The city of Shanghai occupies a unique place in imagining China, for foreigners and Chinese alike. In the nineteenth century it was transformed from a fishing village to an international “treaty port,” growing rapidly in population and becoming China’s gateway to the West. In the twentieth century Shanghai was a site of innovation, from politics … Continue reading HIST 032/EAST 032: Shanghai

This departmental seminar studies the historical development of Hong Kong and China in relation to each other, from the colonial and late imperial experience to their shared histories in national and political movements, from postwar industrialization to reform-era economic growth, culminating in the 1997 handover and its attendant political and economic integration. The readings from … Continue reading HIST 303J/EAST 303: Hong Kong and China: A Global History

This seminar studies “places of memory” in modern China, or the sites, museums, monuments, and memories of the past. It includes theoretical readings on history and memory, some visual primary sources, and case studies from twentieth-century China that include the Sun Yat-sen Mausoleum, Tiananmen Square, the Rent Collection Courtyard, and the Mao Mausoleum. Interdisciplinary in … Continue reading HIST 309J/EAST 309: Uses of the Past in Modern China

How do we understand the recent Chinese past, and how do we frame contemporary events in China in historical context? At the end of the Mao years (1949-1976), China’s revolutionary experiment gave way to the reforms of a market economy, and observers of China predicted that political transformation would follow. Yet more recently, social scientists … Continue reading HIST 375/EAST 375: China from Mao to Now

Can the recent past of the People’s Republic of China be studied as history? This graduate seminar is an introduction to recent scholarship on the People’s Republic of China, primarily focusing on the Mao era. In their readings students will consider scholarship in the social sciences, examine the questions that are currently being asked (and … Continue reading HIST 871/EAST 871: The History of the People’s Republic of China

This graduate reading seminar examines recent English-language scholarship on China’s Republican period (1912-1949), covering themes from state and economy to society and culture. Weekly topics, which juxtapose one recent monograph with one classic study, include state institutions and law, nationalism, politics and political movements, the development of cities, media and publication, gender, education, labor, and … Continue reading HIST 893/EAST 893: The History of China’s Republican Period

This is a graduate reading seminar on modern China’s borders, both spatial and temporal.  It begins with internal borders, considering the divide between city and countryside from the Republican period to the Cultural Revolution and examining today’s urban-rural divide.  Next, it turns to traditional state borders, from China’s maritime borders in Qing to its Central … Continue reading HIST 892/EAST 892: China at Its Borders