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Associate
Professor of History
Research and Teaching Interests:
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This course acquaints
students with the broad sweep of human history from the earliest times
to about 1500 A.D., drawing attention to themes and processes that
link various parts of the world, emphasizing interconnections among societies.
Within this general framework, the course addresses hominid origins,
the neolithic revolutions, the rise of cities and civilizations,
ancient worldviews, empires, continental and maritime communications, as
well as the Mongol empire and other episodes of proto-globalization.
Besides a world history textbook, readings include Jared Diamond's Guns,
Germs and Steel,The Iliad, selections from Chinese and Muslim travelers,
and The Secret History of the Mongols.
History 108 (History 521):
History of Central Eurasia: Steppe Empires and Silk Roads
Through lectures,
primary and secondary readings, class discussion and audio-visual material,
this course surveys the ecological, cultural, social and political dynamics
of the peoples of Central and Inner Asia (Central Eurasia) from the origins
of the steppe-pastoral economy up to the present. Our geographic
scope will take in those regions which today comprise Mongolia, Xinjiang
(Eastern Turkestan), Tibet, Afghanistan and the former Soviet Central Asian
Republics, and will venture at times into neighboring zones, including
Turkey, Russia, Siberia, Iran, India, and China. Needless to
say, both the time-frame and geographic area under consideration are very
great, but this is justified--indeed, required, by the larger purpose of
this course: to highlight ways in which Central Eurasia and its peoples
have been central to world history. Linking our examination of particular
eras and peoples will be an overarching concern with the dynamics of the
relationship between the peoples of the steppes and deserts at the core
of the Eurasian continent and the sedentary societies around the
rim. We will likewise pay close attention to ways in which political,
commercial and cultural linkages across the Eurasian steppe connected Europe,
Persia, Mesopotamia and China from times well before the opening of direct
maritime communications between Europe and Asia launched the current wave
of "globalization." Note: HIST 108 is a regional survey for purposes
of Gen Ed and SFS requirements. HIST 521 is a graduate version of
this course. Link
to Central and Inner Asian Images
This seminar will
read (in English) the tremendously rich Chinese novel The Story of the
Stone (A Dream of Red Mansions; Shitou ji / Honglou Meng) as an entrée
to such topics as social and political structure, gender, class and ethnic
relations, private and family life, religious and legal specialists, connoiseurship
and the commerce in fine things, education, medicine, poetry, food, sex,
gardens and rocks--in other words, as a tool to understand life during
the high imperial era in which the novel was written. Supplemental
readings in secondary historical materials will enhance the picture.
Some background in either social/cultural history in general, Chinese literature,
or Chinese history, and an enthusiasm for reading, is recommended.
Before European expansion,
the only comparable old world unification was the Mongol empire, which
formed a bridge between Europe, Islam and East Asia in the 13th century.
Though the Mongols are best known for chilling military efficacy, their
legacy properly includes transcontinental exchanges of goods, technology,
cultural material and geographic knowledge, as well as a lasting system
of political legitimacy and imperial organization in Asia and a tantalizing
glimpse of Cathay that spurred later Europeans on to exploration and conquest.
Through readings, discussion, and viewing of cultural artifacts, this course
considers the world the Mongols made and reflects upon its contribution
to the world we know today. Primary readings will be drawn from The
Secret History of the Mongols, the travel accounts of Marco
Polo and of Ibn Battuta, the histories of Juvaini and Rashid al-Din, missionary
accounts of Carpini, Rubruck and Rabban Sauma, and other texts.
This course concerns the intensifying contacts between societies and
the emergence of the modern world order over the past half millennium--give
or take ten thousand years. We will approach this enormous subject
through a series of studies involving major world regions and the interactions
between them, each of which raises issues of import to the broad problem
of "globalization," or how the world got to be like it is. These
issues include food production, technology, ecological exchange, commerce,
migration, world-views, cultural contact, colonialism and imperialism,
and nationalism.
The broad outlines of this story are familiar. It is often framed
as the story of the West's rise to global predominance, for which a variety
of explanatory factors are proposed. We will consider these standard
explanations. But while not belittling the West's role, in this course
we will bear in mind that alleged "Western predominance" can be seen as
a relatively recent phenomenon, that the Euro-American-centered world order
conjoined and was built upon other world orders, that there was "history"
in places outside Europe as well, and that indigenous processes and characteristics
not only influenced non-Western responses to the West, but have helped
shape the world as we know it today.
Books
Millward, James and Laura
Newby. "The Qing and Islam on the Western Frontier." In Pamela
Kyle Crossley, Helen Siu and Donald Sutton, eds. Empire
at the Margins: Culture, Ethnicity and Frontier in Early Modern China.
Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005.
"Contextualizing the Qing: the Return of the Torghuts and the
End of History in Central Eurasia." In Lynn Struve, ed. The
Qing Formation and World Time. Berkeley: University
of California Press, 2004
"Political and Cultural History of the Xinjiang Region through the
late 19th Century" (with Peter Perdue). In Frederick Starr,
ed. Xinjiang:
China's Muslim Borderland, M. E. Sharpe, 2004.
"Political History and Strategies
of Control, 1884-1978" (with Nabijan Tursun). In Frederick Starr,
ed. Xinjiang:
China's Muslim Borderland, M. E. Sharpe, 2004. .
Review of Pamela Kyle Crossley, A Translucent Mirror.
In American Historical Review, June, 2001, pp. 953-954.