East Asian Civilization I, Ancient Period-1600

Undergraduate / Graduate

This course examines the politics, society, and culture of East Asia from ancient times until c. 1600. Our focus will be on examining key historical moments and intellectual, social, and cultural trends with an emphasis on viewing the region as a whole. Students will read and discuss culturally significant texts and be introduced to various approaches to analyzing them. This will include discussions of differences in how we approach textual and non-textual evidence (such as archaeological artifacts and reconstructed climate data), and especially the challenges of recovering other meanings from texts that were written and/or later used to legitimate particular regimes, or to project current practices back into the distant past so that they seem to be manifestations of a society's defining traditions.