Midterm

We managed to go over everything I thought was necessary for the midterm in discussion section so there are no extra notes that I need to post before the midterm.

Good luck on the test!

Material Covered on the Test

The midterm will not cover the material that will be covered on the lecture of Tuesday, February 27th (today). It's still important to come as that information is fair game for the final and there will probably be a bit of review by Professor Harlow. Thanks to all the students who brought this to my attention. This is a bit different practice than usual and because I was checking rough drafts of assignment 1 during lecture I missed the announcement.

Review Session and Correction

There has been some confusion about the review session which will be held today. Discussion sections (the ones that meet every week) will be held today as norma. The review session is an addition section which I will hold at 5pm Monday (today) and is completely optional. So please attend discussion as normal, and if you have time, please attend the review session.

Unfortunately we will have the review session and the Monday discussion sections before Tuesday's lecture. Therefore there might be some important points which I would like to review but which we will not have time to go over either in discussion section or in the review session. If there are such points I will try and post them by Wednesday morning.

I also found out I made a slight mistake that I wanted to correct. I had said that the Yuan (Mongol) invsasions took part during the Ashikaga shogunate and had weakened it seriously. I was wrong. The invasions took place during the Kamakura shogunate which weakened it helping lead to the rise of the Ashikaga shogunate. There is very little chance that this will be on the test, but I wanted to make sure to correct the wrong information I gave. My apologies.

Review Session and Misc News

I have reserved a room for the review session. The review session will be held on Monday the 26th from 5-6:30 pm in Buchanan B318.

The review session has a relatively simple structure. Basically, bring any questions you might have. Once I have answered any questions students have we will go through the topic notes page by page (so make sure to bring them!). I will make remarks on anything I think is important and will also answer any questions people might have on a particular page. This is rather boring but is a good way to make sure we cover as much as possible.

There is no reading guide for next week as no new material has been put up on the e-learning cite.

I am hoping that I will be able to return papers a the midterm exam. I will finish grading them before Thursday for certain. However, if there is a problem with the papers Professor Harlow might ask us to hold off returning them. Most likely though you will be able to pick up your papers after the test on Thursday.

Electronic dictionaries are not to be used at the test (a paper one is fine but you need to have a TA check it)

Good luck and have a good break!

Review Session

We will have our midterm the week after reading break. Therefore, I will hold an optional review session that week. I have to schedule a room and time. I will take a vote in my discussion sections on what is the most convenient time and day next week. I will do my best to get a room for those times, but there is no guarantee that I can actually follow the vote. There will be two options to vote for:

1) What time is better, 5pm or 7pm (the review session usually takes between an hour and a half to two hours)?

2) What day is better, Monday or Tuesday?

Remember, vote early and vote often!;)

Readings for Week 6

Kangxi (r 1662-1722) (reigned) consolidated, powerful
Sacred Edicts of the Kangxi Emperor, 1670
1) Why were the edicts read out loud to the people?
2) Why did the edicts have the seven character grammatical structure?
3) How would you characterize these edicts? What ideas unite them?
4) Why would the government issue such edicts?

Qienlong (r 1736-1795)
The Qianlong Emperor: Letter to George III, 1793
1) How did the Qianlong emperor view England? How does this compare to English self image?
2) Why doesn’t the Qianlong emperor grant the King of England’s requests?
3) What does this document say about Qianlong’s image of China and of China’s self image in general?
4) How did this isolationist attitude towards the Europeans hurt China?

Lin Zexu: Letter of Advice to Queen Victoria, 1839
1) What moral responsibilities do merchants have in Lin’s view?
2) What arguments does Lin use against the opium trade?
3) According to Lin, what happens if a ruler acts morally (pay especial attention to page
4) How have things changed since the Qianlong’s letter to King George III?

Supplemental Reading

317-320 (Taiping rebellion and some other information. If you want to read the whole chapter, you can go ahead, though we won’t deal with that material for a little while longer)

Citing the Articles in Assignment One

After talking to a student I realized I had explained how to cite the articles you are using in the bibliography but not how to cite them in the paper. I'll show you how in this blog entry. First, this is how you cite it in the bibliography:

Name of Paper, Address for paper’s Homepage, Article’s Title, Date of Article.

Here is an example
Daily Korean, www.dailykorean.com, Korea is Great, January 23, 2007.

When you cite it inside your paper (for example, when you are giving a quote or a summary) just write the title or in the case of a long title an abbreviation. For example, for the above article, you could just write (Korea is Great). It would look like this in the paper:

Korea is one of the most wired countries in the world. There are many pc rooms where one can play a variety of games for only 1,000 won an hour (Korea is Great).

If you have a really long article, for example an article that is titled "The Philippines is just a really Awesome Place!", in your bibliography you would need to cite it completely, but in your paper you could give an abbreviate form, saying something like "The Philippines is".

I hope this clears things up. I'm sorry about my omission. Email me if there are any questions.

Update on Assignment 1

I have had several questions about Assignment 1 in regards to the use of articles before January 21st 2007. Basically, as long as you have at least the three articles after January 21st 2007 from the same newspaper as your main sources you can also include articles (or other materials) from before that date to supplement them. So you could have articles from the same paper from the 22nd, 27th, and 28th of January 2007 as your main articles and then include an article from January 10th, 2007 to give more background information. I hope this makes sense. Let me know if you have any questions.