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: Although this may seem like a fully developed agenda, it is actually simply a starting point. We will negotiate reading selection in response to your specific interests as the term progresses.
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)
August 20 Sources and approaches to the study of early China
No readings
August 27 Baseline analytic model of historical change in the Eastern Zhou
Cho-yun Hsu, Ancient China in Transition, chapters 1-4 (pp. 1-106)
September 3 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
September 10 Confucianism and ritual culture
Eno, The Confucian Creation of Heaven, Introduction and ch. 2, pp. 1-15, 30-63
September 17 Confucian philosophy
*David Hall & Roger Ames, Thinking Through Confucius
September 24 Daoism
Michael LaFargue, The Tao of the Tao te ching, selected passages
October 1/8 MIDTERM PREPARATION AND FALL BREAK (no meetings these two weeks)
October 15 Origins of Chinese civilization
* Li Liu et al., State Formation in Early China
October 22 Bronze Age polities
David Keightley, Cambridge, ch. 4, pp. 232-91
Eno, "Shang State Religion and the Pantheon of the Oracle Texts," in Lagerwey
& Kalinowski, Early Chinese Religion, pp. 41-102
October 29 The Shang and the Shang-Zhou transition
Robin Yates, "The City-State in Ancient China," pp. 71-90
David Pankenier,
"Astronomical Dates in Shang and Western Zhou," EC 7, pp. 2-37
November 5 Western Zhou history
* Feng Li, Landscape and Power in Early China, ch. 1, 27-90; ch. 2,
91-140
November 12 Qin Dynasty
* Martin Kern, The Stele Inscriptions of Ch'in Shih-Huang
November 26 Han governance and culture
* Michael Loewe, The Government of the Qin and Han Empires
* John Henderson, Canon and Commentary
December 3 Individual research project reports