Writing and Power in China's Early Empires

Catalog description

Most of the written texts that have survived from the ancient world were written by powerful men. How can we read them against the grain to reconstruct the world of early Chinese empires and the place of women, the rural majority, and conquered populations within it? This course will analyze literary and archaeological texts primarily from the Han empire (c. 202 BCE-220 BCE) to understand how written texts encode diverse forms of social and political power, and reveal struggles over them. Genres include historiography, poetry, and political and economic texts. We will also consider how early Chinese writings about imperial conquests, foreigners, gender, and the canonization of the Confucian classics compare to other traditions.