Course objectives:

1)    To understand ways of seeing and forms of visuality in kaleidoscopic Shanghai. How are different modes of seeing encouraged in urban space? And how do they define that urban space?

2)    To reflect on the place of the visual within culture. How does a picture or other visual object shape culture?

3)    To respond to arguments about vision and visuality in writing (blog posts, research paper and its various elements) and verbal forms (workshopping, conference discussion, research presentations in a symposium at the end of the term)

4)    To practice writing as a way of seeing 

5)    To conduct original research on a subject of your choice and produce a longer, sustained research project with support from your colleagues in conference, Professor Claypool, and the UM librarians

January 10 Introductions: Why Vision and What is Visuality?

Blog 1.0: Introduce yourself to colleagues in the conference by posting a photograph of something that made you see the world differently––that gave you a new perspective on yourself or someone else, or on a place where you were living, or simply made you aware of the fact that you were looking at a thing in the world. It can be a painting, a pine tree, a public sculpture––anything. Please come to conference on Wednesday prepared to share your thoughts about it. Post any time before January 10 at 2:30 pm.
NB: Today we will introduce ourselves, talk about the syllabus design, and then throw ourselves into the Nemerov essay.

Read
Alexander Nemerov, “Introduction: Experience,” in Experience (Chicago: Terra Foundation for American Art, 2019), 10-23.

Key terms/concepts

• vision

• visuality

• visual technology

• insight

• haptic

• culture and visual culture

• modernization, modern, modernism

January 17 Ways of Seeing Ink Painting

Blog 2.0: Look carefully at Guo Xi's Early Spring (image linked below). Where does your eye first go? Why? Show us what you see first when you look at the painting in 2-4 sentences.

NB: Today we will discuss the Bryson at length, then we will have our first field trip to the umma where Professor Claypool will introduce you to the form and format of Chinese paintings (like the Guo Xi painting I am asking you to dwell with for the blog post)

Read
Norman Bryson, "The Gaze in the Expanded Field," in Vision and Visuality, ed. Hal Foster (New York: The New Press, 1988), 86-113. (PDF).

Images
Guo Xi (c. 1010-1090), Early Spring 早春. 1072. Hanging scroll, ink and colours on 2 panels of silk; 158.3 x 108.1 cm. National Palace Museum, Taipei, Taiwan. For zoomable image click on painting title.

Key Terms

• embodied eye

• eye-in-the-landscape

• encounter
  phenomenology

• the gaze

• the glance

• horizon

• perspective (one-point, linear, vanishing, floating)

• subject-subject relationship

• subject-object relationship

January 24 Sites of Looking and Spaces of Ideology and Contestation: Architecture in Semi-Colonial Shanghai

MEET AT THE UMMA in the lobby for second field trip

Blog 3.0: Write a one-paragraph visual analysis of one of the pictures by the modern ink painter Zhang Daqian on view in the umma Asian galleries

NB: Today we will review your visual analyses in front of the paintings at the umma, then learn about the city space of Shanghai as “Paris of the East”, modes of looking that it encouraged and that artists responded to, comparing them briefly with representations of visual experience in contemporary Paris

Read
Jonathan Hay, "Painting and the Built Environment in Late Nineteenth-Century Shanghai," Chinese Art Modern Expressions, ed. Maxwell Hearn (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2001), 61-101. (PDF)

·Charles Baudelaire on the flâneur (1863).

Key terms

• hybridity

• "Haipai" 海派 Shanghai School

• spectacle

• built environment

• architecture of permanence

• architecture of displacement
  

Professor Claypool will post a PDF of colour images from Hay’s article

January 31 Seeing the Orient/Seeing the Self

No blog post this week.

NB: During the first half of the conference, we will talk about photography as a technology of vision; during the second a librarian will introduce us to researching Chinese arts and design.

