Fall 2008

HSTAS 551

Field Course in Chinese History to 1276

Instructor:

Patricia Ebrey

112A Smith, 685-1528

ebrey@u.washington.edu

Office hours: Tuesday, 3:00 to 4:00, or by appointment

The goal of this “field” course is to help you gain familiarity with the English-language scholarship on the Tang and Song periods, especially the scholarship since 1980. We begin by taking a look at three of the most important scholars active in the 1960s -1980s, and discuss the issues and approaches that engaged them and how those changed over time. Next we turn to subfields, in each case reading two or three articles together and hearing reports on a few of the books.

All of the articles for common reading are available through online reserves.

Assignments:

1. Bibliographical essay on a field of scholarship, either as broad as the topics in the syllabus, or somewhat narrower (such as economic history or intellectual history), but not too narrow (not studies of Zhu Xi or studies of Fujian). The topic must be approved in advance, if possible by the second week. The aim of the bibliographical essay is to assess the state of scholarship in the field, the dominant approaches or theoretical frameworks, the key issues, the most influential books or articles, and so on. DO NOT LIMIT YOURSELF TO THE BOOKS LISTED UNDER A TOPIC BELOW, BUT DEVELOP YOUR OWN READING LIST, INCLUDING ARTICLES AND POSSIBLY OLDER WORKS IF NEEDED TO UNDERSTAND MAJOR CONTROVERSIES. Bring copies of your reading list to distribute to the class on the week you make your oral presentation. Target length: 15-20 pages. Oral presentation of the main themes of the report in the appropriate week. Target length: 15 minutes.

2. Oral reviews of two books listed on the syllabus on different days, with no overlap with bibliographical essay (in other words, these two books reviews should force you to read outside your own main interest). Target length: 8-10 minutes. Prepare an outline to distribute in class. Look up at least one review of the book, and mention it in your report.

Grading: Participation in class discussions 25%

Two oral book reports 25%

Bibliographical essay 50%

Week 1 9/30 Introduction

Week 2 NEED TO RESCHEDULE 10/7 Founders of the field: Denis Twitchett

BRING CHOICES FOR ORAL BOOK REVIEWS AND BIBLIOGRAPHICAL ESSAY

“Chinese Social History from the Seventh to the Tenth Centuries: The Tunhuang Documents and Their Implications.” Past and Present 35 (1966): 28-53.

“The Composition of the Tang Ruling Class.” In Arthur F. Wright and Denis C. Twitchett, ed. Perspectives on the T’ang. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1973.

“Population and Pestilence in T’ang China.” In Studia Sino-Mongolica: Festscrift fur Herbert Franke. Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1979.

Week 3 10/14 Founders of the field: James Liu 劉子健

“Eleventh-Century Chinese Bureaucrats: Some Historical Classifications and Behavioral Types.” Administrative Science Quarterly 4.2 (1959): 207-26.

“Yüeh Fei (1107-1141) and China's Image of Loyalty.” Journal of Asian Studies 30.2 (1972): 291-97.

“Polo and Cultural Change: From T'ang to Sung China.” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 45.1 (1985): 203-24.

Week 4 10/21 Founders of the field: Robert Hartwell

“A Revolution in the Chinese Iron and Coal Industries During the Northern Sung, 960-1127.” Journal of Asian Studies 21.2(1961-1962): 153-62.

“Historical Analogism, Public Policy, and Social Science in Eleventh- and Twelfth-Century China, 750-1350.” The American Historical Review 76 (1971): 690-727.

“Demographic, Political, and Social Transformations of China, 750-1550.” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 42.2 (1982): 365-442.

Recommended: Luo Yinan, “A Study of the Changes in the ‘Tang-Song Transition Model.’” Journal of Song-Yuan Studies 35 (2005):99-127.

Week 5 10/28 Religion and Ritual

Common reading:

Levering, Miriam. 1999. “Miao-tao and Her Teacher Ta-hui.” In Peter N. Gregory, and Daniel A. Getz, ed., Buddhism in the Sung. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.

Teiser, Stephen F. 1993. “The Growth of Purgatory,” in Patricia Buckley Ebrey and Peter Gregory, ed. Religion and Society in T’ang and Sung China. University of Hawaii Press. 115-45.

Books

Weinstein, Stanley. 1987. Buddhism Under the T’ang. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Teiser, Stephen F. 1988. The Ghost Festival in Medieval China. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Hansen, Valerie. 1990. Changing Gods in Medieval China, 1127-1276. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Ebrey, Patricia Buckley, and Peter Gregory , ed. 1993. Religion and Society in T’ang and Sung China.. University of Hawaii Press.

Dudbridge, Glen. 1995. Religious Experience and Lay Society in T’ang China: A reading of Tai Fu’s Kuang-I chi. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Gernet, Jacques. 1995. Buddhism in Chinese Society: An Economic History from the Fifth to the Tenth Centuries. Trans. Franciscus Verellen. New York: Columbia University Press.

