History 498, Fall 2007
Messiahs, Thugs, Revolutionaries: Social Violence in Modern China
Prof. Dodgen
This seminar asks how violence in modern China was defined,
described, and justified. In other words, what ideological, social, economic,
judicial, political, romantic and other notions were used to shape, instigate,
explain, and direct violence, both from below and above? How were
narratives of violence constructed to suit the needs of both rebel and
government, criminal and legal authority, victim and perpetrator? Most
especially, we want to explore the ways that these narratives were embedded
in Chinese culture and constituted a shared lexicon of revolt and retribution
used by Chinese intellectuals and leaders to define, explain, and mobilize
violence.
The work of the class will be to read a series of assigned books and
discuss the issues they raise in explaining the history of violence in China.
Brief written summaries will be required for all assigned readings. After we
complete the readings assigned to the class as a whole, students will select
individual works from the attached reading list and prepare both a written
summary and an oral presentation explaining where the book fits into the
established discussion framed by the earlier readings. We will supplement
the readings with films and other media.
The final project for the course will be a research paper of no less than
25 pages, double-spaced and typed, paginated, with one-inch margins, in a
12-point font. Footnotes or endnotes must be in Chicago Manual of Style. No
separate bibliography is required. The paper topic must be approved by the
instructor and must be based on both secondary and primary sources. If you
begin research on a topic and find that no significant scholarship or primary
source material is available to support a paper, you should abandon that
topic and find another. Obviously this requires that you decide on a topic and
begin your research early in the semester.
Class Readings:
Jonathan Spence, The Death of Woman Wang
David Der-wei Wang, The Monster that is History
Joseph Esherick, The Origins of the Boxer Uprising
Robert van Gulik, Celebrated Cases of Judge Dee
Frederick Wakeman, Policing Shanghai
Lloyd Eastman, Family, Fields and Ancestors (recommended but not
required)
My office hours are Monday and Wednesday, 12:45-1:45, Thursday 121 by appointment. My office is 2066 Stevenson, extension 42462. You can also
contact me by e-mail at dodgen@sonoma.edu
Syllabus
Week 1:
8/23
Introduction and discussion.
Week 2:
8/30
Crime and Punishment in Imperial China
Readings: The Celebrated Cases of Judge Dee.
Week 3:
9/6
Crime and Punishment in Imperial China II
Readings: The Death of Woman Wang, parts 1 and 2.
Week 4:
9/13
Crime and Punishment in Imperial China II
The Death of Woman Wang, parts 3, 4 and 5.
Week 5:
9/20
Popular Culture and Popular Uprisings
Readings:
Collective Violence in China, 1880-1980. Elizabeth J. Perry.
Theory and Society, Vol. 13, No. 3, Special Issue on China (May, 1984),
pp. 427-454. Stable URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=03042421%28198405%2913%3A3%3C427%3ACVIC1%3E2.0.CO%3B2-N
Connections between Rebellions: Sect Family Networks in Qing
China. Susan Naquin. Modern China, Vol. 8, No. 3 (Jul., 1982), pp. 337360. Stable URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=00977004%28198207%298%3A3%3C337%3ACBRSFN%3E2.0.CO%3B2-X
Begin The Origins of the Boxer Uprising.
Week 6:
9/27
Nativism Collides with Imperialism
Complete The Origins of the Boxer Uprising. Discussion.
Week 7:
10/4
More Pugilism
Continue discussion of Boxers. See questions at:
http://www.sonoma.edu/users/d/dodgen/Assignments\Questions
%20for%20The%20Origins%20of%20the%20Boxer%20Uprising
%20pt%202.doc
Paper Topic and preliminary bibliography due.
Week 8:
Nation Making And Unmaking I
10/11
Readings: Policing Shanghai, sections 1-3.
http://www.sonoma.edu/users/d/dodgen/Assignments/Questions%20For%20Po
licing%20Shanghai%20I.doc
Book presentations.
