Syllabus
1. Lecture 1. Introduction. This lecture introduces the matters of how visual sources can be used in for conducting research in humanities; it looks at methods of analysing visual sources and theories of cartooning, caricature, and animation. The lecture also provides a brief outline of the key events in China within the chronological framework of the course.
Obligatory literature: Burke, Peter. 2001. Eyewitnessing: The Uses of Images as Historical Evidence. London: Reaktion Books.
Recommended literature: Cohn, Neil. 2013. The visual language of comics: Introduction to the structure and cognition of sequential images. London: Bloomsbury. Coupe, William A. 1969. “Observations on a theory of political caricature.” Comparative studies in society and history 11, no. 1: 79-95. Fairbank, John King, and Merle Goldman. (1992) 2006. China: A New History. Cambridge Mass., London: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. Rose, Gillian. 2001. Visual methodologies: An introduction to the interpretation of visual materials. London: Sage Publications. Streicher, Lawrence H. 1967. “On a theory of political caricature.” Comparative studies in society and history 9, no. 4: 427-445. 2. Lecture 2. Local roots of mass-produced images in China. This lecture follows traditions of book illustration, woodblock printing, and estampage in China, as well as their spreading and applications in daily life; it also considers foreign influences of 19th century (in such media as maps, newspapers and magazines, etc.)
Obligatory literature: Clunas, Craig. 1997. Pictures and Visuality in Early Modern China. London: Reaktion Books.
Recommended literature: Brokaw, Cynthia, and Christopher A. Reed, eds. 2010. From Woodblocks to the Internet: Chinese Publishing and Print Culture in Transition, circa 1800 to 2008. Leiden: Brill. Henriot, Christian, and Wen-hsin Yeh, eds. 2012. History in images: Pictures and public space in modern China. Berkeley: University of California, Institute of East Asian Studies. Purtle, Jennifer, and Hans Bjarne Thomsen, eds. 2009. Looking Modern: East Asian Visual Culture from Treaty Ports to World War II. Chicago: The Center for the Art of East Asia Symposia, Art Media Resources. Reed, Christopher A. 2004. Gutenberg in Shanghai: Chinese print capitalism, 1876-1937. Vancouver: UBC Press. Smith, Richard J. 2013. Mapping China and Managing the World: Culture, Cartography and Cosmology in Late Imperial Times. London: Routledge. 3. Lecture 3. Emergence and development of manhua. This lecture is devoted to appearance and growing popularity of manhua cartoons in Shanghai in the 1920s-1930s, along with other visual materials (posters, advertisement, cinema, theatre, etc.); it also tracks the foreign inspirations (primarily from Europe and Japan). The chief objects of study here are early magazines, artists, and their styles
Obligatory literature: Bevan, Paul. 2016. A modern miscellany: Shanghai cartoon artists, Shao Xunmei’s circle and the travels of Jack Chen, 1926-1938. Leiden: Brill.
Recommended literature: Crespi, John A. 2011. “China’s Modern Sketch: The Golden Era of Cartoon Art, 1934-1937.” MIT Visualizing Cultures. Available at http://ocw.mit.edu/ans7870/21f/21f.027/modern_sketch/. Harder, Hans, and Barbara Mittler, eds. 2013. Asian Punches: A transcultural affair. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer. Pan, Lynn. 2008. Shanghai style: Art and design between the Wars. South San Francisco: Long River Press. Rea, Christopher. 2015. The age of irreverence: A new history of laughter in China. Oakland: University of California Press. 4. Seminar 1. Manhua magazines of the 1930s. Discussion of the Shidai Manhua (Modern Sketch) magazine publications. Key questions: What kind of topics were visible in the magazine? What influences, domestic and foreign, can be deduced from cartoons? How recognisable is humour and satire in the images to reader today? What feelings and anxieties can be perceived? Online resources: Modern Sketch collection, Colgate University: https://archives.colgate.edu/repositories/2/resources/497 5. Lecture 4. Cartooning in the age of war (Second Sino-Japanese War 1937-1945, Civil war 1946-1949). This lecture aims to outline the aims and modes of existence of cartoonists in wartime China, chiefly their propaganda of war effort and patriotism; it also looks into the arising technical difficulties and changes in political trends, while also paying attention to cartooning in the occupied territories (Shanghai, Manchukuo, etc.)
Obligatory literature: Hung, Chang-tai. 1990. “War and peace in Feng Zikai's wartime cartoons.” Modern China 16, no. 1: 39-83. Hung, Chang-tai. 1994. “The fuming image: Cartoons and Public Opinion in Late Republican China, 1945 to 1949.” Comparative studies in society and history 36, no. 1: 122-145.
