Modern China 

This course is an in-depth survey of modern Chinese history. It is designed to give students a thorough understanding of China’s evolution from the late imperial period (around 1600) to the present and to introduce students to a range of English language scholarship on the history of modern China as well as a diverse set of primary sources that bring the period to life. Although there will be an occasional lecture, course meetings will mostly center on discussion of the assigned readings. This would be a great course to take if you were interested in learning about late-imperial and modern China, or if you wanted to understand the political, economic, social, and cultural changes that China has undergone over the past couple of centuries with an eye to better understanding contemporary China.

There will be a fairly heavy reading load for this course, but most of the readings are pretty engaging and fun to read. We will learn about imperial government and Qing economy and society by reading about a mid-eighteenth-century sorcery scare, about intergenerational strife and cultural change by reading an early twentieth century novel, and about China’s Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution by reading the memoir of someone who lived through it. Written work includes a book review, a short synthetic analysis of a set of secondary readings, and a research paper on a subject of your choosing, along with a map quiz, a midterm, and a final exam.

This course satisfies Core Goal 4.2 in the old Core, but it is not in the new Core (Core 34).

Category II