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Fine Arts
This is a digital photography course with the focus on China. Students will learn digital photography techniques using the digital camera and working with Photoshop. The course assignments are on life in China and sharing that life visually through their photographs and essays. Classes will include lectures from Chinese and Western photography and digital imaging professionals. There will be individual and group critiques of students work. The classes are designed to encourage and support individual thinking about photography and create in the students a discipline in their photography. All students will actively participate in group and individual assignments ranging from photojournalism to weddings. A weekly project as well as a semester project is required for an assessment. These classes will be challenging and rewarding for those interested in photography and life in China. Click here to download the complete syllabus.
This course will examine the artisan crafts of China from two points of view: historically and technically. We will observe the chronological appearance of significant crafts such as ceramics, wooden artifacts, woven goods, and metal arts, stone carving, and the like. We will study what factors gave rise to the production of the first examples of the craft and how each one became a part of a tradition. We plan to visit local shops and factories where the traditional crafts are practiced, and then observe how contemporary artisans are adapting new technologies to these traditional crafts. A research paper--coupling images and explanation--will be a focal point of the student's work. Click here to download the complete syllabus.
Business / Economics
Taught by the former Executive Director of the American Chamber of Commerce in China, this is a unique course involving a series of guest lectures from the leaders of the international business community in Beijing and from China's top economic scholars. It will focus on the "hot" issues in contemporary economics and business in China. In the past topics have included "Banking in China: Reform and Competition" "Foreign Businesses in China: Further Reform", "Legal Aspects of China's WTO Accession", "Starting a Business in China: Personal Experiences", "Venture Capital in China", "Pension and Other Labor Issues", "Environment Impact on the Chinese Economy", etc. Click here to download the complete syllabus.
This course is to provide expert insight on contemporary China's business environment and offer professional guidance for business operations. Students are supposed to have learned foundation courses in marketing. Click here to download the complete syllabus.
International Business is a hot topic for the managers of multinational companies. This course will: (1) explain how and why the world's countries differ; (2) present a thorough review of the economics and politics of international trade and investment; (3) explain the functions and forms of the global monetary system; (4) examine the strategies and structures of international business; and (5) assess the special roles of an international business's various functions. Case studies will focus on the real world of international business. Click here to download the complete syllabus.
The world has shrunk into a small village, as modern technologies provide convenient means to overcome geographical distance in hours and information is transmitted across continents almost instantaneously. Diverse economies have integrated with each other to the extent closer than ever. Having a good command of the local market is far from enough when competitors are able to employ valuable financial resources trans-nationally. Given these transformations and the challenges posed, students must be well prepared in international finance. This course will enable students to be familiar with the international financial environment; learn important concepts and methods to, among other ends, measure and manage foreign exchange exposures and foreign exchange markets. In addition, the course provides cutting-edge knowledge and techniques of financing ventures globally, and will also assist future analysts and decision-makers in making sound foreign investment decisions. While the course covers global issues, a number of the cases will focus on China. Click here to download the complete syllabus.
Marketing in China is both similar to and very different from marketing done elsewhere. Culture plays a major role, though how large will be one of the areas that will be explored in this course. The rise and role of the internet, the special part played by branding strategies, the role of consumer research, and the ways in which managers and consumers react to various marketing efforts will all be addressed in this course. These and other marketing issues will be illustrated and examined using cases that are derived from experiences and operations in China. There will be set of writing assignments and a paper. Click here to download the complete syllabus.
Chinese Language & Literature
This one-semester course aims to provide students who have no Chinese learning experience with basic knowledge and skills of Mandarin Chinese in oral communication, reading and writing. On completion of this course, students will be able to have daily conversations including talking about families, hobbies, school life, weather, transportation, making appointments and shopping, as well as reading and writing notes and letters. About 350 Chinese characters will be introduced in this course.
