Dreaming East, Dreaming West: Narratives of Identity and Community between China and the U.S.

Dreaming East, Dreaming West: Narratives of Identity and Community between China and the U.S. is a Social Science class taught by Kimberly Chang and Liming Liu.

This course requires prerequisites. This course requires instructor permission.

Course Description
As part of the new Mellon initiative to integrate language learning with academic study, this course will use both Chinese and English sources to explore the movement of peoples and formation of identities between China and the U.S. over the last century. We will read first person narratives--letters, memoir, blog--of individuals whose lives and livelihoods, dreams and aspirations, inhabit the borderlands between the imagined communities of "China" and "America." Focusing on both Chinese writing about America and Americans writing about China, we ask: How have Chinese and Americans historically imagined each other? How do stories of Chinese-American movement and mixing challenge dominant discourse about what it means to be "Chinese" or "American"? And what can we learn from personal narrative about the ways identities and communities are formed in relation to each other? This course includes a field trip to the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies and the Harvard-Yenching Library. Prerequisite: Students are expected to have the equivalent of at least one year of college-level intensive Chinese language study. Course fee: $20.00.