Spring 2024 - HIST 255 D100
China since 1800 (3)
Class Number: 4685
Delivery Method: In Person
Overview
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Course Times + Location:
Jan 8 – Apr 12, 2024: Tue, 10:30 a.m.–12:20 p.m.
Burnaby
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Instructor:
Janice Jeong
janicej@sfu.ca
Description
CALENDAR DESCRIPTION:
A survey of the history of China from the end of the eighteenth century to the present. Breadth-Humanities.
COURSE DETAILS:
From the famed cities of Beijing and Shanghai to the western borderlands of Xinjiang and Tibet, the areas that fall within present-day China’s borders have undergone tumultuous changes over the past two centuries. A series of wars ranging from the Opium Wars to the Chinese Civil War overturned existing orders and created hundreds of thousands of casualties and refugees. The establishment of the People’s Republic of China in 1949 after the victory of the Communist Party was a globally significant event, as was the post-1978 open-up-and-reform that repositioned China back on the world stage. Through this transformative period, the diverse individuals in China and in the diaspora navigated everyday challenges, moved across borders, changed political systems, and articulated self-understandings in active interaction with the rest of the world. This course situates China in a global context, and traces how actors from different social, ethnic, gender, and geographic backgrounds experienced and shaped historic transformations in China. Lectures and readings highlight the interplay between individual agency and the transnational forces such as imperial expansion, capitalism, and circulations of political and religious thought that shaped the course of modern Chinese history. By the end of the course, students would have developed a comprehensive understanding of how Chinese state and society arrived at where it is now, and how the major events and trends shaped the everyday lives of the diverse people in China and among the Chinese diasporas. We will also question and explore how history, rather than existing only in the past, gets memorialized and politicized in different and contentious ways in the present.
Grading
- Attendance/Participation 20%
- 3 Short writing assignments (about 1,000 words) 55%
- Informal reflections (to be posted online) 15%
- In-class writing exercises 10%
Materials
REQUIRED READING:
Pamela Crossley, The Wobbling Pivot, China since 1800: An Interpretive History (John Wiley & Sons, 2010)*
Ida Pruitt, A Daughter of Han: The Autobiography of a Chinese Working Woman (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1967)-- online access through SFU library*
Hou Li, Building for Oil: Daqing and the Formation of the Chinese Socialist State (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2018)*
(*whole or in significant parts)
All other readings will be made available online.
REQUIRED READING NOTES:
Your personalized Course Material list, including digital and physical textbooks, are available through the SFU Bookstore website by simply entering your Computing ID at: shop.sfu.ca/course-materials/my-personalized-course-materials.
Registrar Notes:
ACADEMIC INTEGRITY: YOUR WORK, YOUR SUCCESS
SFU’s Academic Integrity website http://www.sfu.ca/students/academicintegrity.html is filled with information on what is meant by academic dishonesty, where you can find resources to help with your studies and the consequences of cheating. Check out the site for more information and videos that help explain the issues in plain English.
Each student is responsible for his or her conduct as it affects the university community. Academic dishonesty, in whatever form, is ultimately destructive of the values of the university. Furthermore, it is unfair and discouraging to the majority of students who pursue their studies honestly. Scholarly integrity is required of all members of the university. http://www.sfu.ca/policies/gazette/student/s10-01.html