Professor Emily Honig
History 194J
Winter 2015
The Poor and the Everyday in Modern China
This senior seminar will focus on non-elite people in modern China from the early twentieth century through the early years of the People's Republic in the 1950's. Drawing on a combination of historical studies, literature, