ASIAN 2501

History of the Silk Roads

Course Description

Course information provided by the 2026-2027 Catalog.

How did people in the pre-modern world connect to people in other regions, and for what purposes? Did there exist a “globalization” for them, just as we are experiencing today? This course explores these questions by setting you on the journey to the Silk Roads – a long-distance transportation network that links medieval China to Central Asia, and presumably the Middle East and Europe. Departing from Chang’an – the capital of medieval China, we will follow various actors on the roads: traders, monks, artisans, envoys – and investigate the traces they left, including texts, images, and objects, to assess the economic, cultural, and political impacts these roads had. Although this course’s time focus is the Tang-dynasty China (618-907) – one of China’s most cosmopolitan ages, we will extend attention to materials spanning from 200 BCE to the end of the first millennium, to trace the earlier developments and the decline of the Silk Roads in the wider time scale. This course will be taught in collaboration with collections of the Johnson Art Museum and the Kroch Asia Library. (ASIAN-SC)

Distribution Requirements (HST-AS)

Program Requirements (ASIAN-SC)

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