Recommended literature: Fitzgerald, Carolyn. 2013. Fragmenting modernisms: Chinese wartime literature, art, and film, 1937-49. Leiden: Brill. De Giorgi, Laura. 2014. “Little Friends at War: Childhood in the Chinese Anti-Japanese War Propaganda Magazine Kangzhan Ertong 抗战儿童 (The Resistance Child).” Oriens Extremus 53: 61-84. Pozzi, Laura. 2014. “‘Chinese Children Rise Up!’: Representations of Children in the Work of the Cartoon Propaganda Corps during the Second Sino-Japanese War.” Cross-Currents e-Journal: East Asian History and Culture Review 13 (December): 99-133. Taylor, Jeremy E. 2015. “Cartoons and collaboration in wartime China: The mobilization of Chinese cartoonists under Japanese occupation.” Modern China 41(4): 406-435. 6. Seminar 2. Cartooning as weapon. Discussion of wartime cartoons (1937-1945). Key questions: what images appear to be especially striking? How did war conditions change techniques and styles of drawing, printing, transmitting messages? Which sides are shown as strong / weak, how is this conveyed through images? Online resources: Anti-Japanese war and modern Sino-Japanese relations platform: http://www.modernhistory.org.cn/index.htm 7. Lecture 5. Political cartooning of the Mao years. This lecture is concerned with the publication of the Manhua magazine in the 1950s: its key topics, artists, and styles; the lecture aims to show continuity and disruption between pre- and post-1949 cartooning, as well as to explore cartoons as means of propaganda and as ways for public communication
Obligatory literature: Altehenger, Jennifer. 2013. “A Socialist Satire: Manhua Magazine and Political Cartoon Production in the PRC, 1950-1960.” Frontiers of History in China 8 (1): 78-103.
Recommended literature: Andrews, Julia F. 1995. Painters and Politics in the People's Republic of China, 1949-1979. Berkeley: University of California Press. Crespi, John A. 2020. Manhua Modernity: Chinese Culture and the Pictorial Turn. Oakland: University of California Press. Zhu, Ping, Zhuoyi Wang, and Jason McGrath, eds. 2019. Maoist Laughter. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press. 8. Lecture 6. Propaganda posters in the PRC. This lecture looks into the origins, iconography, and political use of propaganda posters in Maoist years; it then follows their evolution and use in post-Mao China by studying the styles, themes, and means of communicating messages
Obligatory literature: Lent, John A. and Ying Xu. 2017. Comics Art in China. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi.
Recommended literature: Min, Anchee, Duo Duo, and Stephan R. Landsberger (comp., essays). (2003) 2015. Chinese propaganda posters. Koeln: Taschen. Zhang, Ningfeng. 2016. A comparative study: Propaganda visualizations of Chinese Communist Party in posters and magazine covers during 1989-2009. MA thesis. Aalto: Aalto University. 9. Seminar 3. Propaganda posters in transition. Discussion of developments in propaganda posters from Mao years into ‘postsocialist’ China. Key questions: What is noticeable and essential for propaganda posters in the Mao years, especially the Great Cultural Revolution? What is characteristic of propaganda posters and other political visuals (e.g. political banners and video recordings of party meetings and leadership) of contemporary China? Which aspects appear to have disappeared, which remained? Online resources: Chinese Propaganda Posters: https://chineseposters.net/ 10. Lecture 7. Animation in 20th century China. This lecture delves into the appearance of animated films in Republican China and the role of the Second Sino-Japanese War in developing animation; it also ponders the interaction with Japanese artists and later changes in Socialist animation of Mao years and new trends in post-Mao period
Obligatory literature: Du, Daisy Yan. 2019. Animated encounters: Transnational movements of Chinese animation, 1940s-1970s. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press.
Online resources: Association for Chinese Animation Studies: http://acas.ust.hk/ 11. Seminar 4. Looking at details in animation. Viewing animation of students’ choice (e.g. Princess Iron Fan 铁扇公主, 1941; Why is a Crow Black 乌鸦为什么是黑的, 1955; Fishing Boy渔童, 1959; The Herd Boy’s Flute 牧笛, 1964/1979; Havoc in Heaven 大闹天宫, 1965). Key questions: What is striking about the animation techniques? What national traits are recognisable, what foreign influences are visible? How does sound, both voices and music, come into play with the images on screen? What kind of moral conclusions are reached by each animated film and why were they topical at their times? Online resources: “Early Chinese animation” playlist: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLhA05Qf-09xAgCdNLbAF3n6PCfu-awo6I 12. Lecture 8. Comics art in post-Mao China. In the start of the lecture lianhuanhua books are introduced as one of the origins of comics art in China; then the development of commercial
Annotation
The course proposes to follow the history and practices of cartooning, comics art, and animation in China, from late Qing period (second half of 19th century) through 20th century. This would be of interest both to students of
China or East Asia as a way of seeing the key historic events from new angles and to students outside of sinology as a path to envision China’s transformations in late Qing, Republican, socialist, and post-socialist periods.
During the lectures we look at various local roots of hand-drawn, mechanically-reproduced, and digital images which have become widespread in China in this period; at stylistic and technical varieties of cartooning, comics art, and animation; at local and international contexts of their existence and evolution; and at various functions these visual sources served at different times. Seminars allow the students to engage in analysis and discussion of materials of their own choice within the course’s framework, chiefly as a means of widening students’ awareness of existing online databases and possible sources for historical and cultural research.