Courses in Chinese
Note: This page contains all of the regular courses taught by this department. Not all courses are offered every year. Check the searchable schedule to see which courses are being offered in the upcoming semester.
CHNS 111Y Intensive Introductory Chinese
Credit: 0.75
This is the first half of the basic introductory language course in Modern Standard Chinese (Putonghua). This course will develop students' basic communicative competence in the Chinese language and their understanding of the Chinese culture. Throughout the course, students develop their listening, speaking, reading, and writing skills across the three communicative modes: interpretive, interpersonal, and presentational. In the first semester, the pronunciation and some basic grammar will be taught. The bulk of in-class work will be devoted to developing oral and aural skills. There will also be an introduction to the Chinese writing system. Class meetings range from eight to nine hours per week in the first semester, to seven to eight hours per week in the second. There will be required self language practice as well. Offered every year.
Instructor: Bai
CHNS 112Y Intensive Introductory Chinese
Credit: 0.75
See course description for CHNS 111Y. Offered every year.
Instructor: Bai
CHNS 213Y Intermediate Chinese
Credit: 0.5
This course is a continuation of CHNS 111Y-112Y. By the end of the first semester, all the basic grammar of Modern Standard Chinese (Putonghua) and another 300 Chinese characters will have been introduced. There will be extensive oral and written assignments. In the second semester, there will be a review of the basic grammar through in-class oral work and an introduction to the elements of Modern Written Chinese grammar. In both semesters, there will be two required drill and discussion sessions each week with an apprentice teacher.
CHNS 321 Advanced Chinese Language and Culture
Credit: 0.5
This course is an upper-level course for students who wish to develop and refine their ability to understand, speak, read, and write Modern Standard Chinese. There will be extensive reading that deals with aspects of Chinese culture and society. Reading assignments serve as points of departure for discussion and composition. Video materials will also be used for this purpose. This course is recommended for students wishing to specialize in any field related to China. The course may be repeated with credit.
CHNS 324 Modern China through Film and Fiction
Credit: 0.5
This seminar explores how the image of modern China has been constructed through a variety of cinematic and literary representations. Both Chinese and foreign perspectives will be introduced. Background readings and documentaries will provide basic historical narrative. Class discussions will focus on how cultural, social, and political changes find their expressions in film and fiction, and, more importantly, how China has come to be imagined and represented as primitive, exotic, oppressive, revolutionary, modern, and, most recently, postmodern and economically appealing. Some of the key issues include gender, youth, family, ethnicity, modernity, visuality, violence, identity, and cultural stereotyping. The course aims to acquaint students with major works of twentieth-century Chinese filmmaking and fiction and to promote students' critical understanding of Chinese literature, culture, and society. All readings, films, and discussion are in English. Advanced Chinese language students also have the opportunity to read Chinese versions of assigned stories, watch movies in Chinese, and write short essays in Chinese. This course will count towards the Asian Studies Concentration and the Asian area distribution for the international studies major. Normally offered every other year.
CHNS 325 Chinese Literary Tradition
Credit: 0.5
This course serves as an introduction to Chinese literary traditions from the first millennium B.C. to 1911. Readings, all in English translation, include the most beloved literary texts that unify Chinese civilization through its long history, selected from early poetry and history, Confucian and Daoist classics, tales of the strange, Tang Dynasty poetry, short stories and drama written in vernacular language, and novels from late Imperial period. The discussion-based seminar will explore how Chinese literature, seen as a means of achieving immortality along with virtue, confirms social values or challenges them, and how it articulates the place of the individual in a thoroughly Confucian and patriarchal society. No prerequisites. Students need not have any background in Chinese language or culture. Normally offered every other year.
Instructor: C. Sun
CHNS 326 Women of the Inner Chambers
Credit: 0.5
This course examines roles, images and writings of women in ancient and modern China. The integration of gender relations into cosmological and socio-political patterns sets the tone for the representation of women in Chinese literature, theater, film, and religious texts, but the notion that women were oppressed and silenced throughout the imperial China is overly simplistic and needs to be re-examined. Our discussion will focus on three main themes: the gap between Confucian ideals of womanhood and the complex realities of female social roles, the construction of a feminine voice by both female writers and men writing as wome, and the issue of female agency and its various manifestations within and outside the domestic realm. No prerequisites. All readings are in English. Normally offered every other year.
Instructor: C. Sun
CHNS 393 Individual Study
Credit: 0.5
Students who have completed three years or more of Chinese language may be eligible to do independent study in Chinese language and literature. Topics will be arranged in consultation with the instructor and may include advanced readings in Chinese literature (stories, essays, newspapers, and so forth) and advanced conversation (Kouyu). Credit earned will vary depending upon the topic.
Instructor: Staff