Use the materials/topics from weeks 5-6-7 (Sept. 26– Oct. 16) as your starting point, but you can of course make connections and comparisons with earlier materials, and/or use this as a jumping off point to move into the future. If in doubt how to make this work, chat with me!
Remember the general guidelines (mainly there to make sure the work remains manageable).
Best before date: Oct. 14
Get ready!
Just like with the first Show and Tell, you get a chance to showcase what you learned and to satisfy your curiosity about something you’ve always wanted to know or just got curious about from Chinese history. Pick a topic, pick a format, and GO! As long as you can share your project digitally with your colleagues in the course, the sky is the limit (more or less). Remember you can look through the examples from previous courses, and think back to our session in week 5!
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 Discord chat channel #hst269 by Tuesday, Oct. 11, 11.59pm. Just a few lines about format and topic is fine!
I will respond with suggestions (sources, direction, or digital tricks) and/or give the green light.
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 1:” in the title of the post; you can further customize the title by adding a title that will draw the reader in.
- Note: make sure to use the exact words and numeral, so your post will show up in the blog stream.
- Add the post to the category hst269.
- In a separate document, keep notes on what you think the strong points are, and the areas for improvement. We will use this for the check-in at mid-semester!
Good to know
You can revise your Show and Tell based on feedback from me and your colleagues. Just alert me to a revised version, so when the final check-in happens or you refer to it in a reflection, we’re both talking about the same version of that project!
Further ideas and suggestions for formats
The description of the assignment (linked via the syllabus) contains a lot of suggestions, including information for more traditional assignments (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 the corresponding part we covered on the course website (now linked in the drop-down menu under “General Resources”). I will give you access to them if you let me know!
Useful starting point for further information: Credo Reference, an online reference library, available through Trexler, and our own library subject guide.
For response papers, I can help you find new materials you haven’t seen yet, but you can zoom in closer on the ones we’ve already seen and make connections doing a traditional “contrast and compare” to start with, and then moving into your response. Oh, and here is an overview of what a response paper is and isn’t. Keep the summary to a minimum, and instead focus on the how the writer does things with words/texts. The point is not to explain the “plot”, but explain how the piece makes you feel, and how it changes your view on Chinese history.
Suggested materials to work with
Qin dynasty
- Sima Qian. “Shiji 6: The Basic Annals of the First Emperor of the Qin.” In Records of the Grand Historian. Translated by Burton Watson, 35-83. Revised edition. Columbia Univ. Press, 1993.
- Sima Qian gives a detailed account of the First Emperor’s life and death
- Qin laws: Ebrey, Patricia Buckley (ed.). Chinese Civilization: A Sourcebook. Second Edition. New York: Free Press, 1993.
- Sima Qian. “Shiji 86: The Biographies of the Assassin-Retainers (exerpt).” In Records of the Grand Historian. Translated by Burton Watson. Revised edition. Columbia Univ. Press, 1993. (ebook)
- This is the basis for the movie Hero from director Zhang Yimou. You can also write a response paper about that movie, available as a DVD in Trexler Library.
- Hero. Directed by Zhang Yimou, Miramax Home Entertainment, 2004. (Trexler library)
Qin-Han transition
- Sima Qian. “Shiji 7: The Basic Annals of Xiang Yu.” In Records of the Grand Historian. Translated by Burton Watson. Columbia Univ. Press, 1961.
- No ebook, but a physical book in the library!
- Sima Qian. “Shiji 8: The Basic Annals of Emperor Gaozu.” In Records of the Grand Historian. Translated by Burton Watson. Columbia Univ. Press, 1961.
- Mei Lanfang. “Hegemon King says farewell to his queen.” In Eight Chinese Plays from the Thirteenth Century to the Present, translated by W. Dolby. New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1978. (PDF)
- This play is an early 20th century dramatization of the clash between Han (Liu Bang) and Chu (Xiang Yu). It is based on an earlier play.
- Interesting to know: we have a DVD on the life of Mei Lanfang in the library.
- Farewell My Concubine. Directed by Chen Kaige. Burbank CA: Miramax, 1999.
- This movie uses very loosely the life of Mei Lanfang as the basis for its plot (Mei’s family has expressed it does not endorse this interpretation); the core piece of the two artists at the center is the dramatized story of Xiang Yu and his consort, so yes: this movie is fair game to write about the long cultural influence of this event in Chinese history/culture.
