Columbia to offer course on 'Sex, Power, Performance' in 'Chine'

In the upcoming spring semester, Columbia University will offer a class entitled “Sex, Power, Performance: Gender in Chine” for upper-division students studying gender and Chinese literature.

According to a class description, the course focuses on a wide range of figures in Chinese literature, including “sexy fox spirits” and Disney’s Mulan.

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“Moving beyond stereotypes of victimized Asian womanhood and the dominance of Confucian patriarchy, we draw on Chinese literary/historical texts to examine sites of agency and power,” the course description reads. 

“Interrogating a range of gendered identities, roles, and expressions—from classical romantic heroines (ex.Peony Pavilion’s Du Liniang) and dynamic women writers (ex.the poet Li Qingzhao) to sexy fox spirits, cross-dressed warriors (Mulan), and queer love affairs (Li Yu’s Women in Love)—we probe relationships among social roles, sexualized bodies, and the performance of gender,” the web page continues.

As of publication, the class has hit capacity with 15 students.

The course will be taught by Allison Bernard, who lectures on Chinese Literature in Columbia’s Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures. Bernard previously taught a course called, “Sex, Ghosts and Cannibalism: The Chinese Short Story” at Wesleyan University, according to her LinkedIn profile. 

Columbia’s East Asian Languages and Cultures department will also offer a spring class that focuses on “culture, mental health, and healing,” which will answer questions such as “Why do certain mental illnesses only appear in specific regions of the world,” “What processes of translation, adaption, and ‘indigenization’ take place when psychiatric diagnostic categories, pharmaceutical regimens, and psychodynamic treatments developed in the West travel to China, Japan and South Korea,” and “How do contemporary East Asian therapeutic modalities destabilize biomedical assumptions about the origins and treatment of mental illness?”

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The course, which places an emphasis on “shamanistic rituals and Traditional Chinese Medicine,” will attempt to undertake a thorough investigation of mental health practitioners throughout China’s history.

“Focusing on East Asia with a particular emphasis on China, we will employ interpretive and political economic anthropological analyses to explore experiences of people struggling with illness, the practices of health practitioners who treat them, and the broader social and historical contexts that shape these interactions,” the course description reads.

Campus Reform has reached out to Columbia University for comment. This article will be updated accordingly.