Kieschnick, John. 1997. The Eminent Monk: Buddhist Ideals in Medieval Chinese Historiography. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.

Gregory, Peter N. and Daniel A. Getz. 1999. Buddhism in the Sung. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.

Davis, Edward L. 2001. Society and the Supernatural in Song China. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.

Hymes, Robert. 2002. Way and Byway: Taoism, Local Religion, and Models of Divinity in Sung and Modern China. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Kieschnick, John. 2003. The Impact of Buddhism on Chinese Material Culture. Princeton: Princeton University Press

Von Glahn, Richard. 2004. The Sinister Way: The Divine and the Demonic in Chinese Religious Culture. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Ning Qiang. 2004. Art, Religion & Politics in Medieval China: The Dunhuang Cave of the Zhai Family. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.

Week 6 11/4 Intellectual and cultural history; the intersection of literature and history

Common reading:

Owen, Stephen. 1986. “The Snares of Memory,” in Remembrances: The Experience of the Past in Classical Chinese Literature. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Pp. 80-98.

Peter K. Bol. 1993. “Government, Society, and State: On the Political Visions of Ssu-ma Kuang and Wang An-shih.” In Ordering the World:Approaches to State and Society in Sung Dynasty China, ed. Robert P. Hymes and Conrad Schirokauer. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Books

Hartman, Charles. 1986. Han Yu and the T’ang Search for Unity. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

McMullen, David L. 1988. State and Scholars in T'ang China. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

De Bary, Wm. Theodore and John Chaffee, eds. 1989. Neo-Confucian Education: The Formative Stage. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Bol, Peter K. 1992. "This Culture of Ours": Intellectual Transitions in T'ang and Sung China. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

Chen, Jo-shui. 1992. Liu Tsung-yuan and Intellectual Change in T’ang China, 773-819. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Tillman, Hoyt Cleveland. 1992. Confucian Discourse and Chu Hsi’s Ascendancy. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.

Barrett, T. H. 1992. Li Ao: Buddhist, Taoist, or Neo-Confucian?. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Egan, Ronald C. 1994. Word, Image, and Deed in the Life of Su Shi. Council on East Asian Studies, Harvard University.

Owen, Stephen. 1996. The End of the Chinese ‘Middle Ages.’ Stanford: Stanford University Press.

Wyatt, Don J. 1996. The Recluse of Loyang: Shao Yung and the Moral Evolution of Early Sung Thought.

Walton, Linda A. 1999. Academies and Society in Southern Sung China. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.

DeBlasi, Anthony. 2002. Reform in the Balance: The Defense of Literary Culture in Mid-Tang China. Albany: SUNY Press.

Lee, Thomas H.C., ed. 2004. The New and the Multiple: Sung Sense of the Past. Hong Kong: Chinese University of Hong Kong Press.

Patricia Buckley Ebrey and Maggie Bickford, eds. 2006. Emperor Huizong and Late Northern Song China: The Politics of Culture and the Culture of Politics. Cambridge: Harvard Asia Center.

De Weerdt, Hilde. 2007. Competition Over Content: Negotiating Standards for the Civil Service Examinations in Imperial China (1127-1279). Cambridge: Harvard Asia Center.

Week 7 11/8 University holiday—no class

Week 8 11/18 Political, institutional, diplomatic, and military history

Common reading:

Hartman, Charles. 1990. "Poetry and Politics in 1079: The Crow Terrace Poetry Case of Su Shih." CLEAR 12:15-44.

Smith, Paul Jakov. 2006. “Shuihu zhuan and the Military Subculture of the Northern Song, 960-1127,” HJAS 66.2: 363-422.

Books:

Twitchett, Denis. 1979. The Cambridge History of China, vol. 3 Sui and T’ang China, 598-906, Part 1. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Morris Rossabi, ed. 1983. China Among Equals: The Middle Kingdom and Its Neighbors, 10th-14th Centuries. ed. Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press.

Wechsler, Howard. 1985. Offerings of Jade and Silk. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Lo, Winston. 1987. An Introduction to the Civil Service of Sung China, with an Emphasis on Its Personnel Administration. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.

Tao, Jing-shen. 1988. Two Sons of Heaven: Studies in Sung-Liao Relations. Tucson: University of Arizona Press.

Smith, Paul. 1991. Taxing Heaven's Storehouse: Bureaucratic Entrepreneurship and the Sichuan Tea and Horse Trade, 1074-1224. Cambridge, Mass.: Council on East Asian Studies, Harvard University.

Brian McKnight. 1992. Law and Order in Sung China. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Twitchett, Denis. 1992. The Writing of Official History Under the T’ang. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Franke, Herbert, and Denis Twitchett, ed. 1994. The Cambridge History of China, Vol. 6, Alien Regimes and Border States, 907-1368. Cambridge, Eng.: Cambridge University Press.

