Courses

Course Number

Semester/Year

Course Title

Instructor

Course Description

The class will read works of fiction from contemporary Taiwan (1949-present) in the Chinese original. These include mainstream literary writings in the early years after the Nationalist Retreat to the island in 1949, works from the Modernist and the Nativist schools in the 1960s and 1970s, and fiction on urban themes that have gained greater popularity since the 1980s.  

The course is designed to meet the dual objective of advanced language learning and literary appreciation. In addition to translation and linguistic analysis of selected parts of the texts, the class time will be devoted to critical examinations of the literary works’ artistic techniques and socio-cultural-political implications.  

This course uses the modern theory of war to analyze East Asian international history,  from the 14th century to the present, exploring the causes and duration of war, the politics of alliances, the sources of stable peace, and the role of great powers in the global order.