Duration: 13 weeks (with mid-term and final exams)
Textbook: Integrated Chinese (Level 1-part 1)
This one-semester course aims to provide students who have a Chinese learning experience equivalent to Elementary Chinese I with basic knowledge and skills of Mandarin Chinese in food, sports, travel, going to a party, seeing a doctor, and renting an apartment. On completion of this course, students will build up comprehensive knowledge of Chinese grammar and essential vocabulary. About 350 Chinese characters will be introduced in this course.
Duration: 13 weeks (with mid-term and final exams)
Textbook: Integrated Chinese (Level 1-part 2)
This is a one semester course and it aims to provide students who have no Chinese learning experience with solid communicative skills as they discuss everyday topics such as food, sports, travel, going to a party, seeing a doctor, and renting an apartment. It covers all of the contents of Elementary I and advances into pre-intermediate level at the end of the semester. On completion of this course, students will build up comprehensive knowledge of Chinese grammar and essential vocabulary. About 700 Characters will be introduced in this course. In this course students are required to comprehend and produce paragraph-level Chinese. Intensive Elementary Chinese aims to fit one year of studying Chinese into a single semester and is thus worth 6 credits.
Duration: 13 weeks (with mid-term and final exams)
Textbook: Integrated Chinese (Level 1-part 1), Integrated Chinese (Level 1-part 2)
This course is an integrated course for the student abroad with the middle level of Chinese. Each lesson in the used textbook has a topic whose content mainly introduces people's dialogue in everyday life including term beginning, dormitory, restaurant, friends and relationships, movie and movie influence. The student can improve their Chinese language skills of listening, speaking, reading and writing after finishing this course.
Duration: 13 weeks (with mid-term and final exams)
Textbook: Integrated Chinese Level 2
This course is an integrated course for the student abroad with the middle level of Chinese. Each lesson in the used textbook has a topic whose content mainly introduces people's dialogue in everyday life including travel, post office, Chinese festivals, physical culture, family, and education. The student can improve their Chinese language skills of listening, speaking, reading and writing after finishing this course.
Duration: 13 weeks (with mid-term and final exams)
Textbook: Integrated Chinese Level 2
This course is an integrated course for the student abroad with the middle level of Chinese. Each lesson in the used textbook has a topic whose content mainly introduces people's dialogue in everyday life including term beginning, dormitory, restaurant, friends and relationships, movie and movie influence, travel, post office, Chinese festivals, physical culture, family, and education. The student can improve their Chinese language skills of listening, speaking, reading and writing as well as further strengthen their ability of communication after finishing this course. Intensive Intermediate Chinese aims to fit one year of studying Chinese into a single semester and is thus worth 6 credits.
Duration: 13 weeks (with mid-term and final exams)
Textbook: Integrated Chinese Level 2
The purpose of this course is to enable students to master advanced-level Chinese language structures, expressive styles, and conventions of communication used in formal situations and academic exchanges. Meanwhile, it is also important to assist students with their realization for today's China. Therefore, the teaching plans focus on the following three areas: First, utilizing different socially and culturally relevant topics to help students systematically master the structures, vocabulary, use of idiomatic expressions, writing styles, and discourse structures commonly used in formal situations; Second, fostering students' ability to express themselves accurately and appropriately through communicative exercises; Third, choosing supplementary materials to help students learn about Chinese cultural concept, social changes, economic development, and human relationships nowadays.
Duration: 13 weeks (with mid-term and final exams)
Textbook: China Scene--an Advanced Chinese Multimedia Course
For Class Advanced Conversational Chinese, we use Accelerated Oral Chinese (intermediate) as teaching material. So the course mainly focuses on speaking. Unlike we teach the basics beginning students need to function in Chinese, this course cover twelve pieces of real authentic materials about different aspects of the society in modern China, such as Different Culture, Parents and Children, Face the Desert, etc. As a course for intermediate students, besides more than 130 new words, 54 set phases, 10 proverbs and 57 sentence patterns are included as well. Through plenty of special trainings, students will be strong in oral Chinese, know how to talk over social phenomenon with Chinese natives in real life with a good understanding of China.
