GV4H1      Half Unit
Chinese Political Thought

This information is for the 2025/26 session.

Course Convenor

Availability

Requisites

Additional requisites:

A specialist background in political theory or intellectual history is strongly recommended.

This course is an interdisciplinary and comparative study of political and social thought, focused on desire and its manifestations in the political economy, philosophy, politics, and literature of the Ming dynasty (1368-1644). As a rapidly expanding, early modern commercial society with literacy rates higher than contemporary Europe, the Ming dynasty marked a watershed in the development of Chinese philosophy and literature, much of which ruminated on the new desires shaped and promoted by the rapid expansion of affluence across many sectors of society. 

In line with the source material, our examination will range over a number of overlapping disciplines. But we centre our discussions on political questions and the political consequences of desire — including who could express desire, and of what kinds; how political, economic and literary institutions shaped and constrained the feeling and expression of desires; and in what genres or spaces desire could be legitimately expressed. We also ask how the reflective embrace of desires in the late Ming encouraged a new kind of other-regarding ethics, which both reproduced and critiqued existing neo-Confucian orthodoxy. Finally, we consider the institutional possibilities for fulfilment of desires for political participation and voice. 

This course would be of interest to those interested in the relationship of literature to politics, the history of political economy, the history of political thought, comparative and non-Western thought, and the development of pre-modern Chinese political philosophy. We begin with an examination of Buddhist and Confucian philosophy, before going on to consider the political status of literature and literary production such as poetry, dramas and novels; the influence of print capitalism and material affluence on the emergence of individual subjectivity; and the gendered nature of desire. No prior knowledge of Chinese thought or literature is required or expected, though a background in literary studies, gender studies, political philosophy, intellectual history, or the history of political thought (of any era or place) would be helpful. All readings will be in English.

20 hours of seminars in the Autumn Term.

This course has a reading week in Week 6 of Autumn Term.

Essay (1500 words)

One formative essay of 1,500 words maximum, excluding footnotes and bibliography, on an assigned topic.

Brook, Timothy. “Introduction: Seasons of the Ming,” in The Confusions of Pleasure: Commerce and Culture in Ming China. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998.

Wang Yangming, Instructions For Practical Living And Other Neo-Confucian Writing. Trans. by Wing-tsit Chan. New York: Columbia University Press, 1963.

Wu, Cuncun. “‘It Was I Who Lured the Boy’: Commoner Women, Intimacy and the Sensual Body in the Song Collections of Feng Menglong (1574-1646).” Nan Nü 12, no. 2 (2010): 311–43. https://doi.org/10.1163/156852610X545877.

Martin Huang, Desire and Fictional Narrative in Late Imperial China. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2001.

Course participation (25%)

Essay (75%, 3000 words) in Winter Term Week 1

Course participation will be assessed in the AT.