Week 9:
10/18
Nation Making And Unmaking II
Readings: Policing Shanghai, sections 4-5.
Book presentations.
Week 10:
10/25
No class. Independent research.
Week 11:
11/1
Narrating Horror I
Readings: The Monster That is History, Introduction and
chapters 1, 2 and 3. Questions at:
http://www.sonoma.edu/users/d/dodgen/Assignments/Questions%20For
%20The%20Monster%20That%20is%20History.doc
Book presentations.
Week 12:
11/8
Narrating Horror II
Readings: The Monster That is History, chapters 4, 5 and 6.
Paper title, thesis and expanded bibliography due.
Book presentations.
Week 13:
11/15
Student Presentations.
Week 14:
11/22
Thanksgiving holiday. No class.
Week 15:
11/29
Student Presentations.
Week 16:
12/6
Student Presentations.
12/13
Final Papers due by 4:50 p.m.
Topics:
The following is a very partial list of subjects for which significant primary
source material is available at SSU.
--The Tiananmen Incident of 1989
--The Boxer Uprising
--The May Fourth Incident (and subsequent events)
--The Cultural Revolution
--The Nationalist Regime of 1926-1949
--The Taiping Rebellion
--The Ming-Qing dynastic transition
--Land reform and resistance
--Millenarian uprisings
--Post-Cultural Revolution China
--Taiwanese independence and resistance
Numerous other topics are available to the creative researcher. These include
law and crime, suicide, gangsters and gangs, gender and violence, etc. Your
readings should alert you to some of these possibilities. I will available to
discuss possible topics during office hours or in class.
A large component of your grade will be based on your ability to find and
utilize source materials to construct your paper.
In addition to these topics, a survey of works on modern Chinese
history such as texts, encyclopedias, bibliographies and the like will point you
to many other potential subjects.
Supplemental Reading List
(on reserve in the library)
Bodde, Derk and Clarence Morris. Law in Imperial China: exemplified by 190
Ch'ing Dynasty cases translated from the Hsing-an hui-lan. Cambridge,
Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1967.
Dingxin Zhao. The power of Tiananmen : state-society relations and the 1989
Beijing student movement. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001.
Eastman, Lloyd E. Title Seeds of destruction: Nationalist China in war and
revolution, 1937-1949. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1984.
Kuhn, Philip A. Rebellion and its enemies in late imperial China,
militarization and social structure, 1796-1864. Imprint Cambridge, Mass.,
Harvard University Press, 1970.
Lewis, Mark Edward, 1954. Sanctioned violence in early China. Albany: State
University of New York Press, c1990.
Naquin, Susan. Shantung rebellion: the Wang Lun uprising of 1774. New
Haven: Yale University Press, 1981.
Perry, Elizabeth J. Rebels and revolutionaries in north China, 1845-1945.
Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1980.
Prazniak, Roxann. Of camel kings and other things: rural rebels against
modernity in late imperial China. Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 1999.
Rowe, William T. Crimson rain: seven centuries of violence in a Chinese
county. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2007.
Selden, Mark. The Yenan Way in revolutionary China. Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 1971.
Spence, Jonathan D. God's Chinese son: the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom of
Hong Xiuquan. New York: W.W. Norton, 1996.
Tong, James. Disorder under heaven: collective violence in the Ming Dynasty.
Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1991.
Wakeman, Fredrick Jr. The Great Enterprise: the Manchu reconstruction of
imperial order in seventeenth-century China, two volumes. Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1985.
Xiao, Gongquan. Rural China: imperial control in the nineteenth century.
Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1960.
Zheng, Zhuyuan. Behind the Tiananmen Massacre: social, political, and
economic ferment in China. Boulder: Westview Press, 1990.
Zhu, Wenzhang. The Moslem rebellion in northwest China, 1862-1878: a
study of government minority policy. The Hague, Mouton, 1966.