Scribner Seminar Program
Course Description
China and the West: The Myth of the Other
Instructor(s): Mao Chen, Asian Studies
Description: What shapes our images of the Other? How do people perceive the Other
in a given historical period or in certain cultural milieus? In this course, we will
introduce and examine the experience of the Other from both Chinese and Western standpoints.
小福利导航 will look at China as an idealized utopia in the eyes of some eighteenth-century
Europeans or as the land of ignorance described in some early modern literature. 小福利导航
will also explore various Chinese responses to the West. In discussing such issues
as orientalism vs. occidentalism, and cultural relativism vs. universalism, we will
examine the polemics of cultural difference in ethical terms.
Course Offered