- Central Eurasian Studies >> Courses >> Course List
- Modern Mongolia
- CEUS-R 360/560
- Christopher Atwood
This course carries Culture Studies & COLL S & H distribution credit
In 1900 Mongolia was a largely nomadic country, with an aristocratic government of the descendants of Genghis Khan and an established Buddhist church, and dominated by viceroys from China’s last, Manchu, dynasty. In 1950, it was the Soviet Union most loyal satellite ruled by Mongolia little Stalin, the dictator Choibalsang. Mongolia entered the new millennium as an independent nation and a multi-party democracy, sandwiched between China and Russia, and struggling to enter the ranks of Asia economic success stories. This course will explore the wrenching changes that Mongolia has gone through in the course of this century: poverty-stricken Chinese dependency, theocracy, revolutionary junta, Communist purges, ailing command economy, transition to democracy and private property. Areas covered will include foreign policy, political events, circulation of elites, Buddhism and modern ideologies, demography and urbanization, and transformations in nomadic pastoralism.
Requirements: Undergraduates: Midterm 20%; two book reviews 15% each; final 40%; map quiz 10%; Graduates: Midterm, 20%, Paper 30%, Final 40%, Map Quiz 10%
Class Website: The lectures are at www.indiana.edu/~ceus/u469.htm (the dates of individual lectures are different but may be matched with the weeks)
Readings:
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Required reading includes nine books: Batbayar, Modern Mongolia: A Concise History; M. Sanjdorj, Manchu-Chinese Colonial Rule in Northern Mongolia, Kotkin and Elleman, Mongolia in the Twentieth Century; Zhambal (trans. Bawden), Tales of an Old Lama; Shirendev, Through the Ocean Waves; Bruun, Precious Steppe: Mongolian Nomadic Pastoralists in Pursuit of the Market.
Graduate students will also have as readings an analysis of the 1921 and 1990 revolutions by the Mongolian historian Otgonjargal, an historical play by Buyannemekhü, an anonymous translation of the proceedings of the third party congress in 1924, poems and stories of Natsugdorji, and cartoons by S. Tsogtbayar.Movies: “Storm Over Asia”
“On the Edge of the Gobi”
“Mongolian Cashmere Traders”
“Wild East: Portrait of an Urban Nomad”
