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课程简介：The English Idea of China
发布时间：2010-08-06 | 作者：博雅学院
应甘阳院长邀请，香港大学英语系主任童庆生教授将于2010学年第一学期任中山大学人文高等研究院访问教授，并为博雅学院2009级本科生和研究生开设课程，课程内容简介如下（本课程用英文讲授）：
The English Idea of China
This course introduces students to a wide range of issues in cross-cultural
studies by looking at how China, as a country and a cultural phenomenon, is
understood, read, studied, interpreted, and imagined in Britain from the
early eighteenth century to the early twentieth century. The texts to be
studied are principally, but not exclusively, non-imaginative, produced
during this period of about two hundred years on a range of topics about
China -- from its history to its people, from its society to its politics,
from its language to its aesthetics.
In tracing the history of the English idea of China, we will critically
examine such issues as how and why China has been understood and presented
differently at different historical moments. We will relate some of the
typical English formulations about China and their implications to the
contemporary conditions of cross-cultural understanding and the on-going
process of globalization.
Themes to be followed throughout this course include: the formation of our
knowledge about different cultural practices, the role of the cultural other
in the construction of the self, the ideology of interpretation and
representation, truth and fiction, consumerism and orientalism, colonialism
and modernity.
The course attempts to provide Bo Ya Students with an opportunity to study a
unique category of literary writing and to examine issues arising from it.
With close reference to some of our current critical concerns and
theoretical preoccupations, and by looking at a specific example of
cross-cultural representation, i.e., the English idea of China, this course
encourages students to think about other problems of general significance in
our cross-cultural experience. The main purpose of the course is to improve
and deepen our cross-cultural understanding and to enable us to respond to
discursive cultural differences more intelligently.
We will meet once a week for two hours. Weekly sessions will be a
combination of lectures and group discussions. Students will have about half
an hour in each session to work, in groups, on an assigned task, and will
present, through email, a report on their discussion to the whole class.
There will also be an email list for the course that enables students to
share thoughts on issues arising from or related to the course material and
to raise questions for discussion among themselves.
The English Idea of China
This course introduces students to a wide range of issues in cross-cultural
studies by looking at how China, as a country and a cultural phenomenon, is
understood, read, studied, interpreted, and imagined in Britain from the
early eighteenth century to the early twentieth century. The texts to be
studied are principally, but not exclusively, non-imaginative, produced
during this period of about two hundred years on a range of topics about
China -- from its history to its people, from its society to its politics,
from its language to its aesthetics.
In tracing the history of the English idea of China, we will critically
examine such issues as how and why China has been understood and presented
differently at different historical moments. We will relate some of the
typical English formulations about China and their implications to the
contemporary conditions of cross-cultural understanding and the on-going
process of globalization.
Themes to be followed throughout this course include: the formation of our
knowledge about different cultural practices, the role of the cultural other
in the construction of the self, the ideology of interpretation and
representation, truth and fiction, consumerism and orientalism, colonialism
and modernity.
The course attempts to provide Bo Ya Students with an opportunity to study a
unique category of literary writing and to examine issues arising from it.
With close reference to some of our current critical concerns and
theoretical preoccupations, and by looking at a specific example of
cross-cultural representation, i.e., the English idea of China, this course
encourages students to think about other problems of general significance in
our cross-cultural experience. The main purpose of the course is to improve
and deepen our cross-cultural understanding and to enable us to respond to
discursive cultural differences more intelligently.
We will meet once a week for two hours. Weekly sessions will be a
combination of lectures and group discussions. Students will have about half
an hour in each session to work, in groups, on an assigned task, and will
present, through email, a report on their discussion to the whole class.
There will also be an email list for the course that enables students to
share thoughts on issues arising from or related to the course material and
to raise questions for discussion among themselves.
