Course Description:

China has one of the longest and richest traditions of queer gender and sexuality in the world, stretching from as far back as the Zhou Dynasty (1046–256 BCE) all the way up to the present day. However, many people both inside and outside of China are unaware of this legacy and of the important role played by queer sexualities in the cultural and historical formation of modern China. In this Integrative Learning course, students will explore the emergence and expression of queer (tongzhi 同志) identities, cultures, and communities in modern and contemporary mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and the Chinese diaspora through the critical reading and analysis of texts from the disciplines of cultural anthropology, history, and literature/film studies.

A historical investigation of understandings and practices of gender and sexuality in traditional China will lay a foundation for our discussion of how and whether popular and scholarly attitudes toward homosexuality shifted during the Republican Period (1912–1949). Memoirs, novels, and films will allow us to catch glimpses of “hooligan” and other queer sexualities during Maoist China (1949–1976). We will also examine the gradual emergence of queer culture in mainland China during the reform period (1977–present) and the explosion of gay literature (tongzhi wenxue 同志文学), queer literature (ku’er wenxue 酷儿文学), and queer film in mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and the Chinese diaspora in the 1990s and 2000s. More recent ethnographic texts will also give us greater insight into contemporary queer Chinese cultures and communities.

Through written assignments and oral presentations, students will hold anthropological, historical, and literature/film studies texts and methodologies in productive tension with one another, reflecting on similarities and differences between these separate ways of knowing and on how integrating disparate disciplinary approaches can enable new forms of understanding and insight.

Course Goals:

• To explore queer China from three distinct disciplinary and methodological perspectives: cultural anthropology, history, and literature/film studies.

• To examine both temporal and spatial variations in queer Chinese experiences, including historical and cultural developments across the traditional, revolutionary, and reform periods and contemporary similarities and differences in queer identities and communities in China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and the Chinese diaspora.

• To apply diverse disciplinary and methodological perspectives from cultural anthropology, history, and literature/film studies to identify and investigate questions in the study of queer China, including how social differences, inequalities, and hierarchies based on gender and sexuality in China and the Chinese diaspora are linked to specific historical and regional contexts, and how these social differences are being created, maintained, and challenged.

• To reflect critically on how an integrative learning approach can generate new knowledge and insights on the study of queer China, and to communicate these findings to others in both written work and oral presentations.