Contemporary Chinese Documentary
Name：
Charles A. Laughlin
Nationality： United States
Academic
Title：
Professor
Home
University
（From）：
University of Virginia (VA,
U.S.A.)
Email
Address：
charleslaughlin@virginia.edu
Undergraduate
Master
English
Preferably a basic literature course, sufficient English to follow discussion
Lecture, class discussion, close reading of examples
(1) Continuous assessment, participation：30%
(2) At least 10 400-word reading/viewing analyses：40%
(3) One 3,000-word thesis or a 10-minute in-class presentation 30%
2 credits
Charles A. Laughlin is Ellen Bayard Weedon Chair Professor of Chinese Literature
at the University of Virginia. Born in Minneapolis, he received his B.A. in Chinese
Language and Literature from the University of Minnesota in 1988, and went on to
complete a Ph.D. in Chinese Literature at Columbia University in 1996. He taught
modern Chinese literature at Yale University for ten years, and then served as
Resident Director of the PKU-Yale Joint Undergraduate Program at Beijing University
(2006-2007) and the Inter-University Program for Chinese Language Studies at
Tsinghua University in Beijing (2007-2009). Laughlin’s first book, Chinese
Reportage: The Aesthetics of Historical Experience, was published by Duke University
Press in 2002, with a Chinese translation forthcoming. He edited Contested
Modernities in Chinese Literature (Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), and his latest book
The Literature of Leisure and Chinese Modernity was published by University of Hawai’
i Press in April 2008. Laughlin has translated Chinese stories, articles and poems
for several collections, and his translations of Ma Lan’s poetry have appeared in
Modern Poetry in Translation and Zhang Er and Chen Dong, eds., Another Kind of Nation:
An Anthology of Contemporary Chinese Poetry.
Conducted in English, this course explores the documentary impulse in modern Chinese
writing and film. Beginning with reportage literature and foreign documentaries
about China from the early 20th century, the course follows the development of
documentary art forms in the People’s Republic of China (with some attention to
Taiwan as well), culminating in the recent trend of independent documentary
filmmaking and its influence on narrative film aesthetics.
1. Shanghai Dokument (1928, USSR) and Xia Yan, “Indentured Worker”
2. Ding Ling,“Eventful Autumn”(1932) and Huang Weikai, dir.“Disorder”(2009),
Huang Tingfu, dir. “Nail” (2002)
3. Mao Dun, ed., One Day in China (1936; selections)
4. Qiu Dongping, “Company Seven” (1938) and Chen Weijun, “It’s Better to Live
than to Die” (2003)
5. Wen Junquan and Dan Fu, “Li Jinzhi: A Female Operator at the Seamless Pipe
Factory” (1956) and “The Bold, Imaginative People of Daqing”
6. Liu Binyan, “People or Monsters” (1979) and “Though I am Gone” (2006)
7. Wang Jiuliang, “Beijing Besieged by Waste” (2010) and Lee Daw-ming, Hu Taili
“Voices of Orchid Island” (1993)
8. Yang Lina “Old Men” (1999) and Juang I-tseng, Yen Lan-chuan “Let it Be”
(2004)
9. Wu Wenguang, “Bumming in Beijing” (1990)
10. Wu Wenguang, “Fuck Cinema” (2005)
11. Jia Zhangke, “Still Life” (2006) and “Dong” (2006)
12. Fan Lixin, “Last Train Home” (2011)
13. Juang I-tseng and Yen Lan-chuan, “Hand in Hand” (2011) and Kuo, Chen-ti, and
Wei-ssu Chien, “Viva Tonal: The Dance Age” (2003)
Berry, Chris, Lu Xinyu, and Lisa Rofel eds., The New Chinese Documentary Film
Movement (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2010).
Laughlin, Charles A., Chinese Reportage: The Aesthetics of Historical Experience
(Durham: Duke University Press, 2002).
Lin, Sylvia Li-chun, and Tze-lan Deborah Sang. Documenting Taiwan on Film: Issues
and Methods in New Documentaries. Print. Routledge Research on Taiwan. 2012.
Anderson, Marston. The Limits of Realism: Chinese Fiction in the Revolutionary
Period. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990. Print.
Bazin, André. What is Cinema? Berkeley: University of California Press, c2004. Print.
Monteath, Peter. "The Spanish Civil War and the Aesthetics of Reportage." Literature
and War. Ed. David Bevan. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1990. 69-85. Print.
Lee, Leo Ou-fan. "Introduction." People Or Monsters? and Other Stories and Reportage
from China After Mao. Ed. E. Perry Link. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1983.
ix-xvii. Print.
Nichols, Bill. Introduction to Documentary. Bloomington: Indiana University Press,
2001. Print.
Rabinowitz, Paula. They Must be Represented: The Politics of Documentary. New York:
Verso, 1994. Print.
Robinson, Luke. Independent Chinese Documentary: From the Studio to the Street.
Houndsmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire, UK; New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013. Print.
Wagner, Rudolf. "Liu Binyan and the Texie." Modern Chinese Literature 2.1 (1986):
63-98. Print.
Zhang, Yingjin. "Narrative, Ideology, Subjectivity: Defining a Subversive Discourse
in Chinese Reportage." Politics, Ideology, and Literary Discourse in Modern China:
Theoretical Interventions and Cultural Critique. Eds. Kang Liu and Xiaobing Tang.
Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1993. 211-242. Print.
---. "My Camera Doesn't Lie? Truth, Subjectivity, and Audience in Chinese
Independent Film and Video." From Underground to Independent: Alternative Film
Culture in Contempoary China. Eds. Paul Pickowicz and Yingjin Zhang. Lanham, MD:
Rowman and Littlefield, 2006. 23-46. Print.
---. "Of Institutional Supervision and Individual Subjectivity: The History and
Current State of Documentary." Art, Politics, and Commerce in Chinese Cinema. Eds.
Ying Zhu and Stanley Rosen. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2010. 127-142.
Print.
---. "Thirdspace between Flows and Places: Chinese Independent Documentary and
Social Theories of Space and Locality." Ed. Carlos Rojas, Eileen Cheng-yin Chow.
The Oxford Handbook to Chinese Cinemas, 2013. 320. Print.
Zhao, Xiaqiu 趙霞秋. Zhongguo xiandai baogao wenxue shi 中國現代報告文學史.
Beijing: Renmin University Press, 1987. Print.