Starting with Week 2, students are expected to have completed all the required readings for the week before attending the weekly sessions. Items marked with an asterisk (*) are available under Files in Canvas; the rest can be found elsewhere online or on reserve. [P] denotes “primary source.”
Week 1 (Jan. 9): The Idea of China
- Valerie Hansen, The Open Empire, 2nd ed. (New York and London, 2015), pp. 3–15 (*also available under Files in Canvas);
- History Writing Centre (history.ubc.ca/undergraduate/writing-centre/), especially the section on “Sources.”
- “How to Read a Document” (T. Brook)
Week 2 (Jan. 16): “Chinese” and “Non-Chinese”
- Hansen, Open Empire, 275–307 (*also available under Files in Canvas);
- *[P] “The Tanguts and Their Relations with the Han Chinese” and “Longing to Recover the North,” in Chinese Civilization: A Sourcebook, ed. Patricia Buckley Ebrey, 2nd ed. (New York, 1993), 139–141, 169–171.
Focus: How did the “Chinese” and “non-Chinese” perceive one another?
Week 3 (Jan. 23): Reforms and Their Enemies
- Hansen, 237–256;
- John E. Wills, Jr., “Su Dongbo,” Mountain of Fame: Portraits in Chinese History (Princeton, 2012), 149–167;
- *[P] “Memorial to the Emperor Renzong” and “A Petition to Do Away with the Most Harmful of the New Laws,” in Sources of Chinese Tradition: From Earliest Times to 1600, 2nd ed., vol. 1, comp. Wm. Theodore de Bary and Irene Bloom (New York, 1999), 612–616, 625–626;
- *[P] “Wang Anshi, Sima Guang, and Emperor Shenzong,” in Chinese Civilization, 151–154.
Focus: What was fundamentally at stake in the debates over reforms in 11th-century China?
Week 4 (Jan. 30): Society in Transition
- Hansen, 256–273;
- *[P] YUAN Cai [Yüan Ts’ai] (1140–95), “Author’s Preface” and excerpts from “Getting along with Relatives” (up to p. 212), in Family and Property in Sung China: Yuan Ts’ai’s Precepts for Social Life, trans. Patricia Buckley Ebrey (Princeton, 1984), 177–212.
Focus: What were some of the major concerns of the literati in the Southern Song period?
Week 5 (Feb. 6): China Under Mongol Rule
- Hansen, 309–343;
- *[P] GUAN Hanqing (ca. 1220–1307), “Rescuing One of the Girls,” in An Anthology of Chinese Literature: Beginnings to 1911, ed. and trans. Stephen Owen (New York, 1996), 744–770.
Focus: In what ways was Guan Hanqing’s play reflective of the Mongol period?
Week 6 (Feb. 13): Mid-term Checkup
No class this week. Students will sign up for individual meetings with the instructor.
Feb. 19–23: Midterm break
Week 7 (Feb. 27): Autocracy at Work
- Hansen, 345–363;
- *[P] Selections from “Ming Foundations of Late Imperial China,” in Sources of Chinese Tradition, 779–786, 788–793.
Focus: What was Zhu Yuanzhang’s vision for Ming-dynasty China?
Bibliography due on March 1
Week 8 (Mar. 5): Currents of Change
- Hansen, 363–379;
- Wills, “Wang Yangming,” 201–215;
- *[P] Selections from “Ledgers of Merits and Demerits,” in Sources of Chinese Tradition, 906–916.
Focus: How had China transformed over the course of the 16th- and early-17th centuries?
Week 9 (Mar. 12): Encounters and Circulations
- Timothy Brook, “The Missionary and His Convert,” Great State: China and the World (New York, 2020), 201–232 (*also available under Files in Canvas).
- *[P] Matteo Ricci, The True Meaning of the Lord of Heaven (Taipei, 1985), #521–#562.
Focus: How well were Christian teachings received by the Chinese literati?
Week 10 (Mar. 19): Seventeenth-Century Crises
- Hansen, 379–404;
- *[P] “‘Horrid Beyond Description’: The Massacre of Yangzhou” and “Soaring Phoenix or Caged Panther? Father and Son Choose Opposite Sides,” in Lynn A. Struve, ed. and trans., Voices from the Ming-Qing Cataclysm: China in Tigers’ Jaws (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993), 28–48, 179–204.
Focus: What were some of the transformations brought about by the Manchu conquest of China?
Week 11 (Mar. 26): The “High Qing”
- Hansen, 404–418;
- *[P] SHEN Fu (b. 1763), Six Records of a Life Adrift, xiii–xv, 1–32, 55–81 (also available under “Files” in Canvas).
Focus: What were the sources of Shen Fu’s joy and sorrow?
Book review due on March 31
Week 12 (Apr. 2): Empire at Crossroads
- Wills, “The Qianlong Emperor,” 231–258;
- *[P] Selections from “China in the Eighteenth-Century World,” in The Search for Modern China: A Documentary Collection, ed. Janet Y. Chen and others, 3rd ed. (New York and London: W. W. Norton, 2014).
Focus: What were some of the challenges faced by Qing-dynasty China at the turn of the 19th century?
Week 13 (Apr. 9): Re-orientation
- Hansen, 419–430;
- R. Kent Guy, “Song to Qing: Late Imperial or Early Modern?” in A Companion to Chinese History, ed. Michael Szonyi (Malden, Mass.: Wiley Blackwell, 2017), 143–53;
- [Optional] Browse chapters of interest in A Companion to Chinese History.