Read
Wu Hung, “Inventing a ‘Chinese’ Portrait Style in Early Photography: The Case of Milton Miller” in Brush & Shutter: Early Photography in China, eds. Jeffrey W. Cody and Frances Terpak (Los Angeles: The Getty Research Institute, 2011): 69-90. (PDF)

Roberta Wue,"Essentially Chinese: The Chinese Portrait Subject in Nineteenth-Century Photography, in Body and Face in Chinese Visual Culture, eds. Wu Hung and Katherine Tsiang (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2005): 257-80. (PDF)

Key terms

• Chinese portrait style

• Orientalism

• Occidentalism

• essentialism

• albumen print

• contact zones/expanded contact zones

• historicism

Professor Claypool will post a PDF of colour images from both articles; the Getty has all of the images that Wu Hung writes about in their collection

February 7 Seeing the Sick Man of Asia

Blog 4.0: Drawing from the session with the librarian last week, find and then quote 1-2 sentences from a book in the UM Libraries or Hathitrust by a "China Hand" that speaks to a vision of China as "the Orient."

NB: Today we will first discuss orientalism as a way of seeing and then two of you will guide the discussion of Parker’s collection of Lam Qua’s medical portraits.

READ
Larissa Heinrich, “Handmaids to the Gospel: Lam Qua’s Medical Portraiture,” in Tokens of Exchange: The Problem of Translations in Global Culture, ed. Lydia Liu (Durham: Duke University Press), 239-275.

OPTIONAL: Arif Dirlik, "Chinese History and the Question of Orientalism,” History and Theory 35, no. 4 (December 1996): 96-118. (PDF and electronic journal)

Discussion facilitators (#1):
For study images, key terms, and questions about the reading, see blog

Peter Parker’s Lam Qua paintings in the Yale Collection can be found online by clicking here.

February 14 Modern Women and Consumer Culture: Seeing as Consuming

Meet at the UMMA in the lobby for third field trip
No blog post today, please spend some time reflecting on the object you’d like to dwell with in your research project.
NB: Today we will look at examples of print technology in the umma and during the second half of conference two of you will lead discussion on calendar posters and modern women.

Read
Francesca Dal Lago, "Crossed Legs in 1930s Shanghai: How 'Modern' the Modern Woman?" East Asian History 19 (June 2000): 103-144. (PDF)

Jane Arthurs, "Sex and the City and Consumer Culture: Remediating Postfeminist Drama" Feminist Media Studies 3, no. 1 (2003): 83-98. (PDF and electronic journal)

Discussion facilitators (#2):
For study images, key terms, and questions about the reading, see blog.

February 21 WORKSHOP

Blog 5.0 Formulation of a question about a visual object dating from roughly 1842 (conclusion of the first Opium Wars) to 1949 (the end of the Republican era and establishment of the People's Republic of China in mainland China). You can choose to write about anything visual--from ink paintings to comic strips, embassy architecture to movie theaters, embroidered shoes to high heels. Consult course image databases, books on reserve, and books listed in the "further reading" links below. Browse. Look for objects or pictures that strike you as absorbingly ambiguous. Spend some serious time mulling over what you see. And then, having selected a visual object that engages you (one object is recommended, though the number can be expanded for comparative purposes), what I would like you to do is to carefully think through and develop a meaningful, provocative question that you wish to pose of it. The work should suggest the question, and not the other way around. In your short essay, first write a visual analysis and then detail the process you used in devising the question, the problems you foresee in answering it, and why you think it is meaningful in relationship to China's visual modernity. That is to say, do not simply draft a generalized, simple statement of the question; I want to see evidence of your deliberate and reasoned approach to developing a good question. Why are you asking this question? Do NOT attempt to essay uninformed, generalized (and therefore uncompelling) answers to your own question. One lengthy paragraph or two, please post to the blog by 5 pm on TUESDAY February 13 so that we can read them before the workshop.

