CHIN-2130: Ethnicity in Modern China

Course description: This course investigates the changing meanings and manifestations of “ethnicity” in the territory we now refer to as the People’s Republic of China. What “China” is and has been are not uniform across time, and neither are the ways that Chinese people have understood ethnic identity and difference. Moreover, how the category of ethnicity participated in the creation of “China” as an intellectual concept and political category in the modern era was not inevitable. Through the study of literature, film, historical and political documents, as well as scholarly research, we will grapple with the shifting meanings of both “China” and “ethnicity” and try to lay a foundation for understanding one of the most important issues in modern Chinese culture.