporetic, …

Personality Transformation And Writing Transference In Li Yu's Novels And Dramas, Mingqi Zhong

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

The paper focuses on the relationship between Li Yu's personality transformation of personality and his writing of novels and dramas and proposes that the formation of his creative mind-state and artistic ideas originates in his psychological transformation from cynicism to comical secularity. This personality transformation, the paper demonstrates, leads the transference of Li Yu's literary mind and results in a writing as a form of existence that caters for the contemporary life in the reality with secular concerns. This indulgence in the function of entertainment of literature greatly hinders Li Yu's scope of social criticism and development of artistic innovation, …

A Synopsis Of The Symposium On "Transformation Of Literature And Art And The Innovation Of Literary Theory", Haijing Chen

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

No abstract provided.

In Search Of The Historical In The Literary:Classic Of The Mountains And Seas And The Lost Cultural Mega-Tradition, Shuxian Ye

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

The paper is a case study of Shanhai Classic (Classic of the Mountains and Seas) to demonstrate how fictions can be explored as reliable historical materials. The paper tries to apply a quadruple-evidence method into the study of the mythohistorical text so as to break the generic and textual boundaries, to open up a new terrain for the literary, the historical and the philosophical, and to reconstruct the mega-tradition of Chinese culture.

The Genealogical Evolution Of Apollo's Images, Hui Tang

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

The minor-Asiatic background enabled Apollo to take on multiple identities in the reconstruction process of Greek myths. Appolo's image was initially displaced and equated with the Sun-God Helios. The Sun-God in Homer and Hesiod' works was still Helios while Apollo was the god of hunting, medicine and music (the god of literature and art). The Histories of Herodotus excluded Helios from the main twelve gods of Olympus, and made the young god Appolo take a higher position in heaven. Tragedy playwrights before 500 BC. called Apollo the Sun-God, regarding his oracles as the moira which cannot be altered or resisted. …

Upon "Aesthetic Education As Substitute For Religion" And The Secularity Of Cai Yuanpei's Construction Of Aesthetic Belief, Liyong Pan

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

Via his theory of "Aesthetic Education as Substitute for Religion," Cai Yuanpei intended to reconstruct the national belief through aesthetic education in a cultural context where the religious spirit was non-existent and the Confucian rites-music institutions had long collapsed. The uniqueness of aesthetics as mental activities and the socio-political context of modern China determine the tension between the secularity and the transcendence in the aesthetic construction of belief, which often results in the sacrifice of the transcendental spirit. This is closely linked with the state of mind of the intellectuals entangled between China and the west, the traditional and the …

"Relating Instead Of Making" And The Sage Myth, Qicui Tang

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

The paper tries to investigate why Confucius make the claim of "relating (shu) instead of making (zuo)." It starts with an exegesis of "shu (relating)" and "zuo (making)," putting them back into their initial context of oral and ritual tradition. The paper demonstrates that "shu (relating)" originated from the rite of oral praying and "zuo (making)" was a later extension, each with its own emphasis. While "shu" lays particular stress on abiding by the skill of divination and putting the ritual words and deeds into practice, "zuo" lays particular stress on the ritual tradition of inscription and building. The key …

Discourse Of Art Criticism And Visual Metaphor, Chenguang Ling

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

Visual art criticism is the center of art criticism, whose discourse often develops around visual themes, as is manifested in the two respects, namely, the relationship between seeing and interpretation regarding the transformation from "seeing" to "speaking out", and that between seeing and being seen revealing the contribution of visual activities to shaping the subject' self-consciousness and showing intersubjectivity. The conversion of visual objects into verbal expressions is an inevitable issue in discourse of art criticism, and it appears in two connected patterns, namely, the visualization of ideas and the verbalization of visual image. The result is that ideas, when …

For An Ontological Critique Of The Narrative Of Social Crises, Zhiqiang Zhou

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

The paper maintains that cultural critique need not only rely on discursive strategies in contemporary public sphere but also insist an ontological criticism. Such a critique can then construct its destructive criticism in local areas so as to achieve a more comprehensive understanding of contemporary political reality. The paper then proposes "an allegorical criticism in a sensational style" so that the effects of sensation, shock and multi-position may help to achieve the political aims of cultural criticism.

