Class schedule

The current week is always at the top of the detailed list. Use the “jump to” menu to jump around.

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Week 15

S. 12/2: 8PM Movie night: Trexler 02: “To Live” (Huozhe 活著)

M. 12/3: chapter 28

  • Spence, Chapter 28
  • Documentary Collection
    • 28.1 “China Can Say No”
    • 28.4 The Beijing Olympics
    • 28.5 Charter 08
  • Reflection on the movies from the entire semester

W. 12/5: conclusions, reflections

  • Understanding present-day China based on history:
    • Bring in a news article connected with China, from the past month (Nov. 1 2018- Dec. 5), that has not yet been posted on the “In the news” section. The topic may be the same as one of those posted.
  • SIR and other feedback and reflections.
Week 14
M. 11/26: chapter 26
  • 26.1 People’s Daily: “We Must Unequivocally Oppose Unrest”
  • 26.2 China News Agency: “Report on the Student Demonstrations”
  • 26.3 “Open Declaration of a Hunger Strike”
  • 26.5 Deng Xiaoping’s Explanation of the Crackdown

Slides (Gdrive)

T. 11/27: Movie night: “Devils on the Doorstep”, 8pm Trexler B02
W. 11/28: chapter 27
  • 27.1 Dalai Lama and “Ahimsa” for Tibet
  • 27.3 President Clinton Reevaluates Human Rights as Element of China Policy
  • 27.5 Dai Qing: Resettlement in the Three Gorges Project
  • submit first version of second essay on Canvas

Slides (Gdrive)

Week 13

M. 11/19

  • Spence, chapter 25
  • Documentary Collection
    • 25.1 One Child Policy: Open Letter
    • 25.2 Report on the Conditions Regarding the Work of Family Planning
    • 25.5 The Joint Agreement by Britain and China Defining the Future of Hong Kong

W. 11/21: no class, Thanksgiving break

  • Eat some turkey (if thus inclined) and catch up with family, friends, and/or sleep
  • Work on your second essay (due Nov. 28)!

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Week 12

M. 11/12:

  • Spence, chapter 23
  • Documentary Collection
    • 23.1 “The Shanghai Communiqué”
    • 23.3 “The Lost Generation”
    • 23.5 “A Barefoot Doctor’s Manual”
  • Optional extra: article with Kissinger‘s reflection on the United States’ China policy
  • Optional extra: from the President Nixon archives: “Nixon in China: The Film”
    • Featuring archival material from news reports and footage from on board Air Force One, etc.
    • Optional extra: “Nixon in China”: an opera by John Adams, in a Peter Sellars production: DVD in the library (DVD 782.1 A214n (1988) ) or follow this link for the first of the seventeen segments posted online.

Slides (Gdrive)

W. 11/14:

  • Spence, chapter 24
  • Documentary Collection
    • 24.1 Deng Xiaoping: “Emancipate the Mind, Seek Truth from Facts and Unite as One in Looking to the Future”
    • 24.2 Wei Jingsheng:”‘The Fifth Modernization”
    • 24.3 Liu Qing: “Sad Memories and Prospects: My Appeal to the Tribunal of the People”

Slides (Gdrive)

Movie night: Wed. Nov. 14: 8pm: Farewell my Concubine

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Week 11

M. 11/5: 

  • Spence, Chapter 21
  • Documentary Collection:
    • 21.3 “Hold High the Red Flag of the People’s Communes and March On”
    • 21.4 “Heroine of the Great Leap Forward”
      • This is a somewhat longer piece which gives you a good idea of the kind of literary writing and fiction that was approved by the CCP.
    • 21.5 “Decision Approving Comrade Mao Zedong’s Proposal to Step Down”

Slides (Gdrive)

W. 11/7:

  • Spence, Chapter 22
  • Documentary Collection
    • 22.1 “Life and Death of Lei Feng, an Admirable ‘Fool'”
    • 22.5 “Deng Xiaoping: Self-Criticism
    • 22.7 “As We Watched Them Beat Him…”

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Week 10
S. 10/28: Movie night: Lust/Caution 6pm, Trexler B02

M. 10/29

  • Spence, Chapter 19
  • Documentary Collection
    • 19.2: New Laws: Marriage and Divorce, May 1950
    • 19.4: Hu Shi and Hu Sidu: Father and Son
    • 19.5: Chiang Kai-shek: Back to the Mainland, October 10, 1954

Slides (Gdrive)

W. 10/31

  • Spence, Chapter 20
  • Documentary Collection
    • 20.2: Mao Zedong: “U.S. Imperialism Is a Paper Tiger”
    • 20.3 and 20.4: The Hundred Flowers Campaign: Lu Dingyi (20.3) and Professors Speak Out (20.4)

Details of posters used in class “museum exhibition” (Gdrive)

