Sr Sem: Reshaping Urban China

PLSD 4011 | Spring 2012 | Faculty: Zhijian Qian

The experiences of a new Chinese urban culture in the past century, especially in the last two decades, are important to a world that tries to deal with the emerging superpower in the era of globalization. This course examines major aspects of new Chinese urban culture such as architecture, design, fashion, environmental art, theatre and cinema, etc. Well investigate such topics as new architecture and urban life in colonial Shanghai; urban life in newspaper illustrations and cartoons of the 1920s-40s; city planning, architecture and communal life in the communist regime; theatre and cinema under Mao; environmental art and urban culture in Post-Mao period; architectural designs by foreign architects since the 1990s; design and fashion; urban life and the politics of consumption. The course aims at helping students understand the formation and transformation of a new urban culture in a China that has been undergoing dramatic political, social and economic changes. Pathway: Spatial Design Studies