HIST 328 - Traveling Along the Silk Roads: East Asia and Beyond

In this course, we explore the Silk Roads as a network of routes connecting East Asia with other parts of the world. In recent decades, scholars have extensively debated the colonial origins and limitations of this term, but they agree that it remains useful for conceptualizing the transregional movement of goods, ideas, and peoples. In this class, we will use this term as a heuristic device rather than a descriptive concept to examine how the world was connected before the modern period and how the regional and global networks that formed continue to shape modern and contemporary politics and culture. We will place particular focus on pilgrimage and trade, which fostered an environment conducive to the development of distinct identities and cultures among peoples and regions. Alongside primary sources such as travel accounts, inscriptions, literary works, images, and artifacts, we will also read significant scholarly literature in this field.

Unit(s): 1
Group Distribution Requirement(s): Distribution Group II
Instructional Method: Conference
Grading Mode: Letter grading (A-F)
Group Distribution Learning Outcome(s):

Evaluate data and/or sources.
Analyze institutions, formations, languages, structures, or processes, whether social, political, religious, economic, cultural, intellectual or other.
Think in sophisticated ways about causation, social and/or historical change, human cognition, or the relationship between individuals and society, or engage with social, political, religious or economic theory in other areas.