Han dynasty: women
- Sima Qian. “Chapter 9: The Basic Annals of Empress Lü”. In Records of the Grand Historian, Translated by Burton Watson. Revised edition. Columbia Univ. Press, 1993.
- Ban Zhao. “Instructions for Women”. In The Columbia Anthology of Traditional Chinese Literature, edited by Victor Mair, 534-41. New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1994. (Use Hypothesis)This is one of the earliest texts in world history on the education of women, and it is written by a woman. Questions to ponder: what can we learn about the role of women in Han society? What remains beyond our knowledge about gender issues?
Han dynasty: Political economy
- “The Debate of Salt and Iron”. In de Bary, Wm. and Irene Bloom, eds. In Sources of Chinese Tradition, Vol. 1: From Earliest Times to 1600. Second Edition. New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1999.
- Wang Mang. “Edict on Land Reform”. In de Bary, Wm. and Irene Bloom, eds. In Sources of Chinese Tradition, Vol. 1: From Earliest Times to 1600. Second Edition. New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1999.
- Secondary source: Von Glahn, Richard. The Economic History of China : From Antiquity to the Nineteenth Century. Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press, 2016. (Trexler book)
- Part of Chapter 3 and part of chapter 4 deal with the Han (the author doesn’t follow the dynasties, but follows the economic trends for periodization. Makes sense!)
Han dynasty and its neighbors: Xiongnu
- Sima Qian, “Shiji 110: The Account of the Xiongnu”. In Records of the Grand Historian (Shiji): Han Dynasty II. Translated by Burton Watson, 17-48. Revised edition. New York: Renditions-Columbia Univeristy Press, 1993. PDF
- I have marked some passages in red brackets, that are of interest because they give us the major story of the rise of the Xiongnu and the pattern of interactions between huaxia and nomadic groups for much of imperial history. (The other sections are interesting as well, but you may not find them as useful for analysis)
- This is the first systematic account of the nomadic people neighboring “China”, and (together with the entire Shi ji) became a blue print for writing official history. What can you tell about its structure, methods of (re)presentation, and the creation of knowledge?
- Secondary source if you like back-up/extra knowledge: Di Cosmo, Nicola. “Taming the North: The Rationalization of the Nomads in Ssu-ma Ch’ien’s Historical Thought.” In Ancient China and Its Enemies: The Rise of Nomadic Power in East Asian History, 294-312. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2002. (Ebook Trexler)
- Chapter 8 explains how Sima Qian (Ssu-ma Ch’ien in the older Wade Giles system) tried to fit this new phenomenon of the Xiongnu into the existing huaxia worldview.
Period of Division (Northern and Southern Dynasties)
- Instructions for the Yan family (Yanshi jiaxun). Various translations and editions, see footnotes in document. (PDF)
- Excerpt from Mouzi. In Sources of Chinese Tradition, Vol. 1: From Earliest Times to 1600, 2nd edition, edited by Wm. Th. de Bary and Irene Bloom, 421-426. (PDF)
- Signs from the Unseen Realm: Buddhist Miracle Tales from Early Medieval China, translated by Robert Ford Campany. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press/Kuroda Institute, 2012. (ebook)
- If you like Buddhist miracle stories, here is the link to the entire book, so you can pick new ones to analyse.
- Campany, Robert Ford. A Garden of Marvels: Tales of Wonder from Early Medieval China. Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press, 2015.
- More amazing stories from that wonderful period of creativity, which some early twentiety century authors in China pointed to as the origin of Chinese fiction writing. But to those who recorded these Tales of Wonder in early medieval China, this was not fiction, they were recording history!
- Jenner, W. J. F. Memories of Loyang: Yang Hsüan-Chih and the Lost Capital (493-534). Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981.
- Yang captured in his Record of the Monasteries of Luoyang (Luoyang qielanji) his memories of Luoyang, the city used by the Northern Wei as capital between 493 and 534. What does the city look like? What makes this into a capital? Pick a few of the stories and use these to create your own image of Luoyang.
- “Ballad of Mulan”. In An Anthology of Chinese Literature : Beginnings to 1911, translated and edited by Stephen Owen, 241-43. New York: W.W. Norton, 1997.(PDF)
- Oldest extant version of the story that keeps coming back.
Remember: if you have other ideas, suggestions, topics: as long as you can connect them to “China between 221BCE-589CE” we’ll find a way to make it work. History is messy, and it’s hard to capture in neat little boxes we create after the fact.