Graduate students enrolled in Early China (EALC E505) will meet weekly for an additional hour at a time and place to be arranged at the start of the term. Written assignments will include maintaining a reading Journal somewhat differently configured from the undergraduate assignment and completing a term research paper.
Tentative and preliminary schedule of classes:
NOTE: Where an asterisk * appears, individual chapter assignments with precis will be involved.
Week of (NOTE: "Cambridge" = Cambridge History of Ancient China, located in the Wells Library Research Collection: DS 741.5 .C35 1999)
January 12 Sources and approaches to the study of early China
No readings
January 19 Baseline analytic model of historical change in the Eastern Zhou
Cho-yun Hsu, Ancient China in Transition, chapters 1-4 (pp. 1-106); Cambridge, ch. 8
January 26 Approaches to the Zuozhuan as history & literature (I)
Yuri Pines, "Intellectual Change in the Chunqiu period," Early China [EC]
22, pp. 77-132
David Schaberg, "Remonstrance in Eastern Zhou Historiography," EC 22, pp.
133-179
February 2 Approaches to the Zuozhuan as history & literature (II)
*
Yuri Pines, Foundations of Confucian Thought
* David Schaberg, A Patterned Past
February 9 Thematic analysis
Mark Lewis, Writing and Authority in Early China, Intro. and ch. 3-4, pp. 99-193
February 16 Intellectual history of Warring States
David Hall & Roger Ames, Thinking Through Confucius
Michael LaFargue, The Tao of the Tao te ching
February 23 MIDTERM WEEK OFF
March 2 Origins of Chinese civilization
* Li Liu et al., State Formation in Early China
March 9 Bronze Age polities
David Keightley, Cambridge, ch. 4, pp. 232-91
R. Eno, "Shang State Religion and the Pantheon of the Oracle Texts," in Lagerwey
& Kalinowski, Early Chinese Religion, 41-102
March 16 SPRING BREAK
March 23 The Shang and the Shang-Zhou transition
Robin Yates, "The City-State in Ancient China," pp. 71-90
David Pankenier, EC 8
March 30 Western Zhou history
* Feng Li, Landscape and Power in Early China
Edward Shaughnessy, Sources of Western Zhou History
April 6 Qin Dynasty
Martin Kern, The Stele Inscriptions of Ch'in Shih-Huang
April 13 Canon formation and function
* Steven Van Zoeren, Poetry and Personality
* John Henderson, Canon and Commentary
*
Michael Nylan, The Five "Confucian" Classics
April 20 Sima Qian and historical writing in China
* Stephen Durrant, The Cloudy Mirror
Michael Nylan, "Sima Qian: a true historian?" EC 23-24
April 27 Individual research project reports