Undergraduate Seminar
HIS 350L (Unique 40530) and ANS 361 (Unique 31160)
Wednesdays 4:00-7:00 p.m., BEN 1.102
Professor: Roger Hart
Office: BUR 470
Office hours: Tues. and Wed., 1:30-3:00 p.m., and by appt.
Office phone: (512) 475-7258
e-mail: rhart@mail.utexas.edu
Note: Please bookmark this syllabus -- I will be revising it and making adjustments to the readings as the course progresses.
In this course we will explore Chinese science, technology, and medicine by reading primary texts (in translation) together with recent secondary studies. We will read selections from the most important existing historical documents on divination, astronomy, optics, mathematics, alchemy, medicine, and technology. We will take an interdisciplinary approach -- drawing on cultural history, anthropology, gender studies, and philosophy -- to analyze these texts in their intellectual, social, and cultural context.
The course is designed for students interested in the following: history, sociology, and anthropology of science, technology, and medicine; East Asian studies; studies of “non-Western” science and cultures.
All primary sources are available in English translation. No knowledge of Chinese language or history is required for the course.
Class attendance is mandatory.
The grade will be based on in-class quizzes and class participation (20%), mid-term and final examinations (30%), and a final paper (50%).
For resources for help with writing, see the web page of the Undergraduate Writing Center. For suggestions on writing the final paper, see "Writing Term Papers."
Readings
All required readings will be available through PCL reserves and electronic reserves, http://reserves.lib.utexas.edu/eres/coursepage.aspx?cid=3674. Readings will include selections from the following:
(1) Primary historical documents (in translation):
Early Chinese Medical Literature: The Mawangdui Medical Manuscripts, trans. and study by Donald J. Harper (London: Kegan Paul International, 1998);
Huang Ti Nei Ching Su Wen: The Yellow Emperor's Classic of Internal Medicine, trans. and study by Ilza Veith (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002);
The Nine Chapters on the Mathematical Art: Companion and Commentary, trans. and study by Kangshen Shen, Anthony W. C. Lun and John N. Crossley (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999);
Astronomy and Mathematics in Ancient China: The Zhou bi suan jing, trans. and study by Christopher Cullen (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996);
Chinese Technology in the Seventeenth Century: T’ien-Kung K’ai-Wu, trans. and study by E. tu Zen Sun and Shiou-chuan Sun (University Park: Pennsylvania State University, 1966).
(2) Secondary historical research:
Paul U. Unschuld, Medicine in China: A History of Ideas (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985);
Francesca Bray, Technology and Gender: Fabrics of Power in Late Imperial China (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997);
Benjamin A. Elman, On Their Own Terms: Science in China, 1550-1900 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2005).
David Keightley, “Science of the Ancestors.”
Keightley, “The Oracle Bone Inscriptions of the Late Shang Dynasty,” chap. 1 of Sources of Chinese Tradition, vol. 1, From Earliest Times to 1600, ed. William Theodore de Bary et al., 2nd ed. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999), pp. 3-23.
"Cauterization Canon of the Eleven Vessels of the Foot and Forearm," "Cauterization Canon of the Eleven Yin and Yang Vessels, Ed. A," "Model of the Vessels," "Death Signs of the Yin and Yang Vessels," in Early Chinese Medical Literature, trans. Harper, pp. 187-220.
Harper, "Medicine, Medical Literature, Medical Men," Early Chinese Medical Literature, pp. 42-67.
"Recipes for Fifty-Two Ailments" (selections) and "Ten Questions," trans. in Harper, Early Chinese Medical Literature, pp. 221-67 and 386-410.
Harper, "Magic," in Early Chinese Medical Literature, pp. 148-183.
Nine Chapters of Mathematical Methods, selections.
Hart, "The Earliest Known Calculations of Determinants: An Analysis of Solutions to the 'Well Problem' from Commentaries to the Nine Chapters of Mathematical Methods (Jiu zhang suan shu).
Cullen, Classic of the Zhou Gnomon, selections.
Inner Classic of the Yellow Lord (Huang di nei jing su wen), selections. Trans. in Ilza Veith, Huang Ti Nei Ching Su Wen: The Yellow Emperor's Classic of Internal Medicine (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002).
Paul U. Unschuld, Medicine in China: A History of Ideas (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985).
Outline of paper due.
Inner Classic of the Yellow Lord (Huang di nei jing su wen), selections. Trans. in Ilza Veith, Huang Ti Nei Ching Su Wen: The Yellow Emperor's Classic of Internal Medicine (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002).
Paul U. Unschuld, Medicine in China: A History of Ideas (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985).
Midterm Exam, in class, 4:00-5:30 p.m. Make-up examinations will be permitted only for documented emergencies.
Klaas Ruitenbeek, Carpentry and Building in Late Imperial China: A Study of the 15th-Century Carpenter's Manual "Lu Ban Jing," Sinica Leidensia 23 (Leiden: Brill, 1993), selections.
Sung Ying-hsing, Chinese Technology in the Seventeenth Century: T'ien-Kung K'ai-Wu, trans. E. tu Zen Sun and Shiou-chuan Sun (University Park: Pennsylvania State University, 1966), selections.
Francesca Bray, "House Form & Meaning," chap. 2 of Technology and Gender: Fabrics of Power in Later Imperial China (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1997), 59-90.
Matteo Ricci, Introduction and chap. 1, "A Discussion on the Creation of Heaven, Earth, and All Things by the Lord of Heaven, and on the Way He Exercises Authority and Sustains Them," in The True Meaning of the Lord of Heaven, pp. 57-97 (English translation is on odd-numbered pages). Li Zhizao (d. 1630), Preface to The True Meaning of the Lord of Heaven; Xu Guangqi (1562-1633), "Memorial in Defense of Western Teaching"; Yang Guangxian (1597-1669), "I Cannot Do Otherwise." In Sources of Chinese Tradition, vol. 2, pp. 142-152.
Selections from Nan-Ching: The Classic of Difficult Issues, with Commentaries by Chinese and Japanese Authors from the Third Through the Twentieth Century, trans. Paul U. Unschuld, Comparative Studies of Health Systems and Medical Care (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986).
Elman, On Their Own Terms: Science in China, 1550-1900, selections.
Sharon Traweek, "Big Science and Colonialist Discourse: Building High-Energy Physics in Japan," in Big Science: The Growth of Large-Scale Research, ed. Peter Galison and Bruce Hevly (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1992), pp. 100-28.
Joan H. Fujimura, "Transnational Genomics: Transgressing the Boundary between the 'Modern/West' and the 'Premodern/East,'" in Doing Science + Culture, ed. Roddey Reid and Sharon Traweek (New York: Routledge, 2000), pp. 71-92.
Roger Hart, "Beyond Science and Civilization: A Post-Needham Critique," East Asian Science, Technology, and Medicine 16 (1999): 88-114.
Shigehisa Kuriyama, The Expressiveness of the Body and the Divergence of Greek and Chinese Medicine (New York: Zone Books, 1999), selections.
G. E. R. Lloyd and Nathan Sivin, The Way and the Word: Science and Medicine in Early China and Greece (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002), selections.
The final examination, as scheduled by the University Registrar, will be given on Friday, December 15, 7-10 PM in BEN 1.102, our usual classroom. The University allows exceptions only by petition to the Dean. Make-up examinations and incompletes will be given only for documented emergencies. This is the final date to turn in a rewritten paper (at the exam).