Introduction to Inner Asian Civilizations

Catalog description

This class is intended for new graduate students and upper-division undergraduates with some prerequisites who wish to get a solid grounding in the study of Inner Asia. The class will introduce Inner Asia as a coherent civilizational network, focusing on: 1) the steppe-imperial tradition; 2) the Tibetan-rite Buddhist commonwealth that developed from the Tibetan and Mongol empires; and 3) the increasing integration of these two Inner Asian civilizational patterns with that of imperial China. There will also be some consideration of the Islamic Turco-Mongolian synthesis that developed in the post-Mongol period. Regionally, the class introduce: 1) core Inner Asia (the Mongolian plateau, the Tarim Basin, the Tibetan plateau, the Manchuria) and 2) the main dynasties of China that formed in the Mongolia and Manchuria (Liao, Jin, Yuan and Qing). There will also be some consideration of historically Inner Asian populations in Hexi (Gansu-Qinghai), and the North China plains and the Shaanxi-Shanxi-Rehe uplands. Chronologically, the class will touch on prehistory and the contemporary period, but will mostly cover the period from the emergence of historical records on the Mongolian plateau and the Tarim basin to roughly 1950. Prehistory and the contemporary period will be give less detailed coverage.