Davis, Richard L. 1996. Wind Against the Mountain: The Crisis of Politics and Culture in Thirteenth-Century China. Cambridge: Harvard Council on East Asian Studies.

Chaffee, John W. 1999. Branches of Heaven: A History of the Imperial Clan of Sung China. Cambridge: Harvard University Asia Center.

Graf, David A. 2002. Medieval Chinese Warfare, 300-900. London: Routledge.

Wang Zhenping. 2005. Ambassadors from the Islands of Immortals: China-Japan Relations in the Han-Tang Period. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.

Standen, Naomi. 2007. Unbounded Loyalty: Frontier Crossing in Liao China. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.

Week 9 11/25 Social History: Elite studies, family, gender

Common reading:

Hymes, Robert P. 1986. “Marriage, Descent Groups, and the Localist Strategy in Sung and Yuan Fu-chou,” in Patricia Buckley Ebrey and James L. Watson, eds., Kinship Organization in Late Imperial China 1000-1940. Berkeley: University of California Press. Pp. 95-136.

Jen-der Lee. 2003. “Gender and Medicine in Tang China.” Asia Major Third Series 16.2:1-32.

Books:

Chung, Priscilla Ching. 1981. Palace Women in the Northern Sung 960-1126). Leiden: E. J. Brill.

Ebrey, Patricia Buckley. 1984b. Family and Property in Sung China: Yüan Ts’ai’s Precepts for Social Life. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Chaffee, John W. 1985. The Thorny Gates of Learning in Sung China: A Social History of Examinations. Cambridge University Press.

Hymes, Robert P. 1986. Statesmen and Gentlemen: The Elite of Fu-chou, Chiang-hsi, in Northern and Southern Sung. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press.

Davis, Richard L. 1986. Court and Family in Sung China, 960-1279: Bureaucratic Success and Kinship Fortunes for the Shih of Ming-chou. Durham: Duke University Press.

Herbert, P.A. 1988. Examine the Honest, Appraise the Able. Canberra: Australian National University Faculty of Asian Studies.

Ebrey, Patricia Buckley. 1991. Confucianism and Family Rituals in Imperial China: A Social History of Writing About Rites. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Hymes, Robert and Conrad Schirokauer, eds.1993. Ordering the World: Approaches to State and Society in Sung Dynasty China. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Ebrey, Patricia Buckley. 1993. The Inner Quarters: Marriage and the Lives of Chinese Women in the Sung Period. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Bossler, Beverly J. 1998. Powerful Relations: Kinship, Status, and the State in Sung China (960-1279). Cambridge: Harvard Council on East Asian Studies.

Tung, Jowen R. 2000. Fables for the Patriarchs: Gender Politics in Tang Discourse. Lantham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield.

Birge, Bettine. 2002. Women, Property, and Confucian Reaction in Sung and Yuan China (960-1368). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Ebrey, Patricia Buckley. 2002. Women and the Family in Chinese History. London: Routledge.

Week 10 12/2 Attention to place// long term perspectives --Bibliographical essay due

Common reading:

Shiba Yoshinobu. 1975. “Urbanization and the Development of Markets in the Lower Yangtze Valley.” In Crisis and Prosperity in Sung China, ed. John Haeger. Tuscon: University of Arizona Press.

John W. Dardess, “Did the Mongols Matter? Territory, Power, and the Intelligentsia in China from the Northern Song to the Early Ming,” in The Song-Yuan-Ming Transition in Chinese History, ed. Paul Jakov Smith and Richard von Glahn. Harvard Asia Center, 2003.

Books:

Von Glahn, Richard. 1987. The Country of Streams and Grottoes: Expansion, Settlement, and the Civilizing of the Sichuan Frontier in Song times. Harvard East Asian Monographs, 123. Cambridge, Mass.: Council on East Asian Studies, Harvard University.

Clark, Hugh R. 1991. Community, Trade, and Networks: Southern Fujian Province from the Third to the Thirteenth Century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Xiong, Victor Cunrui. 2000. Sui-Tang Chang’an: A Study in the Urban History of Medieval China. Ann Arbor: U. of Michigan Center for Chinese Studies.

So, Billy K. L. 2000. Prosperity, Region, and Institutions in Maritime China: The South Fukien Pattern, 946-1368. Cambridge: Harvard University Asia Center.

Sen, Tansen. 2003. Buddhism, Diplomacy and Trade: The Realignment of Sino-Indian Relations, 600-1400. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.

Smith, Paul Jakov and Richard von Glahn, eds. 2003. The Song-Yuan-Ming Transition in Chinese History, Harvard Asia Center, 2003.

Clark, Paul R. 2007. Portrait of a Community: Society, Culture, and the Structures of Kinship in the Mulan Valley (Fujian) from the Late Tang through the Song. Hong Kong: Chinese University Press.

Gerritsen, Anne. 2007. Ji’an Literati and the Local in Song-Yuan-Ming China. Leiden: Brill.