E505
- Select a minimum of 4 of the articles and chapters listed below to read for your journal, plus one other from this or the G380 list.
- Choose at least 2 of the four from the titles above the line, and 2 from the titles below.Most items are available on e-Reserve, at: http://ereserves.indiana.edu/eres/coursepage.aspx?cid=4612; where noted, items will be found in electronic resources accessed directly through IUCAT.
For each article or book chapter, write an entry to be submitted via Oncourse, in line with the Journal Schedule below. Entries should include three sections:
1) "Reading Notes": a single-spaced informal compilation of notes taken as you read -- at least about one single-spaced page of notes for every 50 pages read. At the top of your Notes section, give full bibliographic information about the item you are reading: Author, Title, Location, Publishing Information (be sure you note the date; it's always helpful to be aware of the era your author is speaking from), and Pages. Your reading notes should be understandable and include page references, but they don't have to be grammatical or in any particular form, they are a record of your reading care. You can insert any type of comments you wish.
2) "Precis" (summary): a 1-2 double-spaced page summary of the article or chapter, in your own words, bringing together the main ideas and expressing the overall argument. Specify at the outset whether the item you are summarizing is basically analytic (arguing a hypothesis on the basis of closely examined data), descriptive (devoted principally to introducing information), or synthetic (attempting to bring together a large body of information, selectively introduced to propose a general interpretive model). Longer articles and more complex ones will require more space. Do not exceed three pages.
3) "Response": a separate single page with 1-2 paragraphs indicating what aspects of the piece you find most important or interesting. The response should reflect an understanding of the author's main points, and convey insights that your class studies or analytic reflection give you.
Journal entries should be submitted via Oncourse on the following schedule (you may always submit entries early):
| #1 | Friday, Sept. 15 -- your free choice item |
| #2 | Friday, Sept. 29 |
| #3 | Friday, Oct. 6 |
| #4 | Monday, Oct. 23 |
| #5 | Monday, Oct. 30 |
Be aware that most of these readings employ the "Wade-Giles" system for transcribing Chinese. Items marked * use the this older and much clumsier system. In many cases, names and terms with which you're familiar may at first appear unfamiliar (for example, the names of the major states of the early Classical era - Jin, Qi, Chu, and Qin - will appear as Chin, Ch'i, Ch'u, and Ch'in). You will need to be able to handle this unfortunate situation, so print out and use the Wade-Giles Guide on this website.
Section 1: State and Society
in Classical China
*1. Nicola Di Cosmo, Ancient China and Its Enemies, Chapter 4: "Walls and Horses: The Beginnings of Historical Contacts Between the
Horse-Riding Nomads and Chinese States," 127-158. [31 pages]
[Book on
Reserve, DS 741.3 .D5 2002]
Di Cosmo is one of the few scholars working on Central and Northern Asia during the ancient period. He was trained at Indiana, and now teaches at Princeton.
*2. Mark Lewis, in Sanctioned Violence in Early China,
Chapter 1: "The Warrior Aristocracy," 15-52 (notes 251-268) [38 pages]
[Book on Reserve, HN 740 .Z9 V55 1990]
This is part of a book written, in part, to offer a model of Classical Chinese society different from the one sketched in Cho-yun Hsu's works (3 and 4 above). Both Lewis and Hsu trained at Chicago under the same teacher, but their approaches are in many ways a study in contrasts. The book itself is on Reserve, and the first few pages of the Introduction will help make clearer what Lewis's project is.
*3 A.C. Graham, "The
Nung-chia 'School of the Tillers' and the Origins of Peasant Utopianism in
China,"
in the journal Bulletin of the School of Oriental
and African Studies (University of London) 42.1 (1971), 66-100 [35
pages]
[Electronic Journal Resource; access
through IUCAT]
During the late twentieth century, Angus Graham was the most respected 'sinologist' (scholar of China) working in the area of ancient thought, based at the University of London. Many of his best studies were in the style of "detective work," uncovering lost traditions through careful reasoning based on a few clues. This is an example of such an approach.