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Week 9

M. 10/22: + movie night (5pm)

  • Spence, Chapter 17
  • Documentary Collection:
    • 17.4 “Bearing Witness”
    • 17.6 “Bombs in Yishan”
    • 17.8 “How to be a Good Communist”
  • Associated Response Paper materials:
    • Tan, Amy. The Kitchen God’s Wife. 1st Vintage Contemporaries Ed. ed. New York: Vintage, 1993.
    • Lust Caution (Se jie). Directed by Ang Lee. Haishang Films, 2008.
    • Devils on the Doorstep. Directed by Jiang Wen. Home Vision Entertainment, 2005.
  • Additional material on China in WWII:

Slides (Gdrive)

Movie night: The Last Emperor part 2: 5-6.30pm, Trexler B07

(Movie is on reserve, if you can’t make it: please watch during the week so you can be up to speed when we incorporate it in upcoming classes.)

W. 10/24: 

  • Spence, chapter 18
  • Documentary Collection
    • 18.2 “General Marshall: The Mediator’s View”
    • 18.5 “Proclamation of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army”
    • 18.6 “Democratic Dictatorship”

Slides (Gdrive)

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Week 8

M. 10/15:

  • Spence
    • Chapter 14 (from “Shanghai Spring” section to end)
    • Chapter 15 “The Guomindang in Power”
  • Documentary Collection 
    • 14.4, 14.5, and 14.6 “Purging the Communists: Three Documents”
    • 15.4 “Japan’s Expansion: A Satirical Poem”
    • 15.6 “Control of Practicing Midwives in China”
    • 15.8 “Politics of Power: General von Falkenhausen’s Advice to Chiang Kai-shek”
  • Interesting extra: Tintin, The Blue Lotus extract (PDF):
    • The Mukden incident and Japan leaving the League of Nations found its way into this Tintin comic. The railway is changed to the Nanjing-Shanghai line, but the historical connections are clear.

Slides (Gdrive link)

Talk: “Global Environmental Change Since 1800: Are We in the Anthropocene?” by Prof. John McNeill, Miller Forum, Moyer Hall at 7:00 p.m.

T. 10/16: Film Screening: “The Last Emperor”

Trexler B02, 8.30pm. (duration: 2hrs 43′)

Note: part of the materials for Response Paper

W. 10/17:

  • Spence, Chapter 16
  • Documentary Collection:
    • 16.1 “The Jiangxi Soviet Land Law”
    • 16.5 “‘New Life’ for the Reds”
    • 16.6 “The Students Demonstrate”
  • Associated response paper material: Lao She, Rickshaw: The Novel Lo-t’o Hsiang Tzu.

Slides (Gdrive link)

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Week 7

M. 10/8: no class, “Fall break”

W. 10/10:

  • Spence
    • Chapter 13 “A Road is Made”
    • Chapter 14a “The Fractured Alliance” (to p. 316)
  • Documentary Collection:
    • 13.2 “Li Dazhao: ‘The Victory of Bolshevism'”
    • 13.5 “What Happens after Nora Leaves Home”
    • 14.3 “A Patient Named Taiwan: Chiang Wei-shui’s ‘Clinical Notes'”
  • Additional material in class: Three Principles of Sun Yat-sen (Canvas)
  • Associated Response paper material:
    • Lu Xun. “Ah Q – The Real Story”. In Diary of a Madman and Other Stories. Transl. by William A. Lyell. Honolulu: Univ. of Hawaii Press, 1990, 101-172. [e-book]
      • What is it? One of the transformative stories in modern Chinese fiction, it follows the life of a man who’s always down on his luck through the revolution of 1911, but it can also be read as an allegory of China’s fate.

Slides (Gdrive)

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Week 6

M. 10/1:

  • Spence, Chapter 11 “The End of the Dynasty”
  • Documentary Collection:
    • 11.1 “Zou Rong on Revolution”
    • 11.3 “Qiu Jin, Feminist Revolutionary”
    • 11.5 “Press Coverage of the Wuchang Uprising”
    • 11.6 “The Manchu Abdication Edict”
  • Associated Response paper material: Autumn Gem. Produced by Adam Tow. Directed by Kanopy (Firm). Adam Tow, 2009. Online Video. (available through Trexler Library website)
    • What is it? A documentary about Qiu Jin, a feminist revolutionary.
  • Slides (Gdrive)

W. 10/3:

  • Spence Chapter 12 “The New Republic”
  • Documentary Collection:
    • 12.3 “Japan’s Twenty-one Demands”
    • 12.4 “Feng Yuxiang: Praising the Lord”
    • 12.5 “Zhang Zhongchang, with Pleasure Rife”
  • For information:
    • Nolette cemetery, Noyelles-sur-mer in northern France, one of the cemeteries for the Chinese laborers from WWI
    • Documentary (Youtube): [section from start to appr. 8min. mark] footage of the early days of the Republic.
  • Slides (Gdrive)

