The material on this page is from the 2000-01 catalog and may be out of date. Please check the current year's catalog for current information.

China Associate Professor Yang (Chinese) and Assistant Professor Maurer-Fazio (Economics) During the fall semester 2000, Bates students, including entering first-year students, can study language, culture, and economics in Nanjing, China. No prior experience with Chinese language is required. Following a late August orientation to China and Chinese language on the Bates campus, students study and live at Nanjing University, one of the top three universities in China. Nanjing, a city of 4.5 million and one of China's leading cultural centers, was the capital of China for six dynasties since the third century and has a history dating back to 476 B.C.E. Extensive travel in China is an integral part of the program. Students visit the Silk Road in northwest China, the port of Shanghai, the Great Wall and the Forbidden City in Beijing, the Qin dynasty terra-cotta figures in Xi'an, Tibetan villages of Yunnan, and other sites. Extracurricular opportunities are also available, including martial arts, painting, calligraphy, and traditional Chinese music. Courses 001. Self and Society in Chinese Culture: Classics and Folktales. This course explores concepts of self and society expressed in classics and reflected in traditional tales, popular stories, and legends. How does selfhood differ in East and West? How do heroes and protagonists diversely express their authors' vision? How do stories, poems, and plays express and/or reveal different views on interpersonal relationships? Such questions are approached from both literary and nonliterary perspectives. The first half of the course is devoted to classical texts of Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism, and the second half, to literary works in which these ideas are reflected. Open to first-year students. S. Yang. 002. China's Current Economic Situation: Achievements and Controversial Issues. China, which is now the world's third largest economy, has experienced stellar economic growth and performance in the post-Mao period. This course explores the policies and institutions that have contributed to China's recent social and economic development as well as some of the issues that challenge China today. Topics examined include the decollectivization of agricultural production, the surplus rural labor force, family planning policies, the Three Gorges Dam, the reform of the social security system, the effects of the reforms on women's status, and the environmental effects of rapid growth in the last two decades. Open to first-year students. M. Maurer-Fazio. 003. Intensive Chinese I. Open to first-year students. Staff. 004. Intensive Chinese II. Open to first-year students. Staff. Germany Professor Thompson (English) and Ms. Neu-Sokol (German) During the fall semester 2000, Bates students, including entering first-year students, can study language, culture, and the arts of the twentieth century in Berlin, the political and cultural capital of a reunited Germany. No prior experience with German language is required. The program begins in early August with a four-week intensive study of German at a language institute in Marburg, one of Europe's oldest university towns, located in central Germany. Between September and December, the program moves to Berlin, where students live with host families while pursuing their studies. Literature and culture courses seek to link the past and present through the study of works by German and British writers and artists that reflect a continuing sense of crisis during a century that has seen two major world wars. Language courses emphasize comprehension, and speaking, writing, and reading skills. Extensive travel is a central part of the program. Students visit Munich and Murnau, centers of the Blaue Reiter movement in art; Dresden, an early center for Expressionism; and Prague, the ancient capital of the Czech Republic, the birthplace of Kafka. Courses 001. German Expressionism, 1905 to the Present. This course follows the experience of Germany's war-torn society through the works and lives of artists who abhorred war. Students examine Expressionism, which emerged before World War I and flourishedÑin Berlin especiallyÑbetween the wars. Much of the work of Expressionist writers and painters depicts the sense of crisis and dissolution Europeans experienced, and proposes alternative ways of seeing and living in the world. The course also reflects the influence Expressionist art has had on post-World War II writers and artists such as Freidrich Dürrenmatt, Günter Grass, and Christa Wolf. Open to first-year students. A. Thompson, G. Neu-Sokol. 002. Modernism and the Great War: A Cross-Cultural Perspective. The form and content of early twentieth-century literature was significantly influenced by the complex and decentering experience of World War I, which Henry James termed "the plunge of civilization into blood and darkness." The formal experiments that characterize early twentieth-century British writing are significantly linked to the Expressionist movement in Germany and, more generally, to the impact of World War I. Works by Virginia Woolf, Wilfred Owen, D.H. Lawrence, Willa Cather, Erich Maria Remarque, and T.S. Eliot, among others, introduce students to the literature that was made out of and in response to these times of crisis. Open to first-year students. A. Thompson, G. Neu-Sokol. 003. Intensive German I. Open to first-year students. Staff. 004. Intensive German II. Open to first-year students. Staff. Russia Professors Parakilas (Music) and Costlow (Russian) During the fall semester 2000 Bates students, including entering first-year students, can study language, art, and culture in St. Petersburg Russia. No prior experience with Russian language is required. St. Petersburg is one of the most beautiful and cultured cities in the world. With its eighteenth-century baroque architecture in the Italian style, it is the most "European" of the Russian cities, and as such has long been a focus of debate about Russian identity. Home of tsars, the hermitage Museum, and the Kirov Ballet and Opera, it has also been at the center of the Russian Revolution and the invasion of the German army in World War II. Today, in the aftermath of communism, St. Petersburg is reasserting itself as a cosmopolitan and outward-looking city. In mid-August students participate in a three-week intensive Russian language course at the Nevsky Institute. From September until December, they continue language study and take two courses from Bates faculty members. During this time students live with host families in apartments in St. Petersburg. Travel within St. Petersburg and attendance at cultural events are extensive. Students also visit sites of Russian folk culture in Kizhi, the medieval city of Novgorod, and Moscow. Courses 001. St. Petersburg, Past and Present. This course explores the unique vision that formed St. Petersburg and the special roles the city has played in Russian history. The course involves reading works of history and fiction in English, studying films by classic Soviet and contemporary Russian filmmakers, and visiting historic sites, including the palace of the Romanovs, prisons overseen by the tsars and the Soviet state, and ancient monasteries in the region. Open to first-year students. J. Parakilas, J. Costlow. 002. St. Petersburg as an Artistic Center. This course focuses on the city as a place where art and politics have merged and sometimes clashed, as a funnel for Western artistic ideas, and as a site for artistic experimentation, from the time of Pushkin to the "Silver Age" of the ballets russes, to perestroika. Students examine classic and contemporary literature, music, dance, art, and film; attend concerts, operas, ballet, and drama; visit the Hermitage, the Russian Museum, and other galleries; and explore the latest in the St. Petersburg art scene. As part of the course students take classes in one or more of the traditional Russian arts: woodworking, pottery, or folk dancing, and are asked to consider what these traditional — originally rural — arts hold for the people of this modern city. Open to first-year students. J. Parakilas, J. Costlow. 003. Intensive Russian I. Open to first-year students. Staff. 004. Intensive Russian II. Open to first-year students. Staff.