Besides trainings on speaking, we believe that a healthy language program should be a balanced one. So we also attach much importance to listening, writing and reading in class to maximize the teaching results.
The whole course is designed to be completed within 13 weeks. One chapter for each week, and the last week is for final exam.
Duration: 13 weeks (with mid-term and final exams)
Textbook: Accelerated Oral Chinese (intermediate)
This course is a survey of the modern Chinese literature from 1918 to the present. It requires a close reading of famous Chinese writers and poets such as Lu Xun, Yu Dafu, Xu Zhimo, Mao Dun, Lao She, Shen Congwen, Chang Eileen, Ai Qing, Wang Meng , Mo Yan, and Gao Xingjian, as well as some of the avant-garde writers such as Yu Hua and Can Xue. Students will have the opportunity to explore their own ideas of the aesthetic characteristics of the Chinese literature in the 20 th century, as well as its historical and social background, and be informed of one of the important sides of the modern Chinese culture. All readings in this course are in Chinese. Click here to download the complete syllabus.
This course is a survey of the modern Chinese literature from 1918 to the present. It will focus on the fiction, poetry, and essays during the 3 periods (1918~1949; 1949~1976; since 1976) in the 20th Century. Through a close study of famous Chinese writers and poets such as Lu Xun, Xu Zhimo, Wen Yiduo, Mao Dun, Lao She, Shen Congwen, Ba Jin, Chang Eileen, Ai Qing, Chen Yingzhen, Wang Meng, Han Shaogong, Mo Yan, and Jia Pingwa, as well as some of the avant-garde writers, students will have the opportunity to explore their own ideas of what the development of the Chinese literature in the 20th Century is like, and be informed of one of the important sides of modern Chinese culture.
History
This course is a survey of the modern and contemporary history of China. It is similar to the courses offered to students in Chinese universities. The course is designed to introduce the students to what has happened in China from 1840 to the 1990s. The aim is to have students appreciate how the Chinese Empire, with a bright and advanced civilization in ancient times, became a semi-colony of the western powers, and how the Chinese people pushed forward the modernization of China. Click here to download the complete syllabus.
The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution was launched by Mao Zedong more than forty years ago but the consequences can be still felt throughout Chinese society. From 1966 to 1976 an era of terror and destruction spread all over China. Chinese attitudes about this period have been ambivalent and complex. Although the Cultural Revolution is not taboo, it is still a sensitive subject, in large measure because of the trauma millions of people went through and the political issues involved. One cannot understand contemporary China without comprehending the impact of the Cultural Revolution.
The aim of this class is to understand the situation during the decade 1966 to 1976, and to give the students the elements necessary to grasp a better understanding of contemporary China. In order to do so we will use materials from a variety of sources oral history, official texts, literature, documentaries, and films. Click here to download the complete syllabus.
Communications
The course will give an overview of major films produced in mainland China since 1949. We will examine the genres of Chinese film better known in contemporary China, and consider them a major source of reflection upon, and critique of contemporary Chinese society. The focus will be on the fifth-generation mainland cinema¡ªas well as some films from the 1950s and 1970s, and most important of all, some classics directed by the new generation of filmmakers of the 1990s, normally grouped under the rubric of the sixth-generation directors. All films chosen for the course will help inform our understanding of modern China in terms of its material conditions and ideology. Furthermore, the narrative structures and cinematic images celebrate the changes and convey the anxieties associated with it. Click here to download the complete syllabus.
Philosophy
The body of this course consists in studies of four ethical schools in ancient China: Confucianism, Taoism, Maoism and Legalism. Since the course is a philosopher's approach to those schools, the emphasis is upon the philosophical ideals contained in them, rather than upon any extended exegesis of the texts themselves. Specifically, the following structures govern the interpretation of each school: (1) a general introduction of each school: the text, most important characteristics, and influences; (2) central ethical ideas in each school; (3) the role of each school in the formation of a value system in the tradition; and (4) modern meaning of Chinese ethics: a transformation of a Chinese traditional value system into what is called Asian values during the industrialization of Asian countries. Click here to download the complete syllabus.