Marxism And Form: An Interview With Prof. Fredric Jameson, Jiangang Yang, Xian Wang

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

No abstract provided.

Nietzsche's Idea Of "The Death Of Tragedy" And The Poetics Of Nostalgia, Chaoyong Wei

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

The most remarkable assertion Nietzsche made in his Birth of Tragedy concerns "the death of tragedy." The reason for the death of the Greek tragedy is, for Nietzsche, the change of chorus, spectator and prologue in Euripides' tragedies, which are contrary to the authentic Greek tragedies that represented the Dionysian spirit. Nietzsche attributed this situation to Socratism, claiming that Socratism not only resulted in a Euripidean "Greek cheerfulness" but also related closely to the western modern enlightenment. Thereupon, the Dionysian spirit becomes Nietzsche's nostalgia against the western ancient and modern enlightening rationality. In this sense, The Birth of Tragedy is …

On The Publicity Of Cultural Critique, Dongfeng Tao

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

This paper, based on Hannah Arendt's distinction between truth and opinion, argues that cultural critique owes its publicity to the fact that it doesn't claim absolute truths or professional knowledge but debatable, negotiable opinions. The space of cultural critique is the agora of public opinions, nor the wholesale centre of truths or laboratories of specialized knowledge. Cultural critics are neither philosophers with Platonic contempt for opinions nor professionals in modern hierarchical institutions, but public intellectuals with sensibility to public issues as well as social responsibility and reason. The paper points out that the potency of cultural critique lies not in …

On Zhu Dongrun's Theory Of Biographical Literature And Its Characteristic Complexity, Yeping Gu

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

Zhu Dongrun's theory of biographical literature is constructed from the existent practices and theories of both ancient China and the West. The central concepts of Zhu's theory include the renaming of the prevailing biographical literature into biographical narrative literature, the emphasis of the dual attributes of historical and literary of biographical literature while defining the connotation of biographical narrative. The claim of "the turn from events to people" has freed the biographical literature from its dependency on history, but the overemphasis of historical reliability may result in the negligence of literariness. The claim to characterize and reveal from life from …

Reflections On The Researches To The Essence And Existence Of Song-Yuan Drama In The Past Century, Jiansen Chen, Jiali Mo

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

This paper is a reflective study of the researches on Song-Yuan drama's essence and existence done in the past century. It tries to define what Song-Yuan drama really is, and demonstrate how it is put on the stage and why it is staged in such a certain way. These issues have been tackled in Wang Guowei's Song-Yuan Drama History but have not been clarified since, so they have met with much misinterpretation. Three types of reasons lie behind the misinterpretation, and this has become the conundrum in the study of Chinese opera history. The first type proposes that Wang defined …

Responding To The Formation Of Dominant Culture And Its Production Mode: Contemporary Chinese Cultural Criticism In The Era Of After-Theory, Jun Zeng

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

In the era of what Terry Eagleton terms as "After-Theory," cultural criticism practice in China needs to re-problematize its research, redefine its object with a focus on the local culture and sharpen its research methodology in response to current theoretical transformations so as to delineate some traits in the development of contemporary cultural development out of various cultural phenomena, currents and conflicts. The paper claims that the cultural criticism should engage in participatory research of "the dominant culture in formation," and that this dominant culture can be named as "mainstream mass culture." The current dominant cultural production mode is increasingly …

Tasting Beauty: Aesthetic Implications Of Chinese Cuisine, Zhaorong Peng

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

The paper takes cultural anthropology as its theoretical background and proposes a discipline without demarcated boundaries. As a case study of the beauty of Chinese cuisine, the paper tries to explore the possibility of a new representational mode in literary study from the perspective of anthropology. The paper is a product of an experimental research.