University of Michigan–Peking University 

Courses in Chinese Studies and Social Theory

Summer 2007

 

Sponsored by University of Michigan Center for Chinese Studies, Peking University and US Department of Education Fulbright Hays Group Projects Abroad

 

Courses in Chinese Studies and Social Theory

 

Applications are invited from graduate and advanced undergraduate students to enroll in intensive one-month courses in Chinese Studies and Social Theory offered by the University of Michigan and Peking University  during  the Summer of 2007.  These courses will include both International and Chinese  students and will be jointly taught by UM and PKU faculty. All classes will meet for approximately three hours each day (1.5 hour lecture and 1.5 hour discussion), five days a week for four weeks. The courses for Summer 2007 are:

 

Session I: July 2-27, 2007

 

  • New Directions in Chinese Social Scientific History: James Lee and Pär Cassel, University of Michigan, Department of History
  • Feminisms and Feminist Theory: Sidonie Smith, University of Michigan, Department of English and Women’s Studies (Pending)

 

Session II: July 30 – August 24, 2007

 

  • Religion & Society in the Pre-Modern and Modern China : James Robson, University of Michigan, Department of Asian Languages and  Cultures
  • Urban Imaginaries – City as Fact, City as Theory: Patricia Yeager, University of Michigan, Department of English and Women’s Studies

 

 

 

University of Michigan–Peking University

Courses in Chinese Studies and Social Theory

Summer 2007

 

 

 

Session I: July 2 – 27, 2007

 

Course Title: New Directions in Chinese Social Scientific History

Lead Faculty: James Lee and Pär Cassel, University of Michigan, Department of History

Course description:  This will be a lecture and discussion course taught by an historian and a social scientist on social scientific history, the application of social science methods to historical data, including both qualitative and quantitative approaches to the study of Chinese history during the last three hundred years especially the contemporary period. The course introduces students to the materials, methods, and achievements of the discipline and contrasts the available data and scholarship on China with other histories. We examine the important topics, materials, analytic methods, framing, and narrative techniques of the discipline and contrast the use of oral, written, and visual sources, private and publicly produced documents, and ethnographic and survey methods, as well as different forms of textual reading looking explicitly at cultural studies, legal studies, socio-economic studies, and even scientific studies.  We discuss specific methods historians and social scientists use to explain present behavior by past contexts and thus link our increased analytic ability at the micro level with our macro concerns in ‘big structures,’ ‘long processes,’ and ‘huge comparisons.’ 

 

Eligibility: Graduate or advanced undergraduate

 

 

 

 

 

Course Title: Feminisms and Feminist Theory (Pending)

Lead Faculty: Sidonie Smith, University of Michigan, Department of English and Women’s Studies

Course description: This course is designed to provide an overview of 20th century [western] feminisms. It has as its goals understanding major theoretical concepts and building a theoretical vocabulary; critically engaging heterogeneous feminist theories; developing a nuanced theoretical vocabulary to enhance methodological scholarship; and mapping out and articulating students' theoretical approaches to issues of women and gender. Topics to be discussed include the following: power, the sex/gender system, feminity, nationalism, modernity, global capitalism, and transational feminism.

 

Eligibility: Graduate or advanced undergraduate.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

University of Michigan–Peking University 

Courses in Chinese Studies and Social Theory

Summer 2007

 

 

 

Session II:  July 30 – August 24, 2007

 

Course Title: Religion and Society in the Pre-Modern and Modern China

Lead Faculty: James Robson, University of Michigan, Department of Asian Languages and Cultures

Course Description:  This course provides a sustained inquiry into a variety of theoretical works on the place of religion in society in general and in China in particular.  The course will focus on two organizing themes: theoretical models for thinking about religion and the status of religion in the modern world. The course is designed to give students a broad understanding of the academic study of religion by employing sociological, psychological, anthropological, and philosophical modes of inquiry.  We will give special attention to problems in the comparative study of religions, notions of violence and sacrifice in early twentieth-century theories of religion, and the modernization/secularization thesis, which has been so visibly challenged by the remarkable resurgence of "religion" in the last few decades. Throughout the course, we will consider some of the ways that various theorists of religion might inform our understanding of both traditional forms of Chinese religious practice and the transformations that these traditions have undergone in the modern world.  Readings will include works by Durkheim, Freud, Marx, Levi-Strauss, Griaule, Bataille, Bloch, Weber, Bourdieu, Agamben, and Zizek, among others.  The course will also include visits to Buddhist and Daoist sites in Beijing and the vicinity.

 

Eligibility: Graduate or advanced undergraduate

 

 

 

Course Title: Urban Imaginaries—City as Fact, City as Theory

Lead Faculty: Patricia Yaeger, University of Michigan, Department of English and Women’s Studies

Course description: In Planet of Slums, Mike Davis describes overurbanization as the explosion of city populations without adequate industrialization to provide economic support. In the developing world's megacities, we encounter a new avatar of the city in ruins.  This course will propose a set of practical categories for looking at contemporary cities and city literature, including: (1) the fact of over-urbanization, (2) the predicament of decaying or absent infrastructures, (3) the deficit of shelter, and (4) the importance of inventing counter publics or communal alternatives to the official, bureaucratized polis.  As global cities hold greater cultural and financial sway over populations beyond their borders, has the "urban imaginary" changed?  Are there specifically urban theoretical, literary, and cultural forms?  Do these differ in imperial capitals, colonial cities, and ex-colonial cities?  Is the global city (or exurbia or "edge" city) a postmodern invention or is it the culmination or development of older urban forms?  What is the real or imagined relation of suburbs to cities, of colonial cities to European capitals, of governmental policy to urban development, and of cities to their supply regions?  How does literature about non-Western cities challenge the urban fantasias of Europe and America?  How do literary texts from Africa, the Caribbean, India, China, and South America challenge Western histories of urban space?

 

Eligibility: Graduate or advanced undergraduate.