Fall 2018 Chinese History Courses

时间,就像海绵里的水。只要愿挤,总还是有的。- 鲁迅
Time is like water in a sponge. You can always get more if you squeeze. — Lu Xun

HIST 311: History of China, Prof. Davis (edavis@hawaii.edu)
MWF 1030-1120a
History 311 will introduce the student to the history of China from the Neolithic through the middle of the Ming Dynasty (c. 1600). The lectures will focus on institutional, cultural, and social history. The readings, lectures, discussions, and exams are all designed to teach the student how to understand pre-modern Chinese texts, identify their cultural assumptions, and use them to reconstruct interpretative narratives of Chinese history.
CRN: 87938

HIST 411: Local History: Late Imperial China, Prof. Wang (wensheng@hawaii.edu)
Focus: Writing Intensive (WI)
TR 0900-1015a
This upper division course provides a broad survey of Chinese local history over the long period from the Tang-Song transition (ca. 800) to the collapse of Qing rule (1911). Major topics include family and lineage structure, gender roles, patterns of work and leisure, religious activities and their meanings, class relations, changes in basic demographic patterns (birth and death rates, migration, marriage patterns, etc.), patterns of violence, protest movements, and relations among ethnic groups.
CRN 86362

HIST 416: Chinese Intellectual History, Prof. Davis (edavis@hawaii.edu)
M 0130-0400p
History 416 is an upper-division course that will examine selected topics in the history of the political and religious culture of China during the early and middle empires (Han through Song dynasties.) Topics will touch on all three major Chinese traditions: Confucianism, Buddhism, and Daoism.
CRN 89272

HIST 421: China in World History, Prof. Wang (wensheng@hawaii.edu)
TR 1200-0115p
This writing-intensive course surveys China’s four-millennium history (from the first dynasty Xia to the present) by placing it in wider regional and global contexts. It is organized thematically around China’s intensive interaction with the outside world. Major topics include the Silk Road, the spread of Confucianism and Buddhism, Mongol expansions, foreign trade, tributary system and diplomacy, Great Divergence between China and Western Europe, transnational piracy, environmental change as well as the contemporary Chinese model of development. The overarching goal is to examine China’s changing position, significance, and function in the evolution of world history as a way to provide a better understanding of its past and present.
CRN: 89273

HIST 661D: Seminar in Chinese History: Modern, Prof. Brown (shanab@hawaii.edu)
M 0230-0500p
This research seminar focuses on modern China (from the late nineteenth century to the present day). The goal is to become familiar with innovative scholarship on the major events and themes of the period. You will also complete a c. 20 pp research paper (or an equivalent alternate project, with my consent) that could comprise a chapter of an MA thesis or similar project.
CRN: 89297