KHID 3050 - “The Problem of China”: Research Pathways into the Contested Past

This course is as much about general historical research methods and challenges as it is about Chinese history itself. It is designed as a way of exploring problems in methodology for students studying all manner of cultures, places and periods around the world, including Europe; at the same time, it introduces students to issues and events peculiar to modern China since the 18th century. It does this all through the idea of the “problem”: together, we consider problems in historiography on China; problems in how to research (places like) China; and problems in Western understandings and perceptions of China. By the end of the course, students will be familiar with key events in Chinese history; classic studies of Chinese state and society; and recent trends in scholarship on China’s late imperial (early modern) and modern/contemporary periods up through the Maoist era. Overall, the course aims to strike a balance between providing an overview of the field of Chinese history and practical research methods for studying challenging, perhaps unfamiliar subjects.

Part I Problems of Historiography

Session 1: Introduction to the course: Periodization, Geography, Language, Foreign Encounters, Stubborn Stereotypes, and Schools of Historical Writing

Assigned reading: Paul Cohen, Introduction to the 2010 Reissue “Further Reflections on the China-Centered Approach to Chinese History,” in Discovering History in China: American Historical Writing on the Recent Chinese Past. New York: Columbia University Press, revised edition 2010 [original 1984].

Complementary reading: Zeng Yeying (ed.), Contemporary studies in modern Chinese history I. Li Wenzhong and Wu Jinshan (trans.) London: Routledge / China Social Sciences Press, 2021 (eBook).

Session 2: Sources on China’s Past

Assigned reading: Glenn D. Tiffert, “Peering down the Memory Hole: Censorship, Digitization, and the Fragility of Our Knowledge Base,” American Historical Review (Apr.

2019), 550-68.

Session 3: Shanghai or Peasant? Urban versus Rural Studies

Assigned reading: Myron L. Cohen, “Cultural and Political Inventions in Modern China: The Case of the Chinese ‘Peasant,’” Daedalus 22/2 (Spr., 1993), 151-170.

Session 4: A Civil Society in China?

Assigned reading: Henrietta Harrison, “Newspapers and Nationalism in Rural China, 1890-1929,” Past & Present (Feb. 2000), 181-204.

NOTE: there will be no class on Thursday February 26. We will hold our final 12th class instead in Week 13 (on Thursday April 30)

SEMESTER BREAK: one week off.

Part II Research (Method) Problems

Session 5: Quantitative Lenses: Skinner’s “Culture-Bearing Unit”

Assigned reading: G. William Skinner, “Marketing and Social Structure in Rural China, Part I” Journal of Asian Studies 24/1 (Nov. 1964), 3-43

& G. William Skinner, “Marketing and Social Structure in Rural China, Part II,” Journal of Asian Studies 24/2 (Feb. 1965), 195-228

& Henrietta Harrison, a short excerpt from chapter 2 “The Confucian Scholar” (pp. 45-46), in The Man Awakened from Dreams: One Man’s Life in a North China Village. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2005.

Session 6: Qualitative Lenses: Duara’s “Cultural Nexus of Power”

Assigned reading: Prasenjit Duara, Introduction and Chapter 1 “The Cultural Nexus of Power” (pp. 1-41), Culture, Power and the State: Rural North China, 1900-1942. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1988 & Feng Sizhi, open letter, Laifu bao (Taiyuan, Shanxi) October 10, 1921.

Session 7: Comparative Lenses: Pomeranz’s “Great Divergence”

Assigned reading: Kenneth Pomeranz, The Great Divergence: Europe, China, and the Making of the Modern World Economy. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000, 31-32, 56-68, 107, 206-07, 264-285.

Philip CC Huang, “Revisiting ‘the Great Divergence’: Clarifying the Two Major Modes of Agriculture in China and the West,” Modern China 49/5 (2023), 519-531.

Part III Trends in Chinese History

Session 8: “New Qing” History (+ issue of “Sinification”’ and ethnic studies)

Assigned reading: Mark C. Elliott, Preface and Introduction, xiii-35, in The Manchu Way: The Eight Banners and Ethnic Identity in Late Imperial China. Stanford: Stanford

University Press, 2001.

Complementary reading: Ding Yizhuang & Mark Elliott, “How to write Chinese history in the twenty-first century: the impact of the ‘New Qing History’ studies and Chinese responses,” Chinese Studies in History 51:1 (2018), 70-95.

Sessions 9: “Everyday Socialism” (+ Women’s / Gender history + Memory Studies)

Assigned reading: Gail Hershatter, “The Gender of Memory: Rural Chinese Women and the 1950s,” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 28/1 (2002), 43-70.

Complementary reading: Gail Hershatter, The Gender of Memory: Rural Women and China’s Collective Past. Berkeley: University of California, 2011 (eBook).

Session 10: Revisionist Histories of the Cultural Revolution

Assigned reading: Andrew Walder, “Rebellion and Repression in China, 1966-1971,” Social Science History 38 (Winter 2014).

Session 11: Environmental History

Assigned reading: Ruth Mostern, Chapter 4 “Levies and Levees: The Engineered River, 1351-1855,” (pp. 179-238), in The Yellow River: A Natural and Unnatural History. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2021, eBook.

Session 12: Conclusions: Researching the PRC and its Past Today

Class will serve as both 1) a crash-course in modern Chinese history and 2) an introduction to the major issues, schools of thought, methods, and trends in the field. The readings aim to capture the evolution of the field of Chinese history from the 1960s to the present largely through North American scholarship. The reason for this choice is that the lion’s share of English-language study of China has been by scholars, not necessarily American themselves, based in the United States (which is a fact that is worth discussing in itself). We will, though, touch on the development of Chinese history in the People’s Republic and here in Europe, too.

To validate the course, the student is expected to pass the following assignments (details on each will be given during the first class):

• one 1-page synopsis of one of the weekly secondary source readings (15%) This can be submitted on Moodle at any time in the semester up until the end of Monday of Wk13 (April 27) at midnight.
• one 5-to-7 minute oral introduction to a week’s main reading and the issues it presents (15%; this introduction roughly achieves the same points as the synopsis, but in oral form; it cannot be on the same reading you choose for the written synopsis);
• one 2,500-word final research paper submitted on Moodle before midnight on Thursday May 7 (70%). There is no need to submit anything in advance, but it is important that we discuss the topic you are choosing before you commit to it. There will be designated class time for this mid-semester.

NOTE: the use of Artificial Intelligence software (AI) such as ChatGPT does not qualify as research nor writing in this class and will not be credited as such.