Peking University, Beijing

This course provides a solid understanding of post-war American novels—their historical background, style of writing, and some recurrent themes. The American writers discussed in the course include Kurt Vonnegut, Jerzy Kosinski, John Barth, Ishmael Reed, E. L. Doctorow, Don Delillo, and Robert Coover. The course also surveys contemporary Chinese novels, with a focus on works since the 1980s, the core writers include Mo Yan, Yu Hua, Su Tong, Ye Zhaoyan, Wang Xiaobo, and Yang Xianhui, who have adopted a similar way of writing characterized by the use of metafictional skill and parody, the blending of historical fact and fiction, the fusion of generic boundaries, etc. The course also explores, from a comparative perspective, such themes as war, trauma, ideological interventions, the writing and rewriting of history, etc. 

This course presents how to understand and manage the human side of doing business in China. Some basic concepts, theories, research results, and successful management stories related to this domain are taught. 

The practice teaching of this course mainly teaches the basic practice of yoga, including yoga breathing, postures, pranayama and yoga rest. The theory teaching section of this course mainly teaches the definition, origin, development stage, meridian and chakra of yoga, and how yoga promotes the physical and mental health of modern people.

This course will provide students with an overview of astronomical research covering a wide range of topics, including the history of astronomy, the planets in our solar system, the birth, life and death of stars, black holes, galaxies, the Big Bang theory, cosmology, the search for extraterrestrial life, and space exploration. 

Through watching Chinese films, the students would learn Chinese culture, understand Chinese society and enhance their Chinese language (advanced Chinese level).

This courses examines a widespread phenomenon in the history of narrative that deals with the fantastic. Taking a transcultural and transmedia approach to the study of the fantastic, this course investigates its expressions in literary and cinematic narratives from a variety of historical periods and cultural traditions, in association with genres as diverse as fairy tales, science fiction, gothic romances, psychological thrillers, legends, love stories, and so on. This expansive view not only allows us to appreciate the adaptability of the fantastic as a discursive narrative mode, but also creates opportunities for us to understand its varying connections with its native cultures, as it migrates across cultural boundaries.

The course aims at instructing Japanese daily expression and fundamental grammar. Meanwhile, teachers in this class will instruct students in the basic knowledge of Japanese from a perspective of the pragmatic linguistics and the cognitive linguistics as well as the application of Japanese. The teaching approach to this course would combine instructions with related practice. At the same time, the language lab facilities would be utilized to continuously train students in Japanese pronunciation and tone further. Students are provided in this class with basic grammar and sentences as well as daily vocabularies ranging from 2000 to 2500 words. They also may be equipped with abilities to listen, speak, read, write and translate which will prepare them for Japanese language, culture and literature further. After that, students can reach at an intermediate level of Japanese.

Mathematical logic is a fundation of mathematics and computer science, and foundation course for the students of mathematics and computer science. The content of this course includes propositional logic, first-order (predicate) logic and basic mathematical systems.

This course further enables students to understand the relationship between the media and social change, so as to use of knowledge of communication and journalism in a better way.