Mary Ann Farquhar

Associate Professor of International Business and Asian Studies at Griffith University Mary Ann Farquhar, PH D

A history of children's literature in China, set in the framework of China's revolution and modernization. Lu Xun and his brother Zhou Zhuren were the founding fathers of the idea of the political importance of children and how that connected with literature tailored for them in the 20s and 30s.

From Lu Xun to Mao Zedong

Children's Literature in China

Chris Berry

Christopher (Associate Professor of Film Studies Berry, Goldsmiths College)

In China on Screen, Chris Berry and Mary Farquhar, leaders in the field of Chinese film studies, explore more than one hundred years of Chinese cinema and nation. Providing new perspectives on key movements, themes, and filmmakers, Berry and Farquhar analyze the films of a variety of directors and actors, including Chen Kaige, Zhang Yimou, Hou Hsiao Hsien, Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan, Maggie Cheung, Gong Li, Wong Kar-wai, and Ang Lee. They argue for the abandonment of "national cinema" as an analytic tool and propose "cinema and the national" as a more productive framework. With this approach, they show how movies from China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and the Chinese diaspora construct and contest different ideas of Chinese nation -- as empire, republic, or ethnicity, and complicated by gender, class, style, transnationalism, and more. Among the issues and themes covered are the tension between operatic and realist modes, male and female star images, transnational production and circulation of Chinese films, the image of the good foreigner -- all related to different ways of imagining nation. Comprehensive and provocative, China on Screen is a crucial work of film analysis.

Cinema and Nation

China on Screen

Introduces major works and debates in children's literature within the framework of China's revolution and modernization. Discusses literature born out the May Fourth period cultural renaissance in the early 20th century, and looks at the work of Lu Xun and his brother Zhou Zhuren, founding fathers of this new literature which swept major urban centers in the 1920s and 1930s. Shows how this literature began as an anti-Confucian attack on tradition, using social Darwinism as the framework for national survival and its application to education, then chronciles how Darwinism gave way to Marxism in the post-war period. Farquhar teaches China studies and Asian law at Griffith University in Brisbane, Australia. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR.

Associate Professor of International Business and Asian Studies at Griffith University Mary Ann Farquhar, PH D

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