East Asian Studies 103L (catalogue # 6903)
Sources of East Asian Civilization I
Fall 2005
T-TH
Humanities 115
Instructor: Sarah Allen
Office: Humanities 283
Telephone: 518-442-4120; email: TBA
Office Hours: Monday & Wednesday 1-2 and by appointment
This course is an introduction to some important and
representative texts from the Chinese tradition. The texts we will read span some two
thousand years and include philosophy, poetry, essays, a novel, and a
play. All readings are in English translation.
Required Texts:
Mencius, trans. D.C. Lau (ISBN 0-14-044228-6)
Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching, trans D.C. Lau (ISBN 0-14-044131-X)
Monkey, trans. Arthur Waley (ISBN 0-8021-3086-0)
Tang Xianzu, The Peony Pavilion, trans. Cyril Birch (ISBN 0-88727-206-1)
On E-reserves: Selected texts of the medieval period
Grading:
Attendance at all course meetings is required. Please come to class having done the reading assigned for that lecture; unannounced quizzes on the readings are a significant part of your grade. The midterm and final exams will include short answer and essay questions. You will also write one five-page paper based on close examination of a text or texts we have read in class (i.e. no outside research is required).
Grading breakdown: Class attendance and participation (20%); Quizzes (20%); Mid-term exam (20%); Paper (20%); Final exam (20%).
Scale for final
grades: 93-100%=A; 90-92%=A-; 87-89%=B+; 83-86%=B; 80-82%=B-; 77-79%=C+;
73-76%=C; 70-72%=C-; 67-69%=D+; 63-66%=D; 60-62%=D-; 0-59%=E.
Weekly Schedule:
August 29: Course introduction: no reading assignment
Philosophical Foundations
August 31: Mencius, pp. 7-46 (introduction), pp. 49-73
September 5: no class
September 7: Mencius, pp. 74-137
September 12: Mencius, pp. 138-204
September 14: Tao Te Ching, pp. 7-52 (intro), pp. 57-73
September 19: Tao Te Ching, pp. 74-143
Literature and Literati Culture
September 21: The Classic of Poetry and the foundations of
Chinese literary thought (e-reserves)
September 26: Early medieval poetry: speaking the self, observing the world (e-reserves)
September 28: Tang
poetry: themes and situations (e-reserves)
October 3: no class
October 5: no class
October 10: Tang poetry: the poetry of war and rebellion (e-reserves)
October 12: no class
October 17: Tales of Romance (e-reserves)
October 19: Tang and Song essays: investigating patterns (e-reserves)
October 24: midterm exam
Mischief and Self-control (a novel about a monkey)
October 26: Monkey, pp. 1-8 (introductions), pp. 1-52
October 31: Monkey, pp. 53-118
November 2: Monkey, pp. 119-180
November 7: Monkey, pp. 181-246
November 9: Monkey, pp. 246-305
Return to Romance (a play)
November 14: Peony Pavilion, pp. ix-xv (introduction), pp. 1-30; first draft of paper due
November 16: Peony Pavilion, pp. 30-95
November 21: Peony Pavilion, pp. 95-155
November 23: no class
November 28: Peony Pavilion, pp. 155-214
November 30: Peony Pavilion, pp. 214-273
December 5: Peony Pavilion, pp. 273-305; final draft of paper due
December 7: Peony Pavilion, pp. 305-340 (last day of class)
December 15,
This course fulfills the General Education Categories of Humanities and Regions Beyond Europe.
Characteristics of all
General Education Courses
1. General Education courses offer
introductions to the central topics of disciplines and interdisciplinary
fields.
2. General Education courses offer
explicit rather than tacit understandings of the procedures, practices,
methodology and fundamental assumptions of disciplines and interdisciplinary
fields.
3. General Education courses recognize
multiple perspectives on the subject matter.
4. General Education courses emphasize
active learning in an engaged environment that enables students to be producers
as well as consumers of knowledge.
5. General Education courses promote
critical inquiry into the assumptions, goals, and methods of various fields of
academic study; they aim to develop the interpretive, analytic, and evaluative
competencies characteristic of critical thinking.
Objectives for General Education Humanities
Courses
Humanities courses teach students to analyze and interpret
texts, ideas, artifacts, and discourse systems, and the human values,
traditions, and beliefs that they reflect. Humanities courses enable students to
demonstrate knowledge of the assumptions, methods of study, and theories of at
least one of the disciplines within the humanities. Depending on the discipline, humanities
courses will enable students to demonstrate some or all of the following:
1. an
understanding of the objects of study as expressions of the cultural contexts
of the people who created them
2. an
understanding of the continuing relevance of the objects of study to the
present and to the world outside the university
3. an ability
to employ the terms and understand the conventions particular to the discipline
4. an ability
to analyze and assess the strengths and weaknesses of ideas and positions along
with the reasons or arguments that can be given for and against them
5. an understanding
of the nature of the texts, artifacts, ideas, or discourse of the discipline
and of the assumptions that underlie this understanding, including those
relating to issues of tradition and canon
Objectives for General Education Regions Beyond
Courses in the General Education category of Regions Beyond Europe enable students to demonstrate:
1.
knowledge of the distinctive features (e.g.
history, institutions, economies, societies, cultures) of one region beyond
2.
an understanding of the region from the
perspective of its people(s)
3.
an ability to analyze and contextualize
cultural and historical materials relevant to the region
4.
an ability to locate and identify distinctive
geographical features of the region