ASN 2041 Making of Modern Asia
This course explores how understandings of modernity and reactions to Eurocentrism have shaped modern political thought in South, East, and Southeast Asia. It focuses on ideas central to the making of the region and their influence on shaping ideologies, identities, and governing institutions in the colonial and postcolonial state. Students will draw on the works of ten thinkers, including Rammohan Roy, Syed Ahmed Khan, Gandhi, Ambedkar, Mao, and Lee Kuan Yew, to explore how conceptions of the state, caste, gender, Marxism, capitalism, and nationalism have shaped the region as we know it today.