Rethinking Modernity in a Century of Turmoil: Modern Chinese Art, ca. 1840s-1940s (CD or HA)

Subject associations
ART 356 / EAS 353
Term
Spring 2025
Instructors
Yixu Eliza Chen
Cheng-hua Wang
Registrar description

This course explores the visual and material culture during the century of turmoil in China (1840s to 1940s) while considering critically how modernity was defined and how it operated. In this class, we will examine a wide array of visual mediums, such as painting, calligraphy, prints, sculpture, photography, and cinema. While doing so, we will reflect upon issues crucial to our understandings of modern Chinese art in particular and "modernity" in general, such as globality, coloniality, nationalism, gender, popular culture, and cultural heritage among others.