|
"The Chinese Body: "Medicine and Health, Sex and Gender" course instructor: Michael Nylan, History Department (3212 Dwinelle) |
 |
|
Brief description of course: This course brings a thematic approach to the critical analysis of the "Chinese body", as constructed before 1911, though the final week of classes will compare and contrast pre-modern and modern understandings.[1] As the course title indicates, the course is designed to help students gain a clearer picture of how the body was viewed from four main perspectives, those of (1) gender; (2) sexual activity; (3) health; and (4) medicine. Contrary to the stereotypes of "unchanging China," notions of the body and the person changed dramatically over the course of two thousand years from the Han dynasty (206 BC-AD 220) to the Qing (1644-1911), and contemporary qi gong 氣功 ("breath work") –like contemporary fengshui 風水 – has little in common with older practices. The course begins with the conception of health in pre-modern China, and the important distinction (generally ignored in modern American medicine) between "healing" and "curing." Students will be introduced to the general outline of Yin/yang, Five Phases theory, to standard definitions of "Nature," and to the major microcosm-macrocosm analogies. Diet, acupuncture, moxibustion, and meditation – rather than surgery -- became the main treatments, because of such holistic views of the body, as will be demonstrated by readings drawn from the classic medical texts, from the classic novels and letters, and from recently excavated legal texts. In pre-modern China, a great many of the standard metaphors for good or ill health refer to sexuality. The course consequently considers "ideal sexuality" (and deviations therefrom) next. From there it moves to consider the precise conditions under which "anti-female rhetoric" was invoked and the practical effects – legal, financial, and imaginative -- of that rhetoric on the lives of ordinary and elite women and their male counterparts. The course will also examine the limitations of that rhetoric. Selected readings will draw from such works as Shigehisa Kuriyama, The Expressiveness of the Body; Michel Strickmann, Chinese Magical Medicine; Ruth Rogawski, Hygienic Modernity; Douglas Wile, The Sexual Arts of the Bedchamber; Li Ju-chen, Flowers in the Mirror (China's counterpart to Gulliver's Travels); Nathan Sivin, "Body, State, and Cosmos in China in the Last Three centuries B.C"; Raoul Birnbaum; The Healing Buddha; Christian de Pee, "The Ritual and Sexual Bodies of the Groom and the Bride in Ritual Manuals of the Sung Dynasty (Eleventh through Thirteenth Centuries); and Angela Ki-che Leung, "Women Practicing Medicine in Pre-Modern China."
NOTE: The course does not presuppose knowledge of China, of the Chinese language, or of the history of science. It is essential that you attend regularly, do the reading before lecture, and send questions and comments to the teacher. There will be three in-class exams of no more than 45-minutes (see below under "Grading"), and a final paper on a topic connected with the course. Students who want to improve their writing may choose three short papers, due at regular intervals, instead of the long paper. [1] However, the final weeks of the course will discuss three books -- Judith Farquhar on The Chinese Hospital, Nathan Sivin on Traditional Medicine in Contemporary China, and Caroline de la Pena, The Body Electric – so that students may better relate what they have learned about pre-modern concepts with what they might find today in San Francisco Chinatown, in Taiwan, or in the People's Republic of China. |
|
grading for the course: The course will give 20% to students for class participation (this is more than attendance). The three exams (the first of 30 minutes and the last two quizzes of 45 minutes each will count 10%, 20% and 25%; and the single paper of 15 pages an additional 25% (Option A). For students particularly interested in improving their writing, an Option B (to replace Option A) is also offered: writing three mini-papers of five pages each, whose "progressive grade" (weighted toward progress) will be figured at 25% of the course. The mini-research paper will start with readings prepared for the classroom, but arguments are to be developed with the help of five additional sources (no more than two of them Web-based). Each week (except for the first and last) students will be asked to do about 100 pages of reading, depending on the level of difficulty.
|
|
books to buy (from local bookstores, including University Press Books): Kuriyama, The Expressiveness of the Body Michel Strickmann, Chinese Magical Medicine Douglas Wile, Art of the Bedchamber highly recommended: Nathan Sivin, Traditional Medicine in Contemporary China
Special Note about Reserve Books: The
following items on your course reserve list are non-circulating. We
cannot put the materials on reserve, however they will be available
in the libraries listed below for your students to use. In
addition, issues of the journals are also available from the
electronic links also listed below. |
| student questions: (1) What does feeding the ancestors
entail? |
| Week 1, reading: Introduction to the course: Nathan Sivin, "State, Cosmos, and Body in the Last Three Centuries B.C.," Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 55, no.1 (Jun 1995), 5-37 (JSTOR); John Hay, "The Human Body as a Microcosmic Source of Macrocosmic Values in Calligraphy," in Theories of the Arts in China, pp. 74-102; and Robin D.S. Yates, "Body, Space, Time, and Bureaucracy: Boundary Creation and Control Mechanisms in Early China," Boundaries in China, pp. 56-81. Week 2, reading: for Thursday: Michael Nylan Week 4:
for Thursday: Elisabeth Hsu, The Transmission of Chinese Medicine, pp. 21-87. Week 7: Shigehisa Kuriyama, The Expressiveness of the Body (selections). Week 8: Angela Ki che Leung, "Women Practicing Medicine in
Pre-modern China," in Harriet Zurndorfer, Chinese Women in the
Imperial Past, pp. 101-134; also recommended Judith Farquhar, "Time
and Text: Approaching Chinese Medicine through Analysis of a a
Published Case (on reserve), in Asian Paths to Medical Practice, pp.
62-73. Week 13: Week 14: Week 15: |
| Places to begin with your papers: Wai-yee Li, "The Late Ming Courtesan: Invention of a Cultural Ideal," in Writing Women in Late Imperial China, pp. 46-73; Keith McMahon, "The Classic Beauty-Scholar Romance and the Superiority of the Talented Woman, in Angela Zito, Body, Subject, and Power in China, pp. 227-53; The Story of the Stone, David Hawkes, trans., "Chapter 18: A brief family reunion is permitted by the magnanimity of a gracious Emperor, And an Imperial Concubine takes pleasure in the literary progress of a younger brother," in NAvol. 1, 353-374; Angela Zito, Body, Subject, and Power in China, pp. 1-77; Raoul Birnbaum, "Chinese Buddhist traditions of healing and the life cycle," Healing and Restoring: health and medicine in the world's religious traditions, Sullivan, Lawrence E., ed, pp. 33-57; Judith Farquhar, "Medicine and the Changes are one: an essay in divination healing with commentary," Chinese Science 13 (1996) 107-134; Reiter, Florian C. Reiter, "Conditions, Ways and Means of Healing in the Perspective of the Chinese Taoist, Oriens 33 (1992) 348-362; Angela Ki Che Leung, "Organized medicine in Ming-Qing China: state and private medical institutions in the lower Yangzi region Late Imperial China 8, no.1 (Jun 1987) 134-66; and Angela Ki Che Leung, "Medical learning from the Song to the Ming," The Song-Yuan-Ming Transition in Chinese History (2003), pp. 374-398; Mark Edward Lewis, The Construction of Space in Early China (2005), esp. chaps. 2, 4 on the household and body; Liu Jianmei, Revolution plus Love: Literary History, Women's Bodies, and Thematic Repetition in Twentieth-Century Chinese Fiction (2003); Judith Farquhar, Appetites: Food and Sex in Post-Socialist China (2005); Bernard Faure, The Rhetoric of Immediacy: a cultural critique of Chan/Zen Buddhism (1991), pp. 148-179). |