Week 9: regrouping and restarting

IMPORTANT: PASSWORD ACCESS TO PDFs: Username and password can be found on the Canvas Homepage

ACCESS TO ZOOM SESSION: Login link, or User ID and password can be found on the Canvas Homepage

Use the Pad for all your anonymous comments

General Announcement:

The most important changes for remote learning: look at this page

As we move into remote learning, some of the rhythm and tasks will change. I want to lay out the basics of how I view the course for this week and next week. I welcome your feedback on workload, types of tasks and types of engagement with the learning community (synchronous or asynchronous).

  1. Canvas discussion posts: It will be a better use of our time and broadband if we use the Discussions function in Canvas to mimic our in-class discussions. They will this week function as follows:
    • Create by Wednesday 7pm a first response with your thoughts. I will include a word count to guide you. I am looking for substantial posts that contain some analysis, not merely observation.
    • Once you posted your post, you’ll be able to see what others say on the discussion board. Look through those posts, ideally after Wednesday 5pm so you can see everybody’s first post.
    • Respond by Thursday 2pm to at least 2 other students’ posts. You can “thread” the discussions.
    • I will take a look through the posts to identify main issues, and address those in our shared Zoom session on Thursday, starting at 4 pm. Be there if you can.
  2. Zoom meetings: I have set up a Zoom link that has the password embedded, and all info you need to phone in.
    • All details can be found on our course Canvas site. We will use the same link for the rest of the semester.
    • You can join a Zoom session using a meeting ID and password, or a link.
    • If you don’t have reliable broadband at the time of the meeting: use the phone. You will only have audio, but you can catch up with the video later.
    • If you need some assistance, check out this page from the DLAs (I think they get the credit, but correct me if I’m wrong!)
  3. Signup sheet for drop-in tutorials (Gdrive link): This week: Wed. 1-2, Thu 11-12, Fri. 2-3
  4. At the end of each week, we can evaluate and fine-tune our approach to your learning.
  5. There will be an end of week reflection, with a focus on how you are adjusting to remote learning, and what works and what doesn’t. More details to follow.
  6. Final Project Pitch: Due Monday, March 23: Plan to submit the first step for the final project: pitch the basic idea, and give reasons why you are interested in this particular topic.
          • Get some ideas in these different areas: Topics we have already covered in class, topics in the Topics Portal tab, various suggestions from previous years of this class, and from the Textbook itself. Your topic does not have to be something we cover in class, but we have to be able to connect it to “cultural history of the strange”.
          • Dig a bit deeper than “dragons are cool” (they are, we agree)
          • What in the course so far has guided you to this topic?
          • What in the readings or the topics portal has sparked your curiosity?
          • Length: 300-500 words
          • Post on your site as a blog post, category HST107
          • Note: you are not yet locked in, but this indicates a general direction
  7. An updated timeline for the final project will follow tomorrow. We’ll make it work!

Course contents and tasks for week 9:

Please read the texts below. Then go to Canvas and post to the discussion by Wednesday, 7pm. Respond to two of your classmates’ posts by Thursday 2pm.

Zoom in to our meeting on Thursday, March 19, at 4pm. Please show up a few minutes early so we can start promptly. The meeting will be recorded and posted to Canvas in case circumstances prevent you from attending live. Details for the meeting can be found on the Canvas home page.

To read for the discussion on Canvas:

  • Secondary source:
    • Ledderose, Lothar von. “The Bureaucracy of Hell”. In Ten Thousand Things: Module and Mass Production in Chinese Art. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000. Print. The A.W. Mellon lectures in the fine arts, 1998. (PDF) [note: unfortunately I could not turn this into a searchable PDF at this moment]
  • Primary source:
    • “The Quest of Mulian, or The Great Maudgalyāyana Rescues his Mother from Hell”. In An Anthology of Translations: Classical Chinese Literature. Vol. 1: From Antiquity to the Tang Dynasty, edited by John Minford and Joseph S. M. Lau, 1088-1110. New York: Hong Kong: Columbia University Press; The Chinese University Press, 2000. (PDF)
  • Questions for focus: What did Buddhist hell look like? How could you end up there? How could you avoid going to hell? What does bureaucracy add to the terrors of hell? How was the view of the afterlife different from pre-Buddhist China? How do you think did that affect the behavior of the survivors?
  • Optional extra: Podcast “The Great Maudgalyayana”. Chinese Literature Podcast. https://chinachannel.org/2018/02/07/great-maudgalyayana/ with additional background information.
  • Slides (Gdrive link)
  • Recording of the Zoom session (machine captions not edited)
  • Whiteboard with tips and strategies for coping with remote learning and physical distancing.