SCHOOL OF COMMUNICATION

CMNS 487

Professor: Yuezhi Zhao	Spring 2002
Office: RCB: 6149; 604-291-4916	Burnaby Day
email: yzhao@sfu.ca

MEDIA AND POPULAR CULTURE IN CHINA

Prerequisite:

Permission of instructor and at least 75 credit hours including two upper division CMNS courses or courses related to China studies.

This course explores the media and popular culture scene in reform era China. A wide range of media and popular culture forms and practices, including films, best-sellers, soap operas, late night talk shows, street tabloids, T-shirt signs, popular rhymes, letters from young female sweatshop workers, nationalistic Internet postings, and Falun Gong practices, are analyzed in their concrete institutional settings and dynamic relationships with official ideologies, market imperatives, and the every day struggles and cultural sensibilities of various social groups during a period of epochal transformation in China.


Required texts:

Yuezhi Zhao, Media, Market, and Democracy in China: Between the Party Line and Bottom
Line (Urbana & Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1998).
Michael Dutton, Streetlife China (Cambridge, Mass:, Cambridge University Press, 1998).
Useful Texts for Supplementary Reading and Research (no purchase is necessary):
Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom and Elizabeth J. Perry, Popular Protest and Political Culture in Modern
China, Second Edition (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1994).
Chen Fong-ching and Jin Guantao, From Youthful Manuscripts to River Elegy: The Chinese
Popular Cultural Movement and Political Transformation, 1979-1989. HK: Chinese
University of HK Press, 1997.
Geremie Barme, In the Red: On Contemporary Chinese Culture (Columbia University Press
1999).
Timothy B. Weston and Lionel M. Jensen, China Beyond the Headlines (New York: Rowman &
Littlefield, 2000).
Huot, Marie Claire, China’s New Cultural Scene: A Handbook of Changes (Durham [N.C.] &
London: Duke University Press, 2000).
Jianying Zha, China Pop: How Soap Operas, Tabloids, and Bestsellers Are Transforming a Culture (New York: The New Press, 1995).
Perry Link, Richard Madsen, and Pual Pickowicz (eds.), Popular China (Rowman & Littlefield. Scheduled release date is December 15, 2001; should be available by the second half of the semester).
Extra Readings are available on reserve in the Library.


Course Requirements:

Classroom Participation and Presentation: 20%
Book Review: (3-5 pages) 30%
Research Paper: (10-12 pages) 50%


Seminar Topics:

The Official and the Popular in China: Dynamics and Tensions
The Party, the Revolution, and Popular Culture (Film: The Yellow Earth)
The Party and the Intellectual Elite (TV Documentary: River Elegy)
Tiananmen Square and Beyond
The Mass Media: Structural and Ideological Dimensions
Television, Ideology, the Spring Festival Show
Street Tabloids, Late Night Talk Shows, and the Politics of Popular Media Discourses
Consuming Revolution: From Mao Badges to Cultural Revolution Themed Restaurants
Voices of the Popular: T-Shirt Signs, Satirical Rhymes, and Letters from Sweatshops
The Multifaceted Discourses of Chinese Nationalism
Falun Gong and the Search for Identities in Post-Socialist China
State Repression, Social Divisions, and the Surviving Strategies of China’s Under-classes
Conclusion: Mini Classroom Conference

The School expects that the grades awarded in this course will bear some reasonable relation to established university-wide practices with respect to both levels and distribution of grades. In addition, the School will follow Policy T10.02 with respect to “Intellectual Honesty” and “Academic Discipline” (see the current Calendar, General Regulations section).