Spring 2001                                                                                                             Lisa Trivedi (KJ 164; ext. 4413)

Class time: T 1-4 pm                                                                                                   Office Hours: MW 1:30-2:30

Room: Library 209                                                                                       Thomas A. Wilson (KJ 122; ext. 4236)

Office Hours: MR 3:00-4:00

·      Books for purchase

Marco Polo, The Travels of Marco Polo (campus bookstore)

Jonathan Spence, The Chan’s Great Continent (campus bookstore)

Marguerite Duras, The North China Lover (campus bookstore)

Edward Said, Orientalism (not at campus bookstore)

 

This course examines encounters between Asian and Western peoples from Marco Polo to the present. Focuses on tensions among economic, cultural, and religious aims of Iberian expansion in the East Indies and the Philippines, rising Dutch competition for these territories, and later English and French imperial expansion into southeast and east Asia. Some themes of the course include problems of orientalism/occidentalism and the myth of the Western “impact” on Asia by learning about how Asian peoples understood the West and also about the ways that Europe, too, was affected by these encounters. Thus we are not concerned about how (or whether) the West influenced Asian countries in these encounters, but rather the nature of these contacts and how peoples of different cultures understood those of others.

Grading

Your course grade will be calculated as follows:

Class participation      20%                                                     5 Precis           30%

Class facilitation         20%                                                     Final essay      30%

The Rules

Class attendance is not optional.  You may miss up to two classes without penalty, but we will lower your final grade by 1/3 a grade level for each additional class that you miss.  We expect that your written work will be completed on time and according to the directions specified in the assignment.  A late paper will be marked down 1/3 a grade for each day that it is late.  If you are experiencing any difficulty with your coursework, we urge you to speak with one of us immediately.  It is your responsibility to speak to us about any problems that you are having prior to the deadline; we do not grant extensions on the day of a deadline.  In order to earn a passing grade in this course, you must complete four precis, a final research paper, and facilitate class discussion twice during the term.

Précis

You will be writing five précis over the course of the semester.  Each précis should be no more than two pages, double-spaced.  Précis should be emailed to each of us as an attachment by 11 AM on the day the material is under discussion.  Each student will write a précis on 1) a primary source and corresponding article (e.g., 1/23, 2/13, 2/20); 2) Vicente Rafael and Roger Hart; 3) on Edward Said and Robert Young 3/6; and 4) on the film “The Lover” and Duras’ The North China Lover (3/27).  For the fifth précis, you may choose to write on hybritity (e.g., 2/27), racialization (e.g., 3/27) or conversion (e.g., 2/6, 4/3, 4/24).

Class Facilitation

Each student will be required to facilitate class discussion on two occasions over the course of the semester.  Working in teams, students will develop a concrete set of questions that are designed to open up discussion of the week’s readings.  Each pair will meet with either Professor Wilson or Professor Trivedi on the Monday preceding the discussion to plan for the session.

Final essay

Your final assignment is a 12-17 page essay which examines a primary source within a theoretical framework raised in the course.  For example, you might choose to analyze a 19th century missionary description of a Chinese social custom within the context of cultural encounter as considered in the course.   Research proposals are due March 2nd at 3PM.  Please consult the syllabus below for proposal details.  All final essays are due at 4PM on May 4th.

Class Schedule

1. European Explorations and Missions 1/16

Film:  “Aguirre, The Wrath of God” (Germany, 1972), 94 mins. Dir. Werner Herzog

Stephen Minta, “Aguirre, The Wrath of God,” Past Imperfect: History According to the Movies, ed. Mark C. Carnes, 74-77

Clifford Geertz, “Common Sense as a Cultural System,” Local Knowledge, 73-93,

2. Marco Polo and the Silk Route 1/23

Marco Polo, The Travels, 33-73, 108-162, 260-281, 288-294

Jonathan Spence, “The Worlds of Marco Polo,” The Chan’s Great Continent, 1-18

3. Before European Colonialism 1/30

Janet Abu-Lughod, Before European Hegemony, 3-38; 292-348

Edward Said, Orientalism, 1-73

Charles Ralph Boxer, The Dutch Seaborne Empire, 1600-1800, 1-30

Film:   “Edward Said” 39 min.

Precis due at 11AM

Supplementary readings:

Hugh Clark, “Muslims and Hindus in the Culture and Morphology of Quanzhou from the 10th to the 13th Centuries,” Journal of World History 6 (1995) 1: 49-74

Louise Levathes, When China Ruled the Seas, 19-85

4. Conversion Encounters 2/6

Vincente Rafael, Contracting Colonialism, xvii-54

Roger Hart, “Translating Worlds: Incommensurability and Problems of Existence in Seventeenth-Century China,” positions: East Asian Critique 7 (Spring 1999) 1

Film: “The Mission” (U.S. 1986), 121 min. Dir. Roland Joffe

Precis due at 11AM

5. European Imaginings of the Orient 2/13

Timothy Billings, “Visible Cities: The Heterotopic Utopia of China in Early Modern European Writing,” Genre 30 (1997): 107-136

Ricci, China in the Sixteenth Century: The Journals of Matthew Ricci: 1583-1610, 3-114

David Mungello, “Ricci’s Formulation of Jesuit Accommodation in China,” Curious Land, 44-73

Jonathan Spence, “The Catholic Century,” The Chan’s Great Continent, 19-40

Supplementary readings:

C.R. Boxer, The Christian Century in Japan, 1549-1650, 41-90

6. Missions to India 2/20

Ines G. Zupanov, “Aristocratic Analogies and Demotic Descriptions in the Seventeenth-Century Madurai Mission,” Representations 41 (Winter 1993): 123-48 (available on J-Store)

St. François Xavier, selections to be announced

7. Hybrid Identities  2/27

Dean Mahomet, The Travels of Dean Mahomet, selections

Homi K. Bhabha, “Signs Taken For Wonders: Questions of ambivalence and authority under a tree outside Delhi, May 1817,” Critical Inquiry (1985), J

Robert Young, “The Ambivalence of Bhabha,” White Mythologies: Writings History and the West, 141-156

Supplementary readings:

Homi K. Bhabha, “DissemiNation: time, narrative, the margins of the modern nation,” Nation and Narration, 291-322

Robert Young, “Hybridity and Diaspora,” Colonial Desire, 1-29

March 2 Research Proposals due by 3PM

Your proposal must include a thesis statement, a paper outline, a detailed bibliography (including list of interlibrary loan requests that you have submitted before the Spring Recess).  Please email your proposals to each of us as attachments.

8. Orientalism 3/6

Edward Said, Orientalism, 201-225

Robert Young, “Disorienting Orientalism,” White Mythologies: Writings History and the West, 119-140

primary sources on footbinding and sati

Supplementary readings:

Emily Apter, “Harem: Colonial Fiction and Architectural Fantasm in Turn-of-the-Century France,” Places Through the Body, 119-132

Picturing the Middle East: A Hundred Years of European Orientalism, 53-79

Lata Mani, “Contentious Traditions: the Debate over Sati in Colonial India,” Recasting Women, 88-126

Dorothy Ko, “The Body as Attire: The Shifting Meanings of Footbinding in Seventeenth-Century China,” The Journal of Women's History 8 (Winter, 1997) 4: 8-27

9. Racialization & Nineteenth-Century European Colonialism 3/27

Ann Stoler, “Sexual Affronts and Racial Frontiers: European Identities and the Cultural Politics of Exclusion in Colonial Southeast Asia,” Becoming National, 286-324

Marguerite Duras, The North China Lover

Film: “The Lover” (France 1991) 113 mins. Dir. Jean-Jacques Annaud

Precis due at 11AM

Supplementary readings:

Ann Stoler, “’In Cold Blood’: Hierarchies of Credibility and the Politics of Colonial Narratives,” Representations (Winter 1992), 151-189

Michael Banton, “The Classification of Races in Europe and North America, 1700-1850,” International Social Science Journal (Feb. 1987), 45-60

**Meeting with Professor(s) to discuss final essays**

10. Cultural Passages 4/3

Uma Chakravarti, Rewriting History: The Life and Times of Pandita Ramabai, selections

Gauri Viswanathan, Outside the Fold, 75-152 and 176-207

Film: “Passage to India” (Eng., 1984), 163 mins. Dir. David Lean. Based on E. M. Forster’s novel

11. Nineteenth-Century Protestants and Colonialism 4/10

Karl Friedrich August Gutzlaff (1803-1851), The Journals of Two Voyages along the Coast of China in 1831 & 1832, 1-124

Frances FitzGerald, “Apocalypse Now,” Past Imperfect: History According to the Movies, ed. Mark C. Carnes (Henry Holt, 1995), 284-287

Johannese Fabian, “Religious and Secular Colonization,” Time and the Work of Anthropology, 155-169

Film: “Apocalypse Now” (US, 1979), 153 mins. Dir. Francis Ford Coppola. (Adaptation of Conrad’s Heart of Darkness)

Supplementary readings:

Andrew Porter, “Religion and Empire: British Expansion in the Long 19th Century, 1780-1914,” Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 20 (Sept. 1992) 3: 370-90

James Hevia, “Leaving a Brand on China, Missionary Discourse in the Wake of the Boxer Movement,” Modern China 18 (1992): 304-332

Otis Cary, A History of Christianity in Japan (New York: F. H. Revell, 1909), 13-241

Toyohiko Kagawa (1888-1960), Christ and Japan (New York, Friendship Press, 1934)

12. Finding God in China 4/17

William Jones Boone, An Essay on the Proper Rendering of the Words Elohim and Theos into the Chinese Language (Canton: Office of the Chinese Repository, 1848)

James Legge, The Notions of the Chinese concerning Gods and Spirits: with an Examination and Defense of An Essay on the Proper Rendering of the Words Elohim and Theos into the Chinese Language, by William J. Boone, D.D (Hongkong: Hongkong Register, 1852)

Lauren Psister, “Discovering Monotheistic Metaphysics: The Exegetical Reflections of James Legge (1815-1897) and Lo Chung-fan (d. circa. 1850),” Imagining Boundaries: Changing Confucian Doctrines, Texts, and Hermeneutics, Kai-wing Chow, et. al., ed.

Supplementary readings:

Murray Rubinstein, The Origins of the Anglo-American Missionary Enterprise in China, 1807-1840 (Scarecrow, 1996)

13. Radical Converts 4/24

“The Taiping Heavenly Chronicle,” The Taiping Rebellion 2: 51-79

Jonathan Spence, God’s Chinese Son: The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom of Hong Xiuquan

14. Hollywood Views of Colonial Encounters 5/1

David Palumbo-Liu, “The Bitter Tea of Frank Capra,” positions 3 (1995) 3: 759-789

“The Bitter Tea of General Yen,” dir. Frank Capra (Columbia Films, 1933)