Mid-winter Recess February 24-March 3

March 6 Shanghai Fashion

MEET AT THE UMMA in the lobby for fourth field trip

The redrafted précis of your exploratory along with an annotated bibliography is due on Wednesday, March 13, at 10 pm.

Blog 6.0. Browse Liangyou 良友 [The Young Companion] online (click here). Download a photograph of a page or picture that catches your attention for its fashion design, and post to the blog. The discussion facilitators will borrow from your images.
NB: Today we will begin our session in umma looking at 19th-century clothing, and at the end a discussion on fashion and the body will be led by two of you.

Read
Meimei Rado, “The Lady’s Fan: Fashion Accessories and Modern Femininity in Republican China,” in Fashion, Identity, and Power in Modern East Asia, eds. Kyung-Hee Pyun and Aida Yuen Wong (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), 119-227.

Dorothy Ko, "Jazzing into Modernity: High Heels, Platforms, and Lotus Shoes," in China Chic: East Meets West, eds. Valerie Steele and John Major (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1999), 140-153. (PDF)

OPTIONAL Bao Mingxian on Shanghai fashion

Discussion facilitators (#3):
For study images, key terms, and questions about the reading, see blog

March 13 Warime Surveillance: The Jewish Ghetto in Shanghai and the Pantopic Gaze

Blog 7.0 What kind of panoptic gaze do we encounter in our everyday lives? Upload an image. No prose needed.
The redrafted précis of your exploratory along with an annotated bibliography is due on today at 10 pm
NB: In class we will screen part of "Zuflucht in Shanghai: The Port of Last Resort" (1998) which demonstrates how the Jews were monitored as they moved in and out of their community in Hongkou (north Shanghai) during WWII.

Read
Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish:The birth of the prison, tr. Alan Sheridan (New York: Vintage Books, 1995) on PANOPTICISM (chapter 3) (PDF)

Nancy Berliner, "Jewish Refugee Artists in Shanghai: Visual Legacies of Traumatic Moments and Cultural Encounters," in China and Ashkenazic Jewry: Transcultural Encounters, eds. Kathryn Hellerstein and Lihong Song (Boston: De Gruyter, 2022), 165-181. (PDF)

Key terms
ghetto
panopticon
surveillance

March 20 In the Name of the Real

Blog 8.0: Post an image of a “realist” painting from nineteenth-century Europe/North America or 20th-century China. No prose necessary.

Read
David Der-Wei Wang, “In the Name of the Real,” In Chinese Art: Modern Expressions (New York: The Met, 2001), 29-56.

Terms/Concepts
realism
Chinese realism
truth
objectivity

Images
Xu Beihong 徐悲鴻 (1895-1953)
Lin Fengmian 林風眠 (1900-1991)

March 27 The Silver Screen: A Case Study of “The Goddess”

No blog post this week, as most of our discussion will centre on a film we will screen in class.

Read
Mayumi Alino, “There is Pleasure in Looking: What is the Gaze?” And “There is Power in Looking: The Oppositional Gaze”
Kristin Harris, “The Goddess: Fallen Women of Shanghai,” in Chinese Films in Focus: 25 New Takes, ed. Chris Berry (London: British Film Institute, 2003) 128-134.

Mette Hjort, “Ruan Lingyu,” in Chinese Film Stars, eds. Judith Farquhar and Yingjin Zhang (London: Taylor & Francis, 2010), 32-46.

Key terms
visual pleasure/scopic pleasure
gaze
oppositional gaze
celebrity

April 3 Decolonizing Time

No blog post this week so that you can have time to prepare for your research presentations, which will begin next week.
NB: During the first half of conference we will workshop a paper I am working on about an artist who lived most of his life in Shanghai. At the end we will discuss the art of giving a research presentation.

