The Chinese University of Hong Kong Department of History Department of History
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HIST7016PW 比較史特別專題:東亞近代史研究的理論與方法 (只適用於哲學博士課程學生)

Semester 2 (2021-2022)

Lecture TimeMonday 2:30pm - 5:15pm

VenueKHB 116

LanguagePutonghua

Lecturer POON Shuk Wah ((852) 3943 1757 / swpoon@cuhk.edu.hk)

Course Description

This course is conducted in the form of a small group seminar. It is designed for PhD and MPhil students who are interested in exploring the various theories and methods in the study of modern East Asian history. The geographical focus of the course will be on China and Japan. Students will engage in presentations, group discussion, and original research.

Syllabus

Week 1: Introduction (Jan. 10)

Week 2: Political Leader Biographies (Jan. 17)

  • Taylor, Jay. The Generalissimo: Chiang Kai-shek and the Struggle for Modern China (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2009).
  • Herbert, P. Bix. Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan (New York: Harper Perennial, 2016).

Week 3: Urban History (Jan. 24)

  • Esherick, Joseph W, eds. Remaking the Chinese City: Modernity and National Identity, 1900-1950 (University of Hawaii Press, 2000).
  • Fiévé, Nicolas and Paul Waley. Japanese Capitals in Historical Perspective: Place, Power and Memory in Kyoto, Edo and Tokyo (Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, Curzon 2003).

Week 4: Labor History (Feb. 7)

  • Perry, Elizabeth J. Shanghai on Strike: The Politics of Chinese Labor (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1993).
  • Gordon, Andrew. Labor and Imperial Democracy in Prewar Japan (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991).

Week 5: Labor and Gender (Feb. 14)

  • Honig, Emily. Sisters and Strangers: Women in the Shanghai Cotton Mills, 1919-1949 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1986).
  • Faison, Elyssa. Managing Women: Disciplining Labor in Modern Japan (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007).

Week 6: Term Paper Progress Reports (Feb. 21)

Week 7: Gender and the Body (Feb. 28)

  • Finnane, Antonia. Changing Clothes in China: Fashion, History, Nation (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008).
  • Frost, Dennis. Seeing Stars: Sports Celebrity, Identity, and Body Culture in Modern Japan (Cambridge, M.A.: Harvard University Asia Center Press, 2010).

Week 8: Cultural History: War and Culture (Mar. 7)

  • Hung, Chang-tai. War and Popular Culture: Resistance in Modern China, 1937-1945 (Berkeley, Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1994).
  • Dower, John W. War without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War (New York: Pantheon Books, 1986).

Week 9: Material Culture: Food and Identities (Mar. 14)

  • Swislocki, Mark S. Culinary Nostalgia: Regional Food Culture and the Urban Experience in Shanghai (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2009).
  • Cwiertka, Katarzyna. Modern Japanese Cuisine: Food, Power and National Identity (London: Reaktion Books Ltd, 2006).

Week 10: Asian Modernities (Mar. 21)

  • Klein, T. “How Modern was Chinese Modernity? Exploring Tensions of a Contested Master Narrative.” International Journal for History, Culture and Modernity, 2.3 (2014), 275–301.
  • Harootunian, Harry. Overcome by Modernity: History, Culture, and Community in Interwar Japan (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000).

Week 11: History of Everyday Life (Mar. 28)

  • Brown, Jeremy and Mathew D. Johnson eds., Maoism at the Grassroots: Everyday Life in China’s Era of High Socialism (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2015).
  • Garon, Sheldon. Molding Japanese Minds: The State in Everyday Life (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997).

Week 12: Term Paper Presentations (Apr. 4)

Week 13: Conclusion (Apr. 11)

Assessment & Assignments

· Participation and Discussion: 20%

· Presentation: 20%

· Term Paper: 60% (first draft: 10% [due Mar. 7] , final product: 50% [due Apr. 30])

Honesty in Academic Work

Attention is drawn to University policy and regulations on honesty in academic work, and to the disciplinary guidelines and procedures applicable to breaches of such policy and regulations. Details may be found at http://www.cuhk.edu.hk/policy/academichonesty/.

With each assignment, students will be required to submit a signed declaration that they are aware of these policies, regulations, guidelines and procedures.

  • In the case of group projects, all members of the group should be asked to sign the declaration, each of whom is responsible and liable to disciplinary actions, irrespective of whether he/she has signed the declaration and whether he/she has contributed, directly or indirectly, to the problematic contents.
  • For assignments in the form of a computer-generated document that is principally text-based and submitted via VeriGuide, the statement, in the form of a receipt, will be issued by the system upon students’ uploading of the soft copy of the assignment.

Assignments without the properly signed declaration will not be graded by teachers.

Only the final version of the assignment should be submitted via VeriGuide.

The submission of a piece of work, or a part of a piece of work, for more than one purpose (e.g. to satisfy the requirements in two different courses) without declaration to this effect shall be regarded as having committed undeclared multiple submissions. It is common and acceptable to reuse a turn of phrase or a sentence or two from one’s own work; but wholesale reuse is problematic. In any case, agreement from the course teacher(s) concerned should be obtained prior to the submission of the piece of work.

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