Introduction to Major Topics in Asian Civilizations: East Asia
Introduction to Major Topics in Asian Civilizations: East Asia is a seminar course covering the key points of Chinese, Japanese and Korean history and philosophy. The course has been taught for decades by William Theodore de Bary and his disciples. Readings mostly come from 6 source books, two volumes for each country. The textbook is by Conrad Shirokauer, another Columbia professor.
Syllabus
- Introduction; geographical foundations
- Confucius and an early critic
- Daoism
- Later Confucians
- Legalism and the creation of the empire
- Maintaining the empire: theory and practice
- Buddhism in East Asia: basic doctrines & reception in China
- Buddhism in China: major schools; challenges to tradition
- Early Japan
- Buddhism in Japan
- The aristocratic culture of Heian Japan: culture and power
- Samurai rule in medieval Japan: responses to disorder
- Neo-Confucianism in China and Korea
- Change and tradition in imperial China
- Early modern Japan: intellectual and institutional foundations of the Tokugawa shogunate
- Change and tradition in Tokugawa Japan
- Reformist thought in Korea
- East Asia in a new world: change and continuity
- China enters the modern world: challenges and responses
- Creating a new China: new visions and new problems
- Nineteenth century Japan: from Shogunate to nation state
- New international relations in East Asia
- New ideologies and new politics in Japan and Korea
- World War II and its consequences in East Asia
- The People's Republic of China: consolidation and transformation
- The People's Republic of China: post-Mao changes
- Japan and Korea since World War II
