HIST3465: Late Imperial Chinese History: Society and Culture

This course explores the history of China from the fall of Mongol Yuan and the founding of Ming dynasty to the 18th century Mid-Qing dynasty. Late imperial China is a fascinating historical period when it underwent significant changes on multiple fronts. Designed as a combination of lectures and discussions, this course is devoted to helping students understand how to interpret primary sources creatively and rigorously alongside the best of historical writings about Chinese history. Students will explore the various ways in which late imperial Chinese people formed and reformed social and cultural institutions and practices, and how they responded to changes and events that were sometimes catastrophic. Throughout the course, we will explore topics ranging from family and kinship to commerce and urbanization, woman and gender, ethnicity and frontiers, ideas on body and medicine to the scenes of daily lives and emotions in order to better understand these changes that the late imperial Chinese society and culture underwent. Students will also be exposed to some important works of literature produced during this period as a way of feeling, imagining, and reconstructing the scenes of daily lives, thoughts, and sentiments of people that the official histories and documents do not necessarily reveal. Finally, we will also explore some of the ways ideas and narratives about this period in Chinese history figure in political and social questions in contemporary China. By the end of the course, students will be able to critically evaluate many blanket statements often made about ?traditional China,? and its culture and people. They will be able to challenge the taken-for-granted idea of a monolithic China that stayed stagnant for centuries before the ?coming of the west,? which supposedly brought China the light of modernity.

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