This course takes an interdisciplinary approach and analyzes the issues of didacticism in story-telling, the problems of interpretation and the balance between entertaining and enlightening and the art and techniques of narration in traditional Chinese short stories. By reading Taoist, Buddhist, detective and fox and ghost stories as windows onto the social practices and values of traditional China, the course investigates broad social concerns such as identity, gender, sexuality and morality in pre- modern China. The course will be conducted in English and all required readings are in English as well. Students are not expected to know Chinese to take this course.

This course takes an interdisciplinary approach and analyzes the issues of didacticism in story-telling, the problems of interpretation and the balance between entertaining and enlightening and the art and techniques of narration in traditional Chinese short stories. By reading Taoist, Buddhist, detective and fox and ghost stories as windows onto the social practices and values of traditional China, the course investigates broad social concerns such as identity, gender, sexuality and morality in pre- modern China. The course will be conducted in English and all required readings are in English as well. Students are not expected to know Chinese to take this course.