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Week 5:

M. 9/24:

  • Spence Chapter 9 “Restoration through Reform”
  • Documentary Collection:
    • 9.2 “Three Memorials”
    • 9.3 and 9.4 “The Burlingame Treaty” and “The Exclusion Act”
    • 9.6: “Chinese Anti-foreignism”
  • Slides (Gdrive link)

W. 9/26:

  • A closer look at the prompts for the essay (opens Canvas link):
    • which option are you most drawn to?
    • what are the ideas you currently have for crafting an answer? Bring them to class, you will get a chance to work on them.
  • Spence Chapter 10 “New Tensions in the Late Qing”
  • Documentary Collection:
    • 10.2 “Li Hongzhang Negotiates with Japan”
    • 10.4 “Urban Life in the Dianshizhai Pictorial“
    • 10.5 and 10.6 “Oral Accounts of the Boxer Rebellion”
  • If you can’t get enough:
    • Cohen, Paul A, and Rogers D. Spotswood Collection. History in Three Keys: The Boxers As Event, Experience, and Myth. New York: Columbia University Press, 1997.
      • A study of the different ways the history of the Boxer Rebellion can be, and has been, written
    • Price, Eva Jane. China Journal 1889-1900 : An American Missionary Family during the Boxer Rebellion: With the Letters and Diaries of Eva Jane Price and Her Family. New York: Scribner, 1989.
      • Eyewitness accounts in letters from a missionary family caught up in the Boxer Rebellion.
  • Slides (Gdrive link)

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Week 4

M. 9/17: chapter 8

  • Spence, Chapter 8
  • Documentary Collection: 8.2 (The Conversion of Liang Fa); 8.4 and 8.5 (The “Ten Commandments” and the “Ode of Youth” of the Taiping)
  • Remember: for Primary Source presentations you probably want to coordinate with the other person/people presenting that day to make sure you cover different angles of the same document, or different documents.
  • Slides (Gdrive link)

If you can’t get enough: There are a lot of studies about the Taiping, here are a few:

  • Spence, Jonathan D. God’s Chinese Son : The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom of Hong Xiuquan. First Edition. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1996.
    • If you like the style of the textbook, this is a study by the same author in a similar style.
  • Zhang, Daye. The World of a Tiny Insect : A Memoir of the Taiping Rebellion and Its Aftermath. Translated by Xiaofei Tian. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2013.
    • A translation of a memoir with eye-witness accounts
  • Meyer-Fong, Tobie S. What Remains : Coming to Terms with Civil War in 19th Century China. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2013.
    • A study of the human, bodily aspect of the rebellion: with estimates ranging between twenty and thirty million people killed during the extended period of conflict, what happened to those bodies?

W. 9/19: no class: Yom Kippur

Note: if you observe work restrictions due to the holiday, please get in touch to rearrange any due dates for the Digital Commons.

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Week 3
  • Reminder: let me know your username so you can create posts on the website. Fill out the form!

M. 9/10: chapter 5-6a:

  • Spence, Chapter 5 (pp. 95-114), Chapter 6 first part (pp. 115-126)
  • Documentary Collection: Chapter 5: 5.2, 5.5, 5.6; Chapter 6: 6.2, 6.3
  • Reminder for the Primary Source presentations: you may choose a document from the Collection’s chapter not listed here, or the associated response paper material
  • Associated response paper materials;

    • Cao Xueqin, Story of the Stone, Vol. 1: The Golden Days, transl. by David Hawkes. Harmsworth: Penguin Books, 2006: Chapters 1-5.
      What is it? The opening chapters of one of the greatest novels in the world- I encourage you to read the entire book (five volumes in total), some day in the near future. It will be worth it.
      Earlier prints of David Hawkes translation also acceptable.

    • Shen, Fu. Six Records of a Floating Life. Trans. by Leonard Pratt and Chiang Su-hui. Penguin Classics. Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England: Penguin, 1983.
      What is it? The translation of the four surviving chapters of Shen Fu’s memoir. This gives you a good sense of the ups and downs, pleasures and disappointments in the life of a member of the “gentry” class in late Qing China, and contains a tender portrayal of the relationship with his wife.

