Major Topics in Modern Chinese History: Cultural and Intellectual History

China has experienced profound changes over the course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In the span of less than two hundred years, the country has witnessed colonial incursions by multiple Western powers, the demise of an imperial system over two millennia old, a period of widespread political and social fragmentation, a debilitating war against Japan, a Communist revolution that dwarfed in size its Russian counterpart, and a tumultuous period of Communist rule that has itself fluctuated between periods of unprecedented economic growth and chaos. This course is part of a two-part master class in modern Chinese history. The course will offer students an intensive introduction to the historiography of modern China, mapping out key theoretical frameworks, methodologies, and influential contemporary scholars. Over the past four decades, the study of China has changed as dramatically as China itself. Unprecedented access to Chinese archives, the growth of PhD-granting Chinese history programs worldwide, and a host of formidable new approaches and methodologies have fundamentally changed, deepened, and diversified our study of Chinese history. Owing to this sometimes dizzying diversity, never before has our understanding of modern China so required us to develop a holistic understanding of Chinese historiography as well.