HIST 2400: Critical Approaches to Asian History
Prof. Raja Adal
Wednesdays, 12:00-2:30PM, 3501 Posvar Hall
This course approaches Asia not as a geographic place but as a malleable object of study. It begins by contextualizing the meta-geographical concept of Asia within other spaces, from nations to continents, religious realms, oceans, and highlands. It then turns to approaches for understanding Asia, including sound studies, visual studies, and the computational humanities. How do each of these approaches help us understand this object that we call Asia, and how can they understand it differently? In this way, this course explores a multiplicity of Asias, each of which is created as much by how its space is being conceptualized as by the sources that are being used to conceptualize it. While the first hour of each class will discuss these multiple Asias through a critical reading of recent scholarship, the second hour will seek to use some of the material covered in the first half to advance each student’s own research project. They will begin by creating a proposal for revising a previously written paper, or a plan for writing a paper from scratch. They will implement this plan by, first, rethinking the primary and secondary sources used in writing the paper. They will then explore how one of the methods introduced in class can contribute to their paper. Throughout this process they will rethink the structure of their paper, on their own, in conversation with the instructor, and in conversation with their classmates during two presentations of their paper. At the end of the course, they will present a paper about their own research that incorporates the approaches and methods learned in the course.