ASCL 60.03 Frontier in Traditional Chinese Thought: Beyond the Great Wall and the Becoming of China
The conceptions of frontier, frontier-heartland relations, unity and territoriality are crucial to the formation of the Chinese cultural and spatial identity from the ancient time to today. At the moment, the frontier space beyond the Great Wall takes up more than half of the entire Chinese territory. The ways Chinese people deal with their ethnic minority regions, differentiate the northerners and the southerners, view their own culture and cultural others and imagine their regional and global roles can all be related to the spatial conceptions with regard to the frontier in pre-modern China. This course will trace the development of these conceptions through a variety of philosophical, cosmological, religious, historical, geographical, and literary texts and images. Classical Chinese texts however are not categorized by discipline but represent a body of interdisciplinary knowledge that reflects the culture’s thoughts and values. The course will deal with the materials in a way that relive their a-disciplinary nature while maintaining a critical perspective on them. When relevant, the course will also examine broader theoretical issues such as political morality, gender and sexuality, and border-crossing.
Instructor
Xie