HIS 3332 - China’s Troubled Waters

Credits: 4
Two conflicting images dominate our views of China. One is of a people engaged in harmonious relationships with nature. Another is of overpopulation, resource depletion, and environmental degradation. This course will examine Chinese relations with nature through its history of dams great and small, canals, rerouted rivers, and irrigation projects. We will examine how such water-control projects affected Chinese local societies from the Song dynasty through today. We will explore which regions, which groups (ethnic, gender, class), and which hydraulic projects have been the winners and losers in different eras. From there, we will further examine continuity and ruptures in state policies, political ideology, and institutional politics behind hydraulic projects in their historical contexts. Finally, we will examine crucial turning points in the history of water control in China and see how past historical visions live on in the present.
McDaniel Plan: International Nonwestern; Social, Cultural, and Historical Understanding; Textual Analysis