Category: Posts

A passage I wrote for one of my online course discussion boards: One of my pet peeves about textbook, history, and journalistic writing is the use of the “...

In a thoughtful discussion of teaching at USIH, I commented In addition to all the other qualifications and tensions around teaching, there are gaps between dis...

So, as is our tradition, a bit about what I will be doing in my classes in the Fall. As is also tradition, I am doing this way too late to incorporate any of yo...

This is way too early for me, but I thought I would procrastinate on grading a bit by thinking about what I will be doing in Spring and asking for some advice. ...

One of the odd substrains of commentary on the ongoing Rohingya genocide in Myanmar is Americans (mostly, as near as I can tell) shocked that a Buddhist society...

On this date, April 25, in 1644 the Chongzhen Emperor, last ruler of the Ming Dynasty hung himself from a tree on Meishan in Beiijng, bringing an end to Ming (a...

Since James Joshua Hudson brought it up on Facebook, I thought I would say something about teaching with Robert Bickers’ Empire Made Me: An Englishman Adrift in...

Not that I have much to say about it, but if you are interested in the history of commodities or consumption or of the links between anthropology and history th...

As is something of a tradition here, I am asking for help with my classes. This one is HIST 206 History of East Asia, (i.e. Rice Paddies.) This has not changed ...

Chiang Kai-shek used his wife Soong Mei-ling, as an important part of his attempts to reach out to the Americans and encourage them to see China as a modern nat...

This blog is currently going through a Tang-Song transition sort of thing: a somewhat confusing period of change from which it emerges better than ever…ma...