"The whole structure of Chinese society becomes rather different starting in 1600," Kuhn says. "There is more contact with the outside world, and it becomes much more commercial, which has profound effects on how people live."

"The process of change that we see today started a long time ago," Kuhn says.

Issues like government corruption and centralized power can only be understood in a historical context, he says.

Kuhn is offering this course in place of History 1824. He says that History 1824 was originally intended to be an intermediate level course populated by undergraduate and graduate students. However, because undergraduates increasingly chose Core alternatives, last year the course was three-quarters graduate students and Kuhn began to modify the course for its new home in the Core, he says.

With a moderate workload, the course emphasizes personal stories--both fiction and non-fiction--from throughout the period of interest to flesh out and illuminate the history.

"It's only by confronting primary documents that students can get a sense of what historians have to deal with," Kuhn says.

"History is always a balancing act. You have to be true to the people of the time you are studying, but you also have to be faithful to the concerns of the present day.

--Benjamin P. Solomon-Schwartz