Thanks for the links and ideas! If I was breaking the China history into four semesters (instead of just three), I could see breaking around the Tang, but the the Qing course makes such a nice narrative by itself (depressing, but pretty coherent) that I’d be loath to mix it up with anything else. The Tang-Song-Yuan-Ming narrative is pretty coherent, too, the way I tell it; seesawing between northern/western influences (pastoralists, Buddhism) and southern/eastern ones (Confucian revival; Ming cultural isolationism) at the same time that they are increasingly tied economically to the rest of the world, culminating in the European encounters and the overextension of the Ming…. You know, none of my China courses seem to have happy endings.

http://www.chss.iup.edu/baumler/332syl-s05.html

Looks like a good class. I sort of avoid the problem of lumpiness by ending my class
at about the Tang-Song transition. It’s always the middle part that makes it hard to have a narrative. Up to the Han its creating an imperial-centered order, then it falls apart and the Tang re-do it. A nice, emperor-centered narrative that you can hang lots of things on. Eventually the red-haired barbarians show up and provide a new center, but I never know what to do with the 900-1800 period.

One difference is that I don’t use a textbook for early China. In fact that is the only class I don’t use one for. I remember looking at Hanson and balking at the price ($75.00, although it seems to have come down) and the fact that so little of it is Tang and before. Have you looked at Sarah Allen’s The Way of Water and Sprouts of Virtue?
for the Axial Age? You have to give them the bits of philosophers from somewhere else, but Allen works well because she focuses on the root metaphors that all the ‘schools’ had in common, and thus helps them pull the age of the philosophers together better than they sometimes do.

Lewis Sanctioned Violence in Early China
works well, but it may hit too early to really fit with your class.

TeiserGhost Festival is a really good book to use, since it deals with both Buddhist doctrine and popular culture, so its a nice two for one.

Early China is one of the hardest classes to do, because there are just not that many choices for outside readings

Plagiarism: I’m not going to dock someone for citing “Those who do not study history are doomed to repeat it” without footnoting it; that’s not the point. It’s general knowledge, though anyone with a little effort could find a citation (at least to a dictionary of quotations). The point is to think about their handling of primary and secondary sources in relation to their own thinking and writing: rearranging is not the goal of my assignments, generally.

Grading: If grading were relative, and most students just came to class without actively participating or doing well on the tests, then, yes, I could see giving students like that an “average” grade. My grading is not relative, however, so your system doesn’t work for me. Nor, in the long run, would it improve the problematics of higher education.

Your comment, “…I’m not even trying to make the semester “flow” because the history itself doesn’t. It’s episodic and inconsistent and the emphasis has to shift to make sense of things.” initiated some thinking on my part. PPeople, individuals, live, do things, beget, do more things, and then die. The begotten, live, do things, beget, do more things, and then die; and so on. In that sense, their history, that is, their story is constinuous and not episodic. What is episodic is the theme, or drama (melodrama?) that we find more interesting, or significant, or meaningful, or epoch making.

Not that it is important, but I prefer the history of people based on their economic activities and the technology they use; and superimpose upon this matrix the geo-political and high cultural (fine arts and philosohy) activities that are occuring at the same time.

Concerning your remarks on plagarism in the syllabus, not to rail against the ethics of what you wrote,; but I have always believed that I had the right to quote a well known phrase without footnoting it (although I would put it in italics or perhaps quotes). For a professor, it may not be a bad intellectual game to see if you could identify the sources of any such quotes from your students.

Concerning grades. I have several qualms about modern education in the United States (world wide, actually). But one of the aspects of education is the grading system. Students are coming into a class for several reasons. One of thos reasons may be they are required to for some reason or other; or perhaps it is because the subject matter of the class is topical. Whatever the reason, if the student wishes to just show up and hear what is said, I see nothing wrong with that. If they show up the prerequisite number of times, they should receive the adverage grade for the school. But some students wish more, they want to be certified that they know the subject. For them, I would give examinations and if they pass, the receive one grade above the average. Of course, there is downside risk. If they fail the examinations, they will receive one grade below the average. And then, there are those students who wish for even more than to be certified, they actually want to participate in a dialogue about the subject. For they, doing dialogue in class, doing essays about the subject is required, and if passing these items, they then get the trophy, that is, they receive the highest grade. Downside risk, one grade below the failures of the tests.

Not that these thoughts are meaningful in any fashion, but I thought I would present them anyway.