Week 5 (Sept. 27 – Oct. 3)

Table of contents

To-do and Weekly Schedule

Reminders

  1. The syllabus remains open throughout the semester for comments. Use Hypothes.is group teaglobalhistory to leave comments and suggestions for improvement.
  2. Remember we have a “best-before” dates system, so if you skipped tasks or were swamped with course work, you can catch up: Did you comment on the “history of tea” post from your fellow students? And did you write your Sunday post (Classic of Tea or the tea tastings)?
  3. If not, catch up, or share with me why you feel that particular task is not productive for your development as a writer, and we can look for something that better helps you develop your writing skills.
  4. Plan ahead: Get your Garden Hours in (generally Saturdays: 12-2, more options during the week may come soon), and if you attend events for the campus community (e.g. from Center for Ethics, etc), or performances on campus: write your event responses.

By Monday, 11:59PM

Peer feedback

Keep up the great work with comments, questions, suggestions for improvement etc. in the Hypothes.is comments. Remember to set the widget to the group teaglobalhistory, rather than “Public”!

This week the feedback is mostly on the Tang period tea poems, but there may be the odd earlier one, as students are sometimes catching up and they still can benefit from the feedback. And what can you do with the feedback? Rewrite your post, or think about patterns you see in the feedback: can you implement any changes in a future writing task? Remember your writing portfolio is yours to shape, to fill, to rewrite and to make yours.

Like last week, below you find links to four blog posts from your fellow students. If one of the websites is your own, or it is twice the same person’s, refresh the page, and you should get new sites. [posts coming on Saturday!]

  • Post 1:
  • Post 2:
  • Post 3:
  • Post 4:

Leave feedback, questions, thoughts, insights about the contents of the posts of your fellow students using Hypothes.is group teaglobalhistory. You can ask for clarifications, point out similarities and differences with the material you covered, or with your interpretation. This should encourage you to return with different eyes to the original materials.

Use tags in Hypothes.is: question: If you have a question (obvious); answered: if you gave an answer to a question; info: if you provide more information, looking up additional facts, drawing on knowledge from other classes; and other tags you can think of. This will help us to navigate more quickly to the questions that still need answering.

Use the “Architect’s Model” of giving feedback, and engage with concrete issues. Go beyond “Yeah, I agree,” “I like” or “I think the same”, and instead explain why you have that reaction, or if you disagree, you can try to persuade the original poster of your idea or interpretation. You did a great job last week, thanks!!

Remember that Hypothes.is allows for hyperlinks, e.g. to materials that support your argument, or you can include pictures (memes!), videos etc. that help the original poster to learn more.

Checklist

I commented on four fellow students’ posts about the history of tea using the group teaglobalhistory in Hypothes.is.
I made sure to leave substantial comments that move the discussion forward and help to create better insights, and go beyond a “nice” or “great”. I was specific!
I left comments that I would like to receive myself: thoughtful, helpful, kind, but also pointing out errors so they can be fixed.

By Tuesday, 12.30PM

Gather in the garden! Don’t come to Ettinger.

Reading:

On Tuesday, come straight to the garden — you know where it is!

  • Bring pen and paper to take notes.
  • Please wear sturdy shoes: after the rain we’ve had, it may be a bit muddy. Leave high heels and superwhite sneakers that you want to keep clean at home.

By Thursday, 12.30PM

Reading:

  • “The Debate between Mr. Tea and Mr. Alcohol,” translation based on Chen, Tsu-lung. 1961. “Note on Wang Fu’s Cha Chiu Lun,” Sinologica 6: 271–87, collated with excerpts and notes from James Benn, Tea in China: A Religious and Cultural History, Honolulu: Univ. of Hawaii Press, 2015. (PDF)
    • Think about the arguments used by Mr. Tea and Mr. Alcohol respectively. Which ones are convincing? What does the existence of this kind of text tell us about ninth-tenth century China? (And which words did you have to look up?)

Background information: Slides to view before class

This is a text from the tenth century, and was discovered at the start of the twentieth century in a manmade cave where thousands of manuscripts were preserved. In the West it’s known as the Library Cave, or Cave 17 of Dunhuang, although technically they are now called the Mogao caves in Chinese. These manuscripts are of tremendous importance in understanding medieval Chinese history and the relations with Central Asia at the time.

If you’re curious: and want to learn more, and have some extra time or want to do a deeper dive for a project:

  • Digital version of one of the original manuscripts on the International Dunhuang Project (IDP) website. Move the text by clicking on the text in the top image window.
  • excerpt from a video documentary about the Dunhuang Caves (YouTube link)

Sunday, 11.59PM

Writing exercise: Write a blog post of 200-400 words, and add it to category FYS106

  • OPTION 1: Use the new “ten-on-one / one-on-ten” technique [to be taught on Thursday] on any of the texts (or a combination of texts) we have covered in the semester so far. Your findings are the basis for your blog post: what are the new ideas you see coming to the fore? Which texts are you now able to put into dialogue with each other, and how?
  • OPTION 2: The garden visit should have heightened your understanding, and appreciation for, the relationship between plants and humans. Use a freewrite as the basis for an exploration of your ideas, and brownie points if you can work in a connection with tea plants!
  • OPTION 3: Write both assignments, to get more writing practice

Add an image to brighten up your post and add a caption to the source as a hyperlinked text. If you refer to additional online materials, add them as hyperlinks in your text itself. Add a title, you can be creative! Include at the end a bibliography: a list of the works you consulted, quoted, or referenced, in alphabetical order of the surname of the author.

Where to find images: In addition to Google image, there are also copy-right free, public-domain images available through Trexler Library: https://libraryguides.muhlenberg.edu/open/images.

How: Remember: Don’t just write and post straight away. Instead, take the time to write a draft, maybe use the freewrite method on a key passage to create a few new ideas, and rewrite to help you clarify some ideas. You can draft and rewrite in Word or Google Docs, and then copy-paste to WordPress and tidy up the formatting.

Checklist:

I wrote a blog post of at least 200 words, and no more than 400 words, using one of the two available options (or I did both as separate blog posts)
I added it to the category FYS106 on my blog.
I added an image to the post, with ALT text describing the image, and a caption.
I included at the end a bibliography of the works I consulted or referred to.
I checked that my post appears on the internet the way I want.

Slides

Thursday, Sept. 30.: Background for Debate of Mr. Tea and Mr. Alcohol

Where to get help