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As the PRC's economic and political clout has grown, Chinese diplomacy and foreign relations have drawn far more attention. Especially following the start of Xi Jinping's Belt and Road initiative, both popular and academic commentators have often referred to the supposedly ancient precedents of the modern PRC's approach to foreign policy. PRC leaders have themselves invoked the Chinese tradition of foreign relations as one that enabled largely peaceful coexistence between China and its neighbors, unlike Western alternatives. This course will take a long-duree approach to understanding the conceptual frameworks, interactions, and historical events that shaped Chinese diplomacy and foreign relations from the time of the Mongol invasions up to the early twentieth century. The questions we will consider include: What basic geographic, environmental, and economic factors influenced Chinese foreign relations? Did frequently invoked concepts like "the tributary system" or "Silk Road" actually exist in Chinese thought, and if so, how did they affect the pragmatic practice of diplomacy? What was the role of ritual, poetry, and other forms of praxis in the sphere of foreign relations? How did the way that Chinese thought about the outside world and foreigners thought about China shift over time, especially in the 19th century with the advent of the much more pressing threat of European powers and Japan? The course will conclude by more directly examining the legacy of imperial Chinese foreign relations for China and the world in the 20th and 21st century.

This course explores key concepts and themes around the temporal cultures of South Asia, with an emphasis on the transition from the middle ages to modernity. We will study the philosophical/scientific understandings of time and history in South Asia, and how the West read (or misread) these temporal traditions. Topics include: the philosophical debates around cyclical and linear time; the development of historical thinking outside Europe; the impact of colonialism on medieval understandings of time and history; the challenges to our sense of 'future' due to the current climate crisis. The goal is to think of South Asia not merely as subject to Western epistemologies and temporalities, but also as an important site where our current concepts and propositions about time and history were developed.

May be repeated for credit.

May be repeated for credit.