Teaching in the age of AI -Phantom readings
So, partially because other people are talking about it, and partly because I need to figure out how to deal with AI for next semester. Specifically, I am teach...
Author: Alan Baumler
Teaching Cao Cao
This semester I am teaching HIST 332 Early China, which goes from Anyang to the Tang.1 One problem with this class is where and how to break it in half. The Sha...
Comparative textbookolgy
One assignment that worked well in this semester’s World History II midterm was having them write comparisons of textbook chapters. The prompt. For this s...
Ignorance is Strength: Or, teaching Laozi in Utah
Utah has apparently become the first state to mandate the Ethics and Public Policy Foundation (EPPF) model legislation on General Education. This will be rolled...
I Wanna be Bob Dylan
A fun book to draw from when teaching modern Japan is Soeda Azembo and Michael Lewis, A Life Adrift: Soeda Azembo, Popular Song and Modern Mass Culture in Japan...
Testing to the teach
Below is the mid-term for my Modern Japan class. You can see the syllabus here. I wanted to think about this a bit, because I am trying to do several things wit...
Yellow Peril!
For those of you who don’t follow American politics, the immigrant scourge is back. This time it is Haitian immigrants eating your pets which has gone fro...
Syllabus Blogging Fall 2024
As is the tradition here, I am posting my syllabi so people can make suggestions, although I m doing so too late to take much advantage of your helpful advice....
Tang cooking
Via Sinologists list, a Chinese news item on a Tang tomb in Taiyuan There is a nice scene of food prep, so if, for teaching purposes, you need a picture of a wo...
Teaching from the test -Chat GPT edition
One thing that I did in my final exam for Rice Paddies this Spring was to ask them to compare how how Wikipedia and Chat GPT did at explaining terms that in the...
Air Policing on Taiwan
“Air policing” was a term the British seem to have come up with after the Great War. Although using the new technology to keep the natives down star...
The perfect wife
Three things to use in class Epitaph for Mme Ren, titled Lady of Virtue (shuren) The Honorable Bao Deming, the Assistant Regional Military Commander for my prov...
How much is that goose in the window?
Another book I got for the holidays is Tim Brook. The Price of Collapse: The Little Ice Age and the Fall of Ming China. Princeton, 2023. Oddly enough, I read t...
Obscene mystery solved! (Sort of)
At long last an issue is solved! Did an engraver creating banknotes for a Japanese puppet bank in the 1940s slip in a picture of Confucius making an obscene ges...