*4. Mu-chou Poo, In Search of
Personal Welfare,
Chapter 3: "Personal Welfare in the
Context of Mantic Technique," 41-68 (notes 230-35). [28
pages]
[Book on Reserve, BL 1802 .P65
1998]
Mu-chou Poo is based at the Academic Sinica research institute in Taiwan, a very eminent institution that brings together scholars who are both trained to a high degree of technical expertise and interested in developing general models to explain traditional Chinese history and culture. (Others on this list who have worked extensively at Academic Sinica include Cho-yun Hsu and K.C. Chang, though they have been based in the US.) In his wide ranging book on the character of early Chinese religion, Poo articulates important and sometimes overlooked features with great clarity.
5. Mark Csikszentmihalyi, "Mysticism and Apophatic Discourse in the
Laozi,"
in Csikszentmihalyi and Philip
Ivanhoe,ed., Religious and Philosophical Aspects of the Laozi, 33-58. [26 pages]
"Apophatic" discourse refers to statements that characterize the world according to what it is not, and this is a common strategy of the Daoist text known as the Laozi or the Dao de jing. Csikszentmihalyi [chik-zen-mče-high], who teaches at Wisconsin, illustrates how careful and attentive interpretation can help us "hear" a difficult text speak more clearly.
6. William Boltz, "Language and Writing,"
in Michael Loewe and Edward
Shaughnessy, ed., The Cambridge History of Ancient China, 74-123.
[49 pages]
Boltz's chapter is more specialized than most of these readings. Boltz is a very acute historical linguist at the University of Washington whose theories about Old Chinese phonetics and the origins of writing have had great impact on the field. This essay lays out some ideas of very broad importance, but it also includes technical features that may lead you to worry that you won't understand what's being said (such as the difference between OC *kwjáns and OC *ăkwjáns, just to pick a random example). In fact, you don't need to worry about the details to grasp the main points - anyone interested in China's unusual language, or in how languages change and writing systems develop should find this an absorbing essay.
7. K.C. Chang, Early Chinese
Civilization: Anthropological Perspectives,
Chapter 9: "Changing
Relationships of Man and Animal in Shang and Chou Myths and Art, 174-196.
[18 pages]
Until his death a few years ago, Chang was the most prominent archaeologist of China living in the West (he taught at Harvard for many years), and probably the most imaginative Chinese archaeologist anywhere. He developed a variety of exciting theories, many of which are touched on in the G380 online texts, including some of those in this essay.
8. K.C. Chang, Shang Civilization,
Chapter 3: "The Shang Dynasty
and Its Ruling Apparatus," 158-183; 188-209. [42 pages]
[Book on Reserve, DS 744 .C38]
Chang's study of the Shang is still the most comprehensive overview. Some aspects of his ideas have been superseded by later research (that's why, for example, pages 184-87 of this selection are omitted), but much remains either valid or controversially viable. The model of the Shang kingship's relation to structures of the royal lineage that appears in these pages is summarized in online course materials - it is one of the most intriguing theories to emerge about Shang political organization.
9. Cho-yun Hsu and Katheryn Linduff, Western Chou Civilization
Chapter 5: "Forming a Nation
and Chou Feudalism," 147-185. [32 pages]
[Book on Reserve, DS 747 .H79 1988]
Hsu, whose major career impact was on Warring States era history (3 and 4 above), moved back into Western Zhou history during the 1980s, publishing a well received monograph (sustained specialized study) in Chinese, of which this is largely a translation, with added contributions from Linduff, an art historian at Pittsburgh.
10. David Keightley, ed., The Origins of Chinese Civilization,
"The Late Shang State: When,
Where, and What?" 523-558. [33 pages]
David Keightley, recently retired from Berkeley, is without question the most influential Western scholar of Shang Dynasty oracle bone texts. This is an ingenious essay and remains one of the most influential studies of the Shang state a quarter century after Keightley wrote it.
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