Category: Teaching
Why Asians are different from (Latin) Americans
In a recent speech Zhou Xiaochuan gave a nice clear summary of the reasons for Asian economic exceptionalism and the cultural (and therefore apparently mostly u...
Fields and Periodization (yes, again)
Jeff Vanke, now blogging at The Historical Society’s THS Blog, was looking for some guidance on how to properly divide up the history of the world into fi...
You are nimble in warfare!
Two Western Zhou bronze inscriptions, both dating from around 850 B.C. and describing the war against the Xianyun1 It was the ninth month, first auspiciousness,...
Starting a new year
As is something of a tradition here, these are my syllabai for the upcoming semester. East Asia Early China Honors College Unit C on bronzes and classical China...
Teaching about Chinese Bronzes
As the semester is winding down, our academic readers are no doubt very busy doing their work. If you would like to do my work, however, we have something of a ...
Another Disappointment
I always get a little nervous when a world history textbook cites details about Japanese history which I’ve never heard of before. I’m still mostly ...
New Media and Japanese Studies
WARNING: those of you interested in Japanese studies but not in internet technologies, new media, and the whole question of how digital learning does or doesn...
Virtual Forbidden City
Imagethief has been discussing the Virtual Forbidden City. Basically this is something that looks a lot like a Second Life site but you have to download the who...
The Soul of Japan
I’m teaching a survey course on premodern Japanese history this semester. It focuses on medieval and early modern Japan, and I wanted the first paper to d...
What to do with temples?
Another in our occasional series on teaching aids. One aspect of Chinese modernization that most teachers mention is the modernizing state’s need for buil...
A disappointment
I’ve been enjoying the textbook I’m using for World History this fall: Felipe Fernandez-Armesto’s The World: A History. It covers the entire w...
Pictures of China
Opium burning, 1917-1919. Beijing Duke university has put the entire Sidney Gamble archive on-line. Some of these have been published already (Gamble is pretty ...
China under construction
Apparently China produces a lot of cement From the Oil Drum, via Andrew Sullivan, Another in our series of cool teaching graphics.