The Department of History is excited to announce its summer course offerings! For the full list, please visit this webpage. Students studying East Asia might find the courses listed below of interest:
History 201-001 – Shanghai Life and Crime (Comm B)
Dates: May 24 – July 4 (6 weeks)
Online, asynchronous | Instructor: Joe Dennis | More info
After the first Opium War concluded in 1842, Shanghai was a focal point of encounters between China and the outside world and became famous for its cosmopolitan culture. Using extensive English-language, online archival materials on Shanghai, especially the Shanghai Municipal Police Files and expatriate newspapers, we will explore this cosmopolitan city and develop your research, analysis, and writing skills. If you can read Chinese, Japanese, German, Russian, or French, there are also many historical sources in those languages that you can use in your research, but doing so is not required.
History 201-004 – Sex & Love in Asian Religions (Comm B)
Dates: June 14 – August 8 (8 weeks)
Online, asynchronous | Instructor: Tyler Lehrer | More info
This mostly asynchronous and completely online course examines the religious history of everyday life in Asia from the perspectives of queerness, desire, love, and intimacy. While almost all of the world’s religious and spiritual systems seek to address the many issues of human embodiment longing, suffering, intimate desire, and above all these, love sometimes, in their institutional and politicized forms, they have ignored the voices and experiences of not only women, but also queer and gender nonconforming people. What happens when we look at religious life in Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, and others beyond their sacred texts and hierarchies? What local and non-institutional histories of everyday life remain? In what ways might historical studies of “gender, “sexuality and “religion be intertwined? And in doing so, what implications might this have for our methods and work as historians? As a COMM–B and Historian’s Craft course, we will practice and sharpen important historical research skills like asking savvy questions, using digital library and archival materials, and critically assessing both primary and secondary resources to produce intellectually stimulating and thoughtful historical research.
History 201-004 Promotional Video
History 255 – Introduction to East Asian Civilizations
Dates: May 17 – June 13 (4 weeks)
Online, asynchronous | Instructor: Yaowen Dong | More info
What is East Asia? Whether and to what extent should we think of the region as a unity? This course is an introduction to East Asia since the earliest historical record to the present day. We will explore the ways in which different philosophies, religions, languages, and technologies shaped this region through integrations and conflicts. We will also look at East Asia in the global context. How did the global encounter shape East Asia? What does East Asia mean to the world? Drawing resources from history, political science, philosophy, religious studies, gender studies, etc., we will build an in-depth understanding of this region and analyze historical and contemporary questions in new ways.