Course Introduction, day 1

Three goals:

1. Demonstrate fearless, independent thinking.
2. Trust and engage one another in community.
3. Adopt the mindset of a historian and a cosmopolitan. “The past,” as British novelist LP Hartley wrote, “is a foreign country. People do things differently there."

Student introduction

• Interview someone you don’t know. Ask:
  • What is your name, what does it mean and how did you get it?
  • What are you excited about in this course?
  • What are you nervous about in this course?
  • What’s a comfort food or culturally significant food for you? Why?
• Report back the answers to the group.

Teacher introduction.

Course introduction.

• Our content focus: China 500 BCE-1800 CE; 70% microhistory/30% macrohistory
• Our skills focus: research, analysis, and articulation (through discussion, writing, and website curation) of individual historical narrative. By analysis, we mean a focus on:
  • Geographical and historical context,
  • Sources (how do we know what we know?),
  • Markers of personal identity like gender and class, and
  • Reflection on how individuals are represented as carriers of tradition, figures in elite and popular literature, and mirrors for the present.

Initial discussion: “What does it mean to be Chinese?”