Imperialism/Colonialism: Asia

3 Credits · Level: Graduate, Undergraduate

This course seeks to provide an introduction to recent studies of colonialism and imperialism in East Asia, with particular focus on the Japanese empire. The course is structured thematically and comparatively, and is designed to question in what ways the experience of Asia represents world historical processes, and/or regional or ethnically specific characteristics. Concretely, the course will focus on three aspects: first, introduce the varieties of colonial societies in the nineteenth- and twentieth-centuries; second, examine the role of colonial empires in the history of modern East Asia, including effects on nationalism, commodities and consumption, modernity, governance, gender relations, and other aspects; and third, analyze how Asian societies since 1945 have represented experiences of imperialism and colonialism in official and popular discourse.