The soldier-archeologist
Among other things, the Japanese empire was an empire of science. Conquest led to (or was proceeded by) masses of geographers, anthropologists, geologists etc. ...
Category: Posts
The Marie Kondo thing
I’ve been avoiding getting into the debate about Marie Kondo’s konmari brand of modernist orientalism, mostly because I’m not that interested,...
On the opening vignette as pedagogy
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 “...
Pedagogy In The Wild
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...
Syllabus blogging for Fall 2018
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...
Fame! and journalism
Don’t you hate it when a good bit of teaching material comes to your attention just a little too late? I hate it when that happens. In this case the probl...
Syllabus blogging for Spring 2018
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. ...
On “Buddhist Atrocities”
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...
End of an Era
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...
Teaching about lives
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...
Sidney Mintz
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...
Syllabus blogging
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 ...
The cult of Madame Chiang
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...
Frog in a Well enters the Five Dynasties phase
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...