Who curates the ready-made sound effects for your TikTok/Douyin morning vlog? Whose snapshots and micro-fictions feed DeepSeek’s AI brain? Ever wondered what the Cultural Revolution equivalent of a contemporary podcast sounded like? Or–let us dive deeper–how do media create and shape popular culture, and what does “popular” mean? If any of these questions make you curious, this course is for you: we will take modern China as our primary case to explore the relationship between media and popular culture.

Throughout the semester we will delve into modern Chinese history and look at how Chinese communities in the mainland, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and abroad use and innovate diverse media forms and technologies to express themselves. Starting with gossip-filled late-Qing tabloids, we will watch 1930s Shanghai cinema, study revolutionary “model-theatre” poses, listen to post-Mao pop, play a 1990s video game, browse online posts from the COVID-19 pandemic, and peek inside training sets of Chinese AI models such as DeepSeek.

Using these materials, we will practice thinking and writing about media through lenses of gender, nation, revolution, memory, AI ethics, and–above all– the “popular.”
No prior knowledge of China or the Chinese language is required.

Units: 1

Max Enrollment: 25

Prerequisites: None

Distribution Requirements: LL - Language and Literature

Typical Periods Offered: Every other year; Spring

Semesters Offered this Academic Year: Fall; Not Offered