Identity, Ethnicity, and Place in Modern China

Catalog description

Within popular imagination, China is often considered to be the world's oldest nation. As a result, concepts such as "China" and "Chinese" have become so embedded in our consciousness that we often fail to consider how, like all identities, ideas of Chinese-ness have been constructed hand-in-hand with the invention of the modern Chinese nation-state. This course examines nation-making in China from the outside in. We privilege avenues of inquiry that challenge state-sponsored narratives, complicate the hegemonic notion of "Han" as a majority identity, and consider ways in which processes of state consolidation and majoritization have subjected various ethnic, subethnic, diasporic, linguistic, gender, and religious communities to discrimination, marginalization, exclusion, and in some cases state and majoritarian violence. Rather than uncritically accepting the notion that China is a uniquely "historical nation," we instead consider the possibility that the Chinese state and nation are products of the same transglobal currentssuch as imperialism, settler colonialism, assimilation, minoritization, and exclusion that has made our modern world. Whenever possible, we employ historical texts, short stories, novels, memoirs, and film produced by members of disadvantaged, marginalized, and/or targeted communities in order to demonstrate how and why historical experiences and memories for example among "ethnic minorities" differ from the Han majority and from state orthodoxy, and why these differing perspectives matter. This course fulfills Dietrich College's "Perspectives on Justice and Injustice" general education requirement.