Modern China

(3 Credit Hours) · Undergraduate

This lecture and discussion course surveys China's journey from 17th century to the present. We will focus on how the Chinese — politicians, intellectuals, ordinary people, and others —endeavored to transform their country while facing internal and external challenges. In particular, we will analyze the collapse of the last Chinese empire when it encountered the political incursions, economic exploitations, and military aggressions of foreign imperialist countries in the 19th and 20th centuries. We will investigate the contending understandings of modernity and how they shaped the way Chinese people treated their cultural heritage, engaged with the present, and envisioned their future. Also, we will ask how China's experience in dealing with other parts of the world in the age of globalization changed Chinese people's self-identities.