HIST 410/510 The Exotic City: Shanghai in Chinese and Foreign Cultural Imagination

Course Description

This course is about urban imagination, cross-cultural contact, imperialism, and the history of a major Chinese metropolis. After the Opium War, in accommodation to a range of semi-colonial endeavors, Shanghai was divided in the mid-nineteenth century into separate zones of Chinese, French and Anglo-American jurisdiction. These were soon joined by a Japanese settlement. The dynamic and densely populated commercial city of Shanghai that developed fascinated Chinese and foreign residents and writers. These commentators, in different ways, viewed Shanghai as the exotic city--alluring, foreign, and dangerous.

The course is broadly interdisciplinary, focusing on the interpretation of a wide range of primary sources. Visual, literary and historical source materials serve as windows on late nineteenth and early 20th century Shanghai history, with particular focus on urban imaginations, Orientalism, Occidentalism, projects of city-building and modernity, semi-colonialism and its critics, and urban culture. Readings include primary and secondary sources in English as well as Chinese materials in translation.

Requirements: There are no prerequisites, though some familiarity with urban culture or modern Chinese history will be helpful. Students are required to attend class, read the assignments assiduously, participate in thoughtful discussion, and write several short papers on course readings.

The course has limited enrollment. You are strongly encouraged to contact the instructor (bgoodman@oregon.uoregon.edu) prior to registering for the class.

Topics of specific weeks include:

Mapping Shanghai: Culture, Space and Time Shanghai in Early Chinese and Western Guidebooks Early Chinese Literary Apprehensions of the Contact Zone Chinese, English and Japanese novels of Shanghai Modernity Shanghai in Chinese and American Film Pictorial Representations of the City and Urban Community Shanghai as a Historiographical Problem: Modernity/Colonialism/Westernization Visions of Urban Vice and Exploitation: Urban Danger and Revolution