Political Science
This course is an examination of the political, economic, and social forces that led to and sustain China's contemporary drive towards modernization. The time frame is from 1978 to the present day, with more emphasis placed upon the regimes of Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao. Aside from such areas as the political causes of and ideological changes in economic reform, relations between government and enterprises, and the interactions between the central government and local authority, our efforts will also look at the debates raging here about the direction and destination of China. Click here to download the complete syllabus.
The goal of this course is to help students obtain, in the context of dynamic history and complex realities of power and ideas, a better grasp of the China-U.S. relations, the most important bilateral relations to China at the present as well as in a large part of her modern history, and probably also the most important ones to the United States in the coming decades. The general orientation of the past evolution of the intercourses between these two powers with different traditions but the very similar "continental" magnitude will be surveyed, the developments in the most recent years and months emphasized, and the predictable future prospects discussed, with various major "internal" determinants of the policy behaviors of China and U.S. toward each other being taken in analysis and understanding. Click here to download the complete syllabus.
The course is designed for the students to understand modern and future politics of China through its traditional political philosophy. Chinese traditional political philosophy can be focused on three spiritual spheres by a logical way: Confucianism, Taoism and Buddhism. Chinese Marxism is a new form of Chinese traditional political philosophy. The course will teach the political philosophy of Confucianism, Taoism, Buddhism, Chinese Marxism respectively and then illustrate their relationships based on the comparison between Chinese and West political politics. Click here to download the complete syllabus.
Science
This course provides with a systematic introduction to major environmental issues in the context of the latest social and economic development in China. It starts with an exploration of the links between economic development and the environment in China. This allows students to examine the main driving forces influencing on the course of China's economic and environmental change. This course will also refer to such environmental concerns as land resources management, water resources and water pollution, air pollution and quality, and environmental regulatory framework in China. This course will also touch upon China's role and status in global environmental issues and cooperation. This helps students to explore China from an international environmental and economic perspective.
Click here to download the complete syllabus.
Social Sciences
This course presents to the student an overall picture of the diversity in unity of the peoples and cultures of China. Topics covered include the mental and factual pictures of minorities in China, ethnic and national boundaries in the process of globalization, and the cultural geography of China. Specific minorities studied include Mongols, Ewenki and Oroqen in North China, the Naxi, Yi and Dai in the South, the Tibetans, the Western Muslims, and finally the Han as myth and misnomer. Click here to download the complete syllabus.
This course is designed for students who wish to use the trip to Yunnan to experience a more in-depth and focused examination of the role of ethnic groups in modern China. Students will do additional work on the academic trip to Yunnan, which is China's most geographically and ethnically diverse province. This course involves issues of anthropology, sociology, ethnicity and gender, as well as politics and economics.
Throughout the trip and the course, students will witness the tension between economic development, modernization and ethnicity, and they will also begin to supply themselves with material for use in writing a significant research paper. After the trip concludes, there will be a series of class meetings as the semester proceeds to discuss student observations and findings. Click here to download the complete syllabus.
Martial Arts
This course is a survey of Chinese Wushu of intermediate class, which represents Chinese traditional sports. Students will select to learn some forms at this class. They are Compulsory Boxing (which is international competition routine) Swordplay, Form and Will Boxing and Pricking Foot Boxing, 42-Form-Taichi Boxing, 32-Form-Taichi Sword Form, General Sword Form, and Simplified Eight-Form Chen Style Taijiquan. This class will make students know Chinese Wushu from experience. Click here to download the complete syllabus.
Internship
This course will provide students with an opportunity to get hands-on experience by engaging with China in either a work or volunteer environment. By being placed in an organization, a business corporation, an NGO, or the media, students will gain experience as well as first-hand understanding of China. More importantly, students are strongly encouraged to contribute to the local community.
