Tang "Cosmopolitanism": Toward a Critical and Global Approach - Shao-yun Yang

Shao-yun Yang, Associate Professor of History & Director of the East Asian Studies Program, Denison University
Recorded on May 19, 2022
The Tang dynasty is the only period of Chinese history to which the word “cosmopolitan” is now routinely applied in Western-language scholarship. In this talk, Professor Shao-yun Yang traces the origins of this glamorous image of the Tang to the 1950s and 1960s, but also links its current popularity to a more recent increase in the appeal of the concept of cosmopolitanism, as well as the idea of a “cosmopolitan empire,” among Western intellectuals since the end of the Cold War.