240522 SE MM3 Rethinking Global Asia: Logistics, Infrastructure, Empire (2024W)

What can ports and pipelines, military bases and plantations, teach us about the “place” of Asia in the world? What can they teach us about the world in—and the social worlds of—Southeast Asia? How might tacking back and forth between Asia and the global allow us to put pressure on conventional area studies paradigms? Why might it matter to address these questions now?

This course presents Asia not as a pre-given, stable geographical reality, but rather as a world-region that is more mobile and contradictory, constructed differently at various points in time from historical and material relations to other parts of the world. The provisional point of departure is the notion of “global Asia,” a concept that has obtained significant traction across academic, policy, and cultural institutions in recent decades. “Global Asia” tends to stand for an inquiry into the global impact of countries in Asia, locating Asia within global processes not only in the present period—as per debates over the rising political and economic power of certain countries in Asia—but also over the longue durée, that is, since ancient times. We will address this notion of global Asia as well as other, more critical area studies paradigms such as inter-Asia, Transpacific Studies, Indian Ocean Studies, and global American Studies.