Students are expected to set a clear goal at the beginning of the course. Students' work is supervised and evaluated by their hosts. An assigned text or two; weekly written reports; and a final report summarizing the student's experiences are also requirements. Approximately 8-10 work hours per week is necessary.
Prerequisites include one of the following: 2 or more years of Chinese language at the college level; at least a full year in China, engaged in something other than the pursuit of an undergraduate degree; or have spent the previous semester at TBC. Click here to download the complete syllabus.
Theology
This course is a survey of the history of various religions in China. Through a close study of religious tradition and culture in China, students will acquire knowledge of the native and foreign religions. The course includes ancient religious myths and legends, primitive religions, Confucianism, Taoism, Buddhism, Christianity, Islam Judaism, Manichaeism and popular of folk religions which existed and developed in the Chinese context for thousands of years. The students can get to know some important texts and practices in Chinese religions. They will also have the opportunity to explore the function of religion in the development of Chinese society and the significance of religion in Chinese civilization. Click here to download the complete syllabus.
Seminars
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In the Spring 2008 semester, The Beijing Center will offer a set of seminars that will focus on specialized subjects that will
go into greater depth and detail concerning some of the leading features of China. These courses will enroll 10 students
maximum, with preference being given to students who are enrolled for a full year at TBC. The courses will be extensive
and detailed, and involve the research and writing of a major paper. Professors will work with students in these seminars,
providing not only the context for the course but also helping to guide their research. |
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This course is a research seminar designed to introduce students to basic and advanced perspectives and techniques in Chinese studies. The seminar presents and evaluates methods and sources that are utilized to conceive of and comprehend the development of China across time periods and perspectives. The complexity of the subject demands that research be both cross-cultural and interdisciplinary, and so each student is assigned a project advisor with specific expertise in his/her topic of research. Every student is provided with a class schedule outlining periods for group classes and periods for one on one discussion with their class instructor and/or their project advisor. He/she is expected to submit a research proposal at the start of the course and to discuss their findings with classmates as the semester progresses. A final substantial paper (12 single-space pages or more) is required.
Even before the communist party took power in China, political and social movements of various sorts have been a recurrent feature of political, social, and economic life. Some of these movements have been political campaigns launched by the State; others have been efforts at economic reform; and still others have taken a social form, such as migration, either voluntary (as farmers searching for work in the cities) or compelled (as the displacement of millions in the Three Gorges dam project).
Our task for this class will be to understand better these sorts of movements, not only since 1949, but earlier. Students will be asked to conduct research on a movement of their choosing, so as to help give themselves a better understanding of China's ongoing transformation. As a class, we will make use of the analysis of scholars, official references, documentaries, and oral histories. Click here to download the complete syllabus.
As China has become more powerful, many here have become more contemplative. Morality, spirituality, the role of the individual, and the relevance of traditional Chinese thinking is being debated daily. This seminar will look at these debates and reconsiderations as Chinese intellectuals and citizens try to come to grips with the modern world and its pressures and possibilities. Presentations and discussions of assigned readings will comprise the bulk of the class time, and there will be a research paper focused on a specific question, thinker, or school of thought required by each student.
This course examines China's development and its participation in the globalization of the world in modern Chinese history from a gender perspective. It covers China's transformation from a traditional, imperial and semi-colonial society, through the founding of the People's Republic, and to the recent years in which China became a member of the World Trade Organization and decided to build a "Xiao Kang" (literally in English, "well-off") society. It examines the changes globalization has brought to trade as they are reflected through China's experience as a trading country.
The course also discusses how China moved from a previously collectivist planned economy to a socialist market-based economy and has undergone industrial reforms and rural restructuring and the recent participation in what Thomas Friedman called-ten "flattening forces" of globalization. This discussion shall focus on how this participation impacts on men and women and the growing gender disparities. The course also examines the different views of the challenges China's participation in globalization poses to the world. Click here to download the complete syllabus. |
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