Suffering from burnout? Too many assignments? Feeling like it’s all getting too much without the vibe of being on campus? I get it! This week’s content is optional: come if you can, leave when you must, and don’t come if you prefer to spend this time on your assignments (including sprucing up your website or rewriting earlier blog posts).
Nevertheless, if you have mental and physical energy left to engage with arguably China’s greatest novel (in its best translation in English), please join me this week for a book-club style chat on Thursday’s Zoom session.
PROJECT BITES DUE DATES THIS WEEK:
- Wednesday April 22: First full draft of final project, on Pressbooks. (Link to video tutorials for Pressbooks editing, and adding media)
- Thursday April 23 through Monday April 27: Provide feedback on your fellow students’ chapters: check the Google Sheet to see who you’ve been assigned, and follow the method suggested in this video on leaving feedback. (Counts towards “Thoughtful Participation”)
PASSWORD ACCESS TO PDFs: Username and password can be found on the Canvas Homepage
Use the Pad for all your anonymous questions and concerns.
Schedule April 20- April 26:
- Monday: check you have the project bites up to step 5 (Outline) on your website in Category HST107, or as a shared google doc.
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- Feedback for blog materials is in the Hypothes.is group HST107
- Feedback for Google docs is in comments and suggestions (usually in italics if the font lets me)
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- Tuesday: 4pm Zoom session: (link under the pink header on Canvas Homepage)
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- Check in with classmates and projects, I will be fielding questions and can walk you through Pressbooks.
- You have received an email on your Muhlenberg account with a login for Pressbooks. Check your Spam folder if you haven’t seen it. Check that you can log in.
- Find the recording on the Canvas page (look for the date)
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- Wednesday: (anytime before midnight): Project Bite 6: First full draft of the final project on Pressbooks.
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- Check the video tutorials how to edit and how to add media.
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- Thursday: 4pm OPTIONAL Zoom session (link under the pink header on Canvas Homepage): if you want to talk more about the course contents for this week. I’ll run it more like a book club: bring themes and ideas you want to talk about in a free-flowing conversation.
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- You can start peer-reviewing chapters, check the Google Sheet to see whose chapters you’ve been assigned.
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- Next week (=week 15, April 27-April 30)
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- Monday: Peer feedback on chapters in Pressbooks (check the video how we do this)
- Thursday April 30: Second full draft of final project, on Pressbooks
- May 4: Portfolio with all assignments closes at 11.59pm; Includes one final reflection (part of “Thoughtful Participation“), see details in week 15.
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Readings and course materials
- Cao Xueqin. The Golden Days. Vol. 1 of The Story of the Stone, translated by David Hawkes. Penguin Classics, 1973. (Chapters 1 and 5) (PDF)
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- Another hero with his birth connected to a stone (see Monkey). Chapter 1 of this eighteenth century novel explains how Jia Baoyu, the “Stone” of the title, becomes incarnated as a boy in the human world. He lives a luxurious life in the mansion of his ancestors, the Dukes of Ningguo and Rongguo. He grew up with his cousin Xue Baochai, but at the start of Chapter 5 Dai Linyu, another cousin, joins the household. Through fate these three are connected, and the names of the two girls both contain a character that is also found in Baoyu’s name. Baoyu is (later in the novel) in love with Linyu, but his parents want him to marry Baochai.
- In contrast to most of the primary sources we read so far, this text was consciously created as fiction by the author: it is not a form of history, nor is it a retelling of a traditional folk tale. The full length novel (120 chapters) is very cleverly constructed, and some scholars spend a lifetime to studying the text and its complex literary ideas; it is a separate field of Chinese literature! (It’s called “Redology” or hongxue, after the other title now more frequently used, Dream of the Red Chamber or Honglou meng.)
- How many connections with ideas from earlier in the course can you see? This can be in broad terms (afterlife, enchanted beings, techniques of story-telling…) as well as specific figures we discussed.
- Bear in mind while reading the words that welcome you to the Land of Illusion: “Truth becomes fiction, when the fiction’s true; Real becomes not-real where the unreal’s real.” Which layer of the story is the real world? What is the author doing to the reader? Why?
- If you are curious about the riddles in Chapter 5, here is the solution (PDF)
- We will only discuss chapters 1 and 5, but 2-4 are included should you wish to read what happens in between.
- The full-length novel is a highly recommended quarantine read! It’s long, complex and you will impress all your Chinese friends!
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