{"id":300,"date":"2007-09-19T18:43:51","date_gmt":"2007-09-19T23:43:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.froginawell.net\/china\/2007\/09\/teaching-qing-history\/"},"modified":"2014-08-30T13:40:00","modified_gmt":"2014-08-30T13:40:00","slug":"teaching-qing-history","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/froginawell.net\/frog\/2007\/09\/teaching-qing-history\/","title":{"rendered":"Teaching Qing History"},"content":{"rendered":"

In comments for the previous post Jonathan Dresner asked if Zelin’s new Merchants of Zigong <\/span>would be a good book for an undergraduate class on the Qing. I would think not, as it is only in hardback at present and it is fairly technical. The only actual monograph I could think of to recomend was Kuhn’s Soulstealers. <\/span>I would like to hear if anyone has any other suggestions. Here is what I think make a book something good to assign to a class<\/p>\n

-Price. Pretty much has to be in paperback.
\n-Fitting into the course properly.\u00a0 Can’t be too early or late in the semester or go to far outside the period.
\nHere Jonathan is messing things up, since his is a Qing class rather than a Late Imperial class or a Modern China class, and thus things like Brook’s Confusions of Pleasure<\/a> <\/span>are too early and the many books that go into the 20th century are too late and something like Cochran’s Chinese Medicine Men<\/a> <\/span>is both too late and not China-centered enough.<\/p>\n

-Length and Complexity
\nPeter Perdue’s China Marches West<\/span><\/a> might work in some respects, but it’s over 500 pages. Zelin’s book is good, but it is also rather complex and deals with a number of debates that I would have to\u00a0 introduce.<\/p>\n

-It has to balance with the other things I am doing in the class. Johnathan wanted something that was a bit more economic\/commercial history. So no Manchu books and no Perdue<\/p>\n

-It has to be a good book that the students can relate to on their own
\nPart of the reason I don’t really want to use something like Zelin, or Dunstan’s State or Merchant<\/span><\/a> is that I’m lazy and don’t want to do all the work to set it up. More importantly, I am convinced that most of my students will forget my lectures in month, my exams in a year, and my name in a decade. A good book that you read for class will stick with you for life, or at least that’s what I’ve found. I used Harrison’s Man Awakened From Dreams<\/a> in my Modern China class even though it is about a very odd man who does not fit into most of the narratives I want to talk about in the class, but it’s too good a read to pass up.<\/p>\n

The only real reccomendations I can come up with are all in hardback, reach out of the period or are too complex to work well on their own.<\/p>\n

Bello Opium and the Limits of Empire<\/a>
\n<\/em>Lin Man-Houng’s China Upside Down<\/span><\/a>
\nBrokaw’s Commerce of Culture<\/span><\/a>
\nI think Rowe’s Hankow<\/a> is out of print, as is Yen P’ing Hao’s Commerical Revolution in Nineteenth Century China<\/em><\/p>\n

Any suggestions? I’m afraid I’m being pretty worthless here.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In comments for the previous post Jonathan Dresner asked if Zelin’s new Merchants of Zigong would be a good book for an undergraduate class on the Qing. I would think not, as it is only in hardback at present and it is fairly technical. The only actual monograph I could think of to recomend was…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":25,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[100,165,153,163],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-300","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-china","category-qing","category-teaching"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9yoH3-4Q","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/froginawell.net\/frog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/300","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/froginawell.net\/frog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/froginawell.net\/frog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/froginawell.net\/frog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/25"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/froginawell.net\/frog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=300"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/froginawell.net\/frog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/300\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4924,"href":"https:\/\/froginawell.net\/frog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/300\/revisions\/4924"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/froginawell.net\/frog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=300"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/froginawell.net\/frog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=300"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/froginawell.net\/frog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=300"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}