Seminars & Short Courses
Chinese Fantasy in Literature – Drawing on the Past to Imagine the Present
This asynchronous NCTA short course guides participants on an exploration of Chinese literature and culture through the lens of imagination and fantasy. Two weeks will be spent on investigating early paradigmatic classical sources and later narrative literature that absorbed classical ideas and became new paradigms of literature themselves.
This mini course hopes to highlight an area of interest about China other than the political state, by focusing on the rich cultural presentations of individual freedom and contemplation on divergent systems, worldly and otherworldly. These materials help students better understand the continuing recycling and developments of classical images and stories in Chinese imaginative literature through cutting-edge global and American cultural production, such as Gene Luen Yang’s American Born Chinese and the Academy Award winner Everything Everywhere All at Once. The course awards two hours of Professional Development points upon completion.
Image: Gene Luen Yang’s self-portrait as the Monkey King, author and illustrator of ‘American Born Chinese.’