Chinese (CHI)

For students who have little or no knowledge of Chinese. An introduction to the fundamentals of Chinese, including introductory readings.

A continuation of CHI 101.

Chinese Theater is a living synthesis of essential cultural and aesthetic values that have been refined and shaped over thousands of years. This class will survey the historical developments of Chinese performing arts and examine how they relate to social beliefs and cultural structures. The course will cover a wide range of readings and plat scripts in English translations of source material. In addition to weekly assigned readings, videotapes, field trips to live performance events and hands-on workshops, this course will give students a deep multi-leveled understanding of the history of Chinese performance culture in its varied forms and expressions.

This course examines major aspects of contemporary Chinese film and literature. Studied as art forms, literature and film offer unique dimensions through which students may closely consider cultural representations as well as cross-cultural perceptions. This course is designed in part to introduce students to the relationships between literary and cinematic forms. Films are shown as an integral part of the course.

: Chinese Theater is a living synthesis of essential cultural and aesthetic values that have been refined and shaped over thousands of years. This class will survey the historical development of Chinese performing arts and examine how they relate to social beliefs and cultural structures. The course will cover a wide range of readings and play scripts in English-translations of source material. In addition to weekly assigned readings, videotapes, field trips to live performance events and hands-on workshops, this course will give students a deep multi-leveled understanding of the history of Chinese performance culture in its varied forms and expressions.

The course will provide an overview of China, mainland China, and its changing culture. It will give a brief examination of its long history and sociopolitical philosophies, the origin and composition of the language, and will take a closer look at its turbulent changes since 1900 and overwhelming developments in recent decades. The course will look at the impacts of the state politics on cultural patterns and lifestyles of the people and will highlight the roles of influential leaders responsible for such changes. It also studies China's family structure, gender relations, and urban/rural patterns of social values and behaviors. The course will present a complex picture of China, rooted in Confucianism, reshaped by Mao's revolution, Deng's reform, and the more recent globalization. The social, cultural, and environmental cost of rapid industrialization will be reviewed and analyzed.

This course is designed for students who have a basic knowledge of spoken Mandarin but limited reading and writing skills. It seeks to develop heritage learners’ integrated skills of reading, writing, listening, and speaking at the elementary level with an emphasis on reading and writing. In this course, you will be introduced to the Chinese Romanization system (pinyin), most commonly used vocabulary and functional sentence patterns. Through a variety of assignments, such as interviewing friends in Chinese, writing journal entries and group discussions, students will expand their linguistic and cultural knowledge, as well as develop a more heterogeneous undertaking of the Chinese language and culture. Multiple-skill approach is used in this course.

A continuation of CHI 271.

Increase development of oral and written mandarin. Acquire a more sophisticated conversational ability. Exposure to more Chinese characters and improve ability to read Chinese.

Increase the students working vocabulary by 300 new words, with accurate pronunciation, ability to write characters, compose sentences and essays.

The main focus of this course is to help students expand their reading fluency and develop FORMAL writing abilities by studying advanced vocabulary of more abstract and descriptive nature and by discussing basic Chinese rhetorical devices. Students will learn not only write correctly, but also how to write effectively and formally. Students will be required to do both intensive reading and extensive writing inside and outside the class. Chinese vocabulary, grammar, character writing, and punctuation will be emphasized.

A survey of Chinese dramatic performance as it has developed over the centuries. Using a wide range of Chinese language source material, play scripts, videotapes, trips to live performance events, lectures by guest artists and hands–on workshops, the course seeks to put into a wide cultural context the history of Chinese theater's many varied performance genres.

Intensive conversational practice in Mandarin at the fifth semester level.

Offered as a follow-up course to CHI 284, this course focuses on reading and writing at the advanced level, and also helps to develop proficiency in listening and speaking and a good awareness of contemporary Chinese culture. The course is conducted primarily in Chinese. All in-class and out-class communications with the instructor and language partners, whether oral, written, or electronic, will be in Chinese.

Designed to develop the student's language proficiency within his/her career interests. Students will be introduced to commercial terminology and cultural differences in business. Emphasis on business correspondence.

This course will present material from the earliest classics of the Chou Dynasty (12th century) to the end of the Yuan Dynasty (14th century). Readings will include excerpts from original texts and modern commentaries.

This course will cover material from the Ming Dynasty (15th century) to the modern period.

Seminars are designed to compliment the student's knowledge of literature by either covering material not included in other courses or by investigating in detail a major author or work.