Module 2: Fragmentation and Reform – Show and Tell project

Remember you can always rewrite/resubmit after getting a grade and feedback, for a better grade, as long as you do so before December 9.

Important: If you did not submit a Show and Tell project for the First module, you’ll need to do the remaining four (including this one) to meet the requirements of the course!

Slight change to first Show and Tell: Include in submission comments on Canvas a self-assessment and suggested grade. (More details below)

Get ready!

As we reached the end of the second module, you should start thinking about a way to showcase what you learned about Chinese history between ±1800 and 1911 (i.e. after the visit of Macartney to Qianlong, and down to the fall of the Qing dynasty.) This includes the Opium Wars, the various rebellions (including the Taiping and the Boxer rebellion), but also the Chinese Exclusion Act, the increase of missionary activity inside China, the first Chinese studying abroad, and whatever else takes your fancy in connection with chapters 7-11 (of the third edition) in The Search for Modern China, or weeks 4-5 and part of week 6.

There are many different ways you can do that: traditional, scholarly, or more creative and interpretive. As long as you can share your project digitally with your colleagues in the course, the sky is the limit (more or less). Explore examples from the first round in this randomizer, and give feedback! Who knows what this round will bring?

Brainstorm

To make sure you pick a viable project, one that your colleagues feel is of equitable size and effort, and to get a sense of the variety of ideas there are, please pitch your idea in the Google chat room by Tuesday, March 22, 11.59pm. I’ve opened a discussion. Just a few lines is fine, to coordinate between closely related topics and to prevent you from embarking on a Ph.D.-sized research project. (I’d love you to do that, but we don’t have time.)

During Get Stuff Done Club and in Thursday class time, we will talk about your ideas. I highly encourage you to drop-in/attend and brainstorm.

How to submit

To submit your Show and Tell project:

  • Create a blog post, and share a link to the project. (If it’s a text-based Show and Tell, you can of course submit it as the blog post.)
  • Use the words “Show and Tell 2” in the title of the post, you can further customize the title by adding a title that will draw the reader in.
  • Add the post to the category hst271.
  • NEW: In the submission comments, add a self-assessment of your project, and a suggested grade [out of 10 points].

Self-assessment: Think of the self-assessment as an “honesty check”, which gives you a chance to reflect on the effort you put into the task, and you can flag up where you feel there is room for further improvement, or what you did particularly well in your opinion. If you want to think more about it through the perspective of a grade: Use that paragraph to explain why you think you deserve an A? Or if you think you’re only handing in a project that deserves a B+, what would you like to do differently to make it an A- or an A? (A: 10-9/ B: 8.9-8/ C: 7.9-7/ D: 6.9-6)

I reserve the right to modify the grade, but I will provide you feedback why I think our views on this differ. Remember you can always re-submit the project for a shiny new grade.

I’ll add this to the list of assignments of Week 5 and 6, as an assignment to submit on Canvas, not as a declaration quiz.

Good to know

Remember you only need 4 out of 5 Show and Tell projects. If you do all 5, I’ll only count the 4 highest scores. Bear in mind you don’t know what trouble may lie ahead in the semester, and banking some points early on is probably a good strategy.

You can re-submit the project based on feedback, anytime before May 19. (but I would not wait that long.)

Useful starting point for further information:

Ideas and suggestions for formats

The description of the assignment in the syllabus contains a lot of suggestions, including information for analytical papers (in blog post form), small digital projects, response papers, … One student each can also provide a new or updated version of the map layer or timeline we have for “Part 2” on the course website.

Last semester we also had a talk show, and a Prezi in addition to the more regular fare of encyclopedia and analytical style posts.

Transcription and comment

For this Module, I would also welcome anybody who wants to transcribe a new section of the Almack journal, and provide comments. Please get in touch with me if you’d like to practice your skills in reading nineteenth-century handwriting!

Response papers

For the response papers, here are two I provide that work well with the time period under scrutiny. Note that there are not that many great options for response papers this time round because I can’t put books on physical reserve.

  • Yang, Gene Luen, and Lark Pien. Boxers & Saints, 2 vols. New York: First Second Books, 2013.
    • On campus: available in the library, but remember they have a 72hr turn-around.
    • Online, scroll down and click on one of the two books under “issue name” (Tip from one of last semester’s students). I DO apologize for the terrible adverts on the site, I hope you have some eyebleach ready 🤮
    • You need to read both, so you get the full story: one book follows the story of a boy who becomes a “boxer”, who joins the rebel forces who try to rid the country of the Westerners; the other follows the journey of an orphan who is taken in by missionaries and becomes a Christian. Their paths cross.
  • Yung, Wing. My Life in China and America. Cer Classics. Hong Kong: Reprinted by China Economic Review Pub, 2007.
    • Read pp. 40-101 (you can, of course, read more if you’re interested!)
    • Yung Wing was educated by missionaries in China, and the first (known) Chinese student to graduate from a US college. (He also visited the Taiping, see week 4.) He married an American woman, and as a man who lived in and understood both American and Chinese culture, his memoirs make it a bit easier for us to try and understand how both cultures saw each other.

Introduce part of a collection

The Adam Matthews Collection is a new resource for Muhlenberg College, and you can help your fellow students for future generations to find their way, if you create a brief introduction of some of the materials you have found useful or interesting for the study of Chinese history, or the relations between China and the West.

There are three collections that are of interest to our course:

You can get started with this guide from Kelly Canon, but each of the collections has an Introduction (video or other visual walk-through) on how to use the collection, and where to find materials. Here are some options for what you can do with your Show and Tell project:

  • A “review” of the collection: how easy is it to use, what kind of materials are there, how useful is it for an undergraduate who’s taking a general survey course or do you think it’s more aimed at a specialist reader, e.g. a CUE student or a graduate student?
    • People write reviews of physical archives, so why not online ones? And why not customize them for our class?
    • Provide concrete examples of what worked, where you ran into trouble, what you thought was useful. Include URLs and titles etc.
  • Pick a topic and a few resources, and do a mini research project: in short, you can do a “down the rabbit hole” type exercise but on a larger scale and with a more scholarly approach, using one of these collections as your starting point.
  • Collate a small selection of visual materials, and create an “online exhibition”
    • You can create a Google Slide Show and embed that in a blog post, then add in your blog post commentary. Don’t forget to credit the images correctly.
    • Alternatively, create an image gallery on your blog post, again including guiding commentary and credits for the images.
  • I am sure there are other ways to use this wealth of resources!