Read
Lisa Claypool, "Decolonizing Time" draft 

Key terms

• moment

• stillness vs movement

• anachronic

• achronic

• nonsynchronous

• heterochronic

• chronology

• modernity

• ontology

• crisis

April 10 Your Gaze on Shanghai: Symposium

Blog 9.0. Post a short abstract of the talk that you will be giving in our symposium this week by Tuesday at 10 am. so that we have time to read them beforehand

April 17 Individual meetings with Professor Claypool to discuss research projects

SUMMARY OF COURSE REQUIREMENTS

Conference Attendance and Participation. All students are expected to do the weekly readings, participate regularly and rigorously in the conference discussion, and lead conference discussion with one other students, as a group, one time during the semester. If you miss a conference, you will be responsible to turn in summaries of texts that were discussed on the day of your absence (these summaries will not be returned to you). This is to ensure that you remain integrated into the warp and woof of the expanding discussion. More than three unexcused absences will result in no credit for your participation grade. Acceptable excuses are illness and serious emergencies. 25% total grade.

Leading Conference Discussion. During the semester, you and another student will work together to facilitate the discussion. By Tuesday at 5 pm (the evening before the conference meets), please distribute a list of six discussion questions (compiled jointly with your discussion co-leader) to every member of the class through the course blog, along with images that you want to focus on during discussion and key terms. All conference participants will read the questions and reflect on the issues raised before class. 15% total grade.

Each question should be preceded by two or three sentences that contextualize it and explain its significance to the discussion. Ideally, the questions will perform three interrelated functions: they will highlight the main point of the text, suggest its relationship to other texts we have read and images we have seen, and illustrate its influence on the way we look at and understand visual images under consideration. For an extended set of suggestions on how to lead a good discussion, see the document labeled DISCUSSION FACILITATION in the FILES folder.

Course blog 9 posts 18% total grade. Due by 10 pm on Tuesdays unless noted in the syllabus.

One Writing Project in Lots of Acts.

1.   Object writing. Choose a visual object. You can choose to write about anything visual--from ink paintings to comic strips, embassy architecture to movie theaters, embroidered robes to high heels. It does not have to be Chinese but it has to have a connection to Shanghai. It must date from roughly 1842 (conclusion of the first Opium Wars) to 1949 (the end of the Republican era and establishment of the People's Republic of China in mainland China). Consult course image databases, books on reserve. Browse. Look for objects or pictures that strike you as absorbingly ambiguous. Spend some serious time mulling over what you see. And then, having selected a visual object that engages you, what I would like you to do is to carefully think through and develop a meaningful, provocative question that you wish to pose of it (more accurately, what is the meaningful, provocative question that it poses of you?). The work should suggest the question, and not the other way around. In your short essay, write a visual analysis, then detail the process you used in devising the question, the problems you foresee in answering it, and why you think it is meaningful in relationship to Shanghai's visual modernity. That is to say, do not simply draft a generalized, simple statement of the question; I want to see evidence of your deliberate and reasoned approach to evolving a good question. Why are you asking this question? Do NOT attempt to essay uninformed, generalized (and therefore uncompelling) answers to your own question. Two-three lengthy paragraphs. Due as Blog 5.0 on Tuesday, February 20, at 10 pm.

2.     Brainstorming questions and images in conference on Wednesday, February 21.

3.     Redraft your question into a 2-3 PAGE project precis and email it to Professor Claypool as a WORD DOC (no PDFs, please) with an annotated bibliography of 4 sources, minimum. Due March 13 at 10 pm. 7% total grade

4.     Research presentation. April 10. 10% total grade

5.     Research project due April 24 at 5 pm. Undergraduates 11-13 pages of prose, graduate students 14-20 pages of prose, double-spaced, 12-point Times New Roman or Garamond font, regular margins, with images placed at the end of the paper. No extensions on project deadline. No exceptions. Please email to Professor Claypool as a WORD DOC. 25% total grade.

Because we are working together to move forward and build knowledge, late assignments will not be accepted unless health or emergencies are preventing you from submitting on time. Please email your assignments to Professor Claypool as WORD documents. That allows me to freely comment on your paper and for us to have a meaningful dialogue.

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