Colloquium Description:

This colloquium is designed to help the senior students majoring or minoring in Chinese to integrate their understandings of Chinese culture with broader social, political, and aesthetic issues. The guiding questions or perspectives for this colloquium are based on our majors and minors, who can share what they learned in the past 7 semesters and what they didn’t study but would like to learn. Therefore the colloquium is actually led by our majors and minors through discussion. Particularly Honors students would take an advantage of this arena to present their ideas and thoughts on their study fields. Therefore, we don’t have a fixed schedule or syllabus now, but an open and working plan waiting each of you to contribute.



It aims to provide an opportunity for our majors and minors to catch up with what is lacking in their understanding of China; exchange or sharing with others about their learned knowledge or comprehension of China; discuss about future plans to see if feasible with your fellow students and the instructor.


CHINESE SECTION: LEARNING GOALS FOR MAJORS AND MINORS

1. Language acquisition – students will be able to communicate at second year level according to the ACTFL Proficiency Guidelines; they will also integrate targeted language training courses, such as advanced reading, conversation, and Classical Chinese towards their professional and personal goals.
2. Disciplinary knowledge – students will gain a contextual understanding of China through the section’s wide selection of content courses on pre-modern and modern China spanning across the fields of literature, theater, history, film and media, gender studies, and calligraphy.
3. Critical textual engagement – students will develop close reading skills and learn to use theoretical frameworks to analyze a range of source materials.
4. Fieldwork – through practicum and attachment courses, students will have the opportunity to interact with Chinese-speaking cultural and community organizations in the greater Philadelphia area and abroad.