Topics in Taiwanese History and Culture

3 credits · Undergraduate

A site of both conflict and mutual adaptation between forces of local autonomy versus regional and global domination over nearly half a millennium, Taiwan offers a vantage-point for understanding the dynamics of the regional history of East Asia from the early modern period down to the present, particularly for the complex ways in which economic, political and geographic forces shape and complicate narratives of national, ethnic, and cultural identity. This course will allow students to build a historically informed understanding of Taiwan and its history and culture, and to develop new perspectives on East Asian and indeed global history not as impersonal abstractions, but as a constellation of lived human realities.