HUM 232 - Middle Imperial China: The Great Song Transition

The transformation of Chinese civilization during the “Song renaissance” (960-1279) is our major concern for the fall semester. China mentally realigned itself, first because it had to acknowledge other players in the world such as the powerful nomad states along its own northern borders and second because those nomads would occupy the northern half of China during what is called the “Southern Song” (1127-1279). Buddhism, a foreign religion though it had been introduced to China many centuries before the Song period, flourished alongside the Indigenous popular pantheon. Furthermore, China underwent internal changes such as the emergence of a vibrant urban culture. Self-representation changed in tandem with the rise of a new social stratum, the shidafu, and the literati culture it produced. The change rippled into the fine arts as well. We will study the new contexts of Chinese civilization through travel essays, cartography, and reports and journals of diplomatic envoys. Tiantai Buddhism, Chan Buddhism, and Indigenous popular religion will be examined through their primary texts. We will observe the changes in culture via storytelling and dramatic texts and via Song cityscape paintings. We will “learn about the Way” (daoxue) with Zhu Xi, China’s second-most famous scholar, who recast his forerunner Confucius to make him the linchpin of middle and late imperial education. In literature, we will study Song shi- and ci-poetry. Shi-poetry showed expanded topics and the mindset of the new literati class. Ci-poetry transformed the very notion of poetics. In art, we will analyze monumental landscape painting, printed illustrations, and Song calligraphy. The Qin-Han unification may have laid the basic foundation of China, but many have argued that the Song gave modern China its distinctive cultural heritage.

Unit(s): 1
Group Distribution Requirement(s): Distribution Group I, Distribution Group II
Prerequisite(s): Sophomore standing
Instructional Method: Lecture-conference
Grading Mode: Letter grading (A-F)
Notes: First-year students in their second semester may register with instructor approval.
Not offered: 2024-25
Group Distribution Learning Outcome(s):

Understand how arguments can be made, visions presented, or feelings or ideas conveyed through language or other modes of expression (symbols, movement, images, sounds, etc.).
Analyze and interpret texts, whether literary or philosophical, in English or a foreign language, or works of the visual or performing arts.
Evaluate arguments made in or about texts (whether literary or philosophical, in English or a foreign language, or works of the visual or performing arts).
Evaluate data and/or sources.
Analyze institutions, formations, languages, structures, or processes, whether social, political, religious, economic, cultural, intellectual or other.
Think in sophisticated ways about causation, social and/or historical change, human cognition, or the relationship between individuals and society, or engage with social, political, religious or economic theory in other areas.