Intellectual History Of Modern China

AY2020/2021 Semester 2

This course will provide you with a thorough understanding of the intellectual history of modern China and its legacy in today's China. It will enable you to investigate and explain the broader historical processes behind the major cultural and intellectual developments in modern China. It will also enable you to analyze and interpret both primary and secondary sources specific to the field of modern Chinese intellectual history. Instead of the familiar archival or policy documents, these primary sources will mostly consist of texts written by Chinese intellectuals. The course will enable you to read these sources in context and to collect and synthesize large quantities of both these primary sources and relevant secondary sources on modern Chinese intellectual history. Based on your analysis of these sources, the course will enable you to formulate novel historical arguments. Finally, by reading works from the hand of Chinese intellectuals, the course will enable you to develop 'historical empathy' through personal accounts of lives lived in various decades of modern China.