MODERN AND CONTEMPORARY CHINESE LITERATURE

This course aims at helping students obtain a deeper knowledge of some themes and texts of modern and contemporary Chinese literature (from the early Twentieth century up to the present day), while training them develop critical awareness and a method of research, mainly based on the close reading of texts (including texts in Chinese). Students will be also guided in setting Chinese literature within a larger cultural, social, and historical perspective, throughout the shaping of modern China, and to present their personal reflections on the contents of the course by means of both written (final paper) and oral discussions.
The main subject of the course addresses the relation between gender and genre, namely Chinese literature written by Chinese women writers and related to women matters.

1. Knowledge and understanding:
• Know the historical and social context in which each writer's attitudes, ideas and works took shape, and their interplay with the society and cultural life of the time;
• Know the literary trends defining the historical context: students will be guided into a critical reflection upon the literary texts read in class weekly, in order to let them recognise their stylistic features and understand the underlying meanings, also in relation with the shaping of modern Chinese society and culture.
2. Ability to apply knowledge and understanding
• Students will be able to recognise and categorise texts in terms of genre, linguistic and lexical features specific of the author's time and social context;
• Students will be able to analyse and compare literary texts and phenomena to western literature;
3. Judgement capacity
• assess the level of one’s knowledge of texts, genres and textual analysys skill;
4. Communication skills
• argumentative skill;
• be able to communicate orally by means of class presentation and in the final exam, with clarity of exposition and accuracy in citing sources (both English and Chinese sources)
• be able to communicate in written form (final paper), demonstrating a general knowledge of the sources and of the basic rules of academic writing.
5. Learning skills
Students' ability to analyse and research autonomously Chinese literature will be tested through the final paper they are requested to write on a new topic agreed upon with the teacher. Besides, oral skills and argumentative skills will be tested during the class presentation and the final oral exam, by which they will have to demonstrate their general understanding and critical view on the course contents.

A good knowledge of Chinese language is requested, in order to be able to read modern literary texts and literary criticism in Chinese. A basic knowledge of the history of Chinese literature in the twentieth century is also recommended.

The relationship between gender and genre, namely, between modern Chinese fiction and women writers/matters will be explored through a reasoned survey in the historical background of the Twentieth Century and the beginning of our century. We will follow the path of women writers' emancipation in the May Fourth period (from Bing Xin and Lu Yin, to Xiao Hong, Ding Ling and Zhang Ailing); we will discuss also the evolution of women's poetry in the Twentieth century. A short overview of women writing in the Maoist era will be provided, and particularly the coming-of-age novel "The Song of Youth" and short stories by Zong Pu and Ru Zhijie. The course will include the fiction produced by "new feminists" such as Wang Anyi, Zhang Jie and Zhang Kangkang in the 1980s and the "private fiction" by Chen Ran and Lin Bai in the 1990s. Finally, the course will analyse engaged writers such as Chi Li and Sheng Keyi as well as the contribution of women writers to new genres of fiction such as fantasy and science fiction. The works will be mainly selected from the narrative genre, which was the dominating genre throughout the twentieth century, but we will also look into poetry, which was traditionally a male-dominated genre.

Main readings
Nicoletta Pesaro, Melinda Pirazzoli, La narrativa cinese del Novecento. Autori, opere, correnti. Roma, Carocci, 2019 o
Daniela Brogi, Lo spazio delle donne. Torino, Einaudi, 2022.
Mary Eagleton, "Genre and gender", in David Duff (ed.), Modern Genre Theory, Essex, Longman, 2000, pp. 250-262.
Nicoletta Vallorani, "Femminismi e sguardi queer", in Laura Neri e Giuseppe Carrara (a cura di), Teoria letteraria, Roma, Carocci, 2021, pp. 311-326.
Robbins, "Gender and Genre in the Short Story", in The Edinburgh Companion to the Short Story in English, Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh, pp. 293-312.

Supplementary readings
Amy Dooling, Women’s Literary Feminism in Twentieth-Century China. New York Palgrave MacMilian, 2005
Haiping Yan, Chinese Women Writers and the Feminist Imagination, 1905-1948. London, Routledge, 2006.
Ping Zhu and Hui Faye Xiao, Feminisms with Chinese Characteristics, Syracuse, Syracuse University Press, 2021.
孟悦，戴锦华， 浮出历史地表 ，北京，北京大学出版社，2022.
Kirk Denton ed., The Columbia Companion to Modern Chinese Literature, New Work, Columbia University Press, 2016.
孟悦，戴锦华， 浮出历史地表 ，北京，北京大学出版社，2022.
陈思和 (编) 中国当代文学史教程, 复旦大学出版社，2019年 (第二版)
Hong Zicheng, A History of Contemporary Chinese Literature, translated by Michael M. Day, Brill, 2008.

ONLINE SOURCES
Sinosfere http://sinosfere.com
Paper Republic https://paper-republic.org
Denton Bibliography https://u.osu.edu/mclc/
CNKI https://oversea.cnki.net/index/
Words without borders https://www.wordswithoutborders.org/find/languages/chinese
https://clt.oucreate.com/

The final exam is divided into two parts:

1) short paper (max. 3500 words) to be handed in at least one week before the oral exam;
2) oral discussion about the individual paper and the general contents of the course.
Please have a look at the teacher's material on the moodle platform for the guide to essay-writing.

Evaluation criteria:
1) Relevance of the paper to the course program;
2) Formal correctness and adherence to editorial standards prescribed for an academic text (cf. editorial guidelines provided on the Moodle platform);
3) Originality and depth of the topic; methodology;
4) Language proficiency and synthesis skills during the discussion.

Classes will be carried out in presence. The teaching methods include a close-reading of primary texts, through which relevant topics will be presented and analysed, and a discussion with students on assigned readings.

Italian

Further bibliographic information and Chinese texts will be provided throughout the course

oral

This subject deals with topics related to the macro-area "Poverty and inequalities" and contributes to the achievement of one or more goals of U. N. Agenda for Sustainable Development