The last few decades have witnessed an explosion of cultural creativity in the Chinese-speaking world. This class introduces students to twentieth-century Chinese culture, through the lens of film and literature. It is the only class at Penn that studies what some scholars have recently come to call "Cultural China": the People's Republic of China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and diaspora communities all over the world, including North America. From the beginnig of this century, Chinese thinkers and artists have struggled with the question of what it means to be Chinese. At the same time that the class focuses on post-national communities in the Chinese diaspora, we will also examine how some key literary and cinematic texts address and wrestle with nationalism. Other issues to be addressed include gender studies and postcoloniality. Texts to be studied include stories by Lu Xun, Eileen Chang (Zhang Ailing), and Maxine Hong Kingston. Films to be shown include the popular (among them Chungking Express and at least one martial arts film) and the lesser-known (City of Sadness and Yellow Earth). Students will also be required to attend film screenings.