Shanghai and Berlin: Cultures of Urban Modernism in Interwar China and Germany

FAIN: FS-50212-09

Stanford University (Stanford, CA 94305-2004)
Russell Berman (Project Director: March 2009 to February 2011)

A six-week college and university teacher seminar for sixteen participants to explore urban modernism in Shanghai and Berlin in the period between the first and second world wars.

The purpose of this seminar is to explore urban modernism in Shanghai and Berlin, primarily in the period between the first and second world wars and through select literary and cinematic works. Urban modernism involves the transformation of everyday culture in the wake of the rapid erosion of traditional hierarchies and values. It found expression in revised life-styles, gender roles, and structures of individuality. The seminar approaches these aspects of modernism, as part of a wider concept of modernity, through a comparative approach of Chinese and German material. It examines how the expression and representation of the modern metropolis developed in the two contexts. It also inquires into elements of instability in modernism and the challenge it faced from revolutionary movements on the right and left.