JAN 045 - The Great Silk Road

Lower division
Full credit
Remote
MTuThF, 9:15 AM - 11:50 AM

We are born to explore. When Marco Polo traveled from Italy to China in 1271, they followed what was later called The Silk Road, but there were actually many different “Silk Roads,” and they were not merely for silk. For thousands of years, trade and travel, technology, and disease, missionizing and warfare – connected Europe and China along routes through the Mideast and Central Asia. Alexander the Great and Genghis Kahn; Buddhist, Christian, and Muslim missionaries; Arab, Jewish, Viking, and Italian traders, all crossed the 10,000-mile-plus expanse of Eurasia, along the Silk Road. It was not easy: it took the Polos two years to arrive at their destination.

For at least 2,000 years, the Silk Road connected all the “known” world and served as a primary metaphor for what we call “globalism.” That’s why today, China calls its “Belt and Road Initiative” the “New Silk Road” and the United Nations is immersed in a decade-long “Silk Road Project.” These are physical, economic, and cultural developments, but we can view the Silk Road as a metaphor for our contemporary, internet-connected world. We can even view it as a potent image of exploration and discovery. Our online JanTerm course is an expression of this!

Few Americans seem to have much idea about the old or the new Silk Roads, the complexity of this history, the extraordinary geography of Eurasia, or the nomadic cultures of the steppes. The so-called “stans” which lay at the heart of the Silk Road (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, and Afghanistan) are often misunderstood or misrepresented through mainstream media sources or simply unknown to Americans. Throughout the term, we will ask students to consider straddling ideas across the east and west by looking at what is similar and what is different between the past and the present, as well as between the silk road countries and the US. To look at our own region, our homes and cultures, and the world as a whole through diverse lenses from guest speakers from across the Silk Route region, who will share their insights in our class. With the aim to broaden our perspectives on other peoples and places and perhaps thereby see ourselves differently in the process. Almost everything in this course might be very new to you. The only requirement for the course is that you are willing to learn - that you will open your eyes and make a serious effort to expand your horizons. That’s what education means: to draw or reach out, to stretch, to grow. In other words, this is a course for explorers, for adventurers.

Instructor(s): Robert Weiner & Tara Pandeya
Email: rw7@stmarys-ca.edu

Prerequisites & Notes
Prerequisites: None
Course Fee: 40

Credits: 1

Print this Page