Foundations Of East Asia

AY2024/2025 Semester 1

This course aims to provide you with foundational understanding of the history of East Asia, including major dynastic reigns, philosophical, cultural and literary works, the influence and movement of religious traditions, and changing intra-regional relations and trade. Anyone interested in understanding East Asian identity, regional relations, and cultural practice, and political and social values will benefit from this course. This will prove foundational for contextualizing the later contact with and adaptation to European influences in the region, to deeper studies of East Asian philosophy, literature and religion. Anyone going on to work in public policy or communication, who will write about regional identity, the flows of cultural practice, the processes of cultural assimilation and the longue-duree of inter state relations, or even tourism, will find this course useful.