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Whether, Whither, and How? A Consideration of the Role of Advanced Courses in Asian History at the Undergraduate Level

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 March 2011

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Extract

With rare exceptions, Asian historians in the United States are practicing teachers. Through grim necessity, many of us teach courses in fields other than Asia. Most of us teach survey courses in Asian history, usually to large enrollments. Some of us teach advanced undergraduate courses, usually to smaller enrollments.

As researchers, we are a highly trained and professionally self-conscious group; but as teachers? When did we last examine carefully our own aims and methods? When did we last examine carefully a colleague's syllabus? When did we last alter drastically our own syllabuses? The following essay is an attempt to stimulate discussion of the role of advanced courses in Asian history at the undergraduate level.

Type
Opinion
Copyright
Copyright © The Association for Asian Studies, Inc. 1978

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References

1 Bury, J. B., Introduction, in Gibbon, Edward, Autobiography of Edward Gibbon, As Originally Edited by Lord Sheffield (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1907), xivGoogle Scholar; quoted in Hanke, Lewis, “A Proposal for an Oral History Project—For Historians,” mimeo, July, 1977, p. 1.Google Scholar

2 Levenson, Joseph R., “The Humanistic Disciplines: Will Sinology Do?JAS, 23, No. 4 (1964), 507.CrossRefGoogle Scholar The other participants are Wright, Mary C., Skinner, G. William, Freedman, Maurice, Mote, Frederick W., Murphey, Rhoads, and Schwartz, Benjamin, Denis Twitchett and Kung-chuan Hsiao add their thoughts in JAS, 24, No. 1 (1964).Google Scholar

3 Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1963.

4 Pfeffer, Richard M., ed., No More Vietnam? (New York: Harper Colophon, 1968), p. 7.Google Scholar

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6 Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1950.

7 The United States and Japan, p. 52. Reischauer deleted this passage from later editions of the book. However, the tactical excision of one particularly undiplomatic passage does not change the tone of the whole; and the image is indicative of Reischauer's true frame of mind: Japan and the Japanese are of interest to us less intrinsically than instrumentally, as the materials out of which “we and our international associates” are attempting to create “a peaceful and democratic world.”

8 Marx, Leo, New York Times Book Review Section, 26 March 1978, p. 22.Google Scholar

9 Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1948.

10 New York: Institute of Pacific Relations, 1940.

11 Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1961.

12 Akita, George, “An Examination of E.H. Norman's Scholarship,” Journal of Japanese Studies, 3, No. 2 (1977), 375419.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Also useful is Dower, John W., “E.H. Norman, Japan and the Uses of History,” in Origins of the Modem Japanese State: Selected Writings of E.H. Norman, ed. Dower, John W. (New York: Pantheon, 1975).Google Scholar

13 New York: Signet, 1970.

14 Cf. Ševčenko, Ihor,“Two Varieties of Historical Writing,” History and Theory: Studies in the Philosophy of History, 8, No. 3 (1969), 341CrossRefGoogle Scholar: “At best, he [the vivid historian, whom Sevcenko contrasts with the technical historian] speaks of human nature as a wise man…. He has to give answers which are above his head, because the public for which he writes is most interested in them.”

15 Muggeridge, Malcolm, “25 Propositions at a 75th Birthday,” New York Times, 24 April 1978, p. A23.Google Scholar