Few courses provide an opportunity to look at a civilization as a whole. If we examine the Chinese quarter of humanity in this way, we can better understand the interplay of ecology and history, of class and community, and of self and society in China-and in any other society. We may also gain a new perspective on the West, whose peculiarities we too readily take as normal. This introductory course focuses on Chinese solutions to Chinese problems, as reflected in the words of the literate (e.g., philosophers and soldiers, dramatists and novelists) or in the actions of the unlettered (e.g., peasants, women and religious cultists). We proceed by making explicit their values and ours, setting up a kind of discourse across cultures. Special attention is paid to the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
