How were human communities sustained before the rise of capitalism, individualism, and secularism? Where can we look to imagine a world in which modern science, polity, and ethics are not the defining system of civil social? Through an exploration of stories from late medieval Europe, China, Southeast Asia, and other regional communities, with a particular focus on the East, this course aims at de-orientalizing the narratives of the Western world by recovering the collective practices of the global past and present. Interrogating the idea that human history has been a linear process of industrialization and secularization, this course encourages students to reflect on the limits and problems of modernization, and learn from cultures whose practices were displaced or silenced by colonial knowledge production. Students will be empowered to consider, and even envision, alternative versions of modernity and the future of our world.