If you can’t get enough: The “Eighteenth Century Collections Online” project hosts a number of primary documents connected to Chapter 6. You can access them through Trexler library:

W. 9/12 chapter 6b-7

  • Spence, Chapter 6, second part (pp. 127-135), Chapter 7
  • Documentary Collection Chapter 6: 6.4-6.5; 7.1 and 7.2
  • Please note that for the timeline events of Chapter 7 you will need to use the timeline for part 2. You can find the link on the Canvas sign-up page.
  • Fun extra: Play the online game “High Tea”, created for the Wellcome Trust in Britain. “Exercise your powers of negotiation and risk-taking to keep Britain happy in a trading game with a twist.” (Scroll down on the link page to learn more about the ideas behind the game, and the rules.)
  • Slides (opens link to Gdrive)
  • Excerpts of opinions on opium trade: almack-journal-extract_late1839, and jardine-moule-on_opium

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Week 2

M. 9/3

    • Check your spot on the Primary Source Presentation list (Canvas link). We have a large group of people to cram into the semester, so we start on Wednesday 9/5 with the first ones!
      • Note: you can edit the document and swap places: ask another student first, and stay within the right “round”.
      • Basic instructions for Primary Source presentation are in the syllabus
      • If you’re stumped by the texts on offer, come and chat with me, or check your “How to read a text” sheet of questions.
    • Sign up on the Digital Commons sing-up sheet (Canvas link)!
    • Digital Learning is visiting the classroom for a demonstration. If you bring a laptop or tablet, you can follow along!
    • Spence Chapter 2 (from “Adapting to China”) and Chapter 3
    • Documentary Collection: Documents 2.5 and 2.6; 3.2 and 3.3
    • Associated Response paper material: 
      • Lynn A. Struve, Voices from the Ming-Qing Cataclysm: China in Tiger’s Jaws. New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1993: Chapters 1-6.
        • What is it? Translations of eyewitness accounts of the upheaval, and other primary source documents from the Ming-Qing transition.
      • Spence, Jonathan D. Emperor of China: Self Portrait of Kʻang Hsi. New York: Vintage Books, 1975, Chapters 2-5 (pp. 25-139 in this edition)
        • What is it? Spence uses a variety of documents to weave together a “self-portrait” of one of the most important emperors of the Qing (read the Introduction for an explanation of his method).
    • Slides (G-drive link) and notes from class (G-drive link)

W. 9/5

  • Spence Chapter 4 (+possible spill-over from earlier)
  • Documentary Collection: Documents 4.1 to 4.3 (entire chapter)
    • First Primary Source Presentations! Check the schedule on Canvas. Remember you can ask to swap placed with a friend, check the rules at the top of the list.
  • Associated Response paper material: (see also previous session)
    • Spence, Jonathan D. Emperor of China: Self Portrait of Kʻang Hsi. New York: Vintage Books, 1975, Chapters 2-5 (pp. 25-139 in this edition)
      • What is it? Spence uses a variety of documents to weave together a “self-portrait” of one of the most important emperors of the Qing (read the Introduction for an explanation of his method).
  • Look through the notice about your work on the website, and possible privacy concerns. I can easily create you as a new user if you haven’t posted anything yet, or migrate contents to a new user profile if you want to change anything.
  • slides from this class (G-drive)

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Week 1

M. 8/27

Getting to know each other, the course, the books, and what to expect. Please see Announcement.

You can find the powerpoint in the folder on Canvas

W. 8/29

  • Read through the syllabus and annotate using hypothes.is in the group HST271. You have to sign up for a (free) account, and Hypothes.is works best with the Google Chrome browser. You install a small plug-in on your Chrome browser, and off you go! This quick-start guide will be useful!
    • You may use an alias to increase your anonymity online, but please let me know (in person or via e-mail) who you are. You may also comment on the syllabus in person or via e-mail.
  • Spence (blue cover) Chapters 1 and 2 (to p. 37)
  • Documentary Collection (orange cover) Documents: 1.1 to 1.5; 2.1 and 2.4.
    • You may always read all of the primary source documents in the collection, but I am trying to decrease the reading load where I can.
  • Associated response paper material:
    • Tang Xianzu, “The Peony Pavilion”, dir. by Tan Dun. Video of performance at the MET Museum
      • Libretto: Tang, Xianzu. The Peony Pavilion: Mudan Ting. Chinese Literature in Translation. Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press, 1980. [e-book])What is it? An abbreviated performance of the Kun-style “opera” at the MET museum, with subtitles.
  • If you don’t have your textbook yet: you can access the PDFs for this class on the Canvas site
  • (Please let me know if a link does not work or leads to nowhere.)
  • Bring your notecards for a test-run. You can check the document “Good discussion questions” on Canvas to help you craft good questions.
    • With time and effort you will over the course of the semester develop the skill to ask great questions and select good quotes, so don’t worry if you feel you’re not doing well yet. You will receive feedback to help you.
  • Remember there may be a pop-quiz, but the first couple will be a test-run to give you time to get used to the format.
  • Powerpoint is available on Canvas, ppt folder. Powerpoints and other presentation materials will always include the date in yymmdd format.

F. 8/31

  • Send me the your self-reflection (Google Doc link), either by e-mail or drop off a hard copy in my mailbox (photocopy room on third floor of Ettinger). Create a copy and save on your own drive, or print off and fill out by hand.

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Future weeks

 

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