ARTH 417
Gender Construction in Chinese Art
Last Offered Spring 2016
Division I Writing Skills Exploring Diversity Initiative
Cross-listed ASST 417 / WGSS 318
This course is not offered in the current catalog

Class Details

“One is not born, but rather becomes a woman”–Simone de Beauvior This course will investigate how gender as a cultural and social construction is visualized in Chinese art. Issues of interest include how gendered space is constructed in Chinese painting; how landscape paintings can be decoded as masculine or feminine; and ways in which images of women help construct ideas of both femininity and masculinity. This course will also discuss Confucian literati’s [ideals] [of] reclusion and homsociality; didactic art for women; images of concubines, courtesans; and lonely women’s isolation and abandonment. For example, while nature is often seen as feminine, Chinese landscape painting may be coded as masculine due to its association with the Confucian scholar’ ideals of eremitism, a means for the cultivation of the mind, and homosociality. On the other hand, the placement of a masculine landscape in feminine space may be seen as rhetorical strategy, accentuating the lonely woman’s isolation and abandonment, which are important tropes in Chinese erotic poetry as well. This course fulfills the EDI requirement in that it is designed to enable students to study the logic of gender and sexuality in a context different from their own; to see how both genders are constructed in relation to each other, and how they interact in the context of class, ideology, politics, and ideals, as well as how we may compare their representation in China with those of other cultures, notably Japan and the West. Using both visual art and literature, this course also challenges the gender stereotyping that still exists in current scholarship.
The Class: Format: seminar/discussion
Limit: 14
Expected: 10
Class#: 3469
Grading: no pass/fail option, no fifth course option
Requirements/Evaluation: a series of 2-3 page position papers; one 3-4 page 1st oral presentation write-up; one 4-5 page pre-focus/focus paper for exploring the final paper topic; 2 oral presentations; a 12-15 page final research paper; class discussions; class attendance
Extra Info: may not be taken on a pass/fail basis; not available for the fifth course option
Prerequisites: none
Distributions: Division I Writing Skills Exploring Diversity Initiative
Notes: meets Division 1 requirement if registration is under ARTH; meets Division 2 requirement if registration is under ASST or WGSS
This course is cross-listed and the prefixes carry the following divisional credit:
ASST 417 Division II ARTH 417 Division I WGSS 318 Division II
Attributes: ARTH pre-1400 Courses
ARTH pre-1800 Courses
ARTH Middle East, Asia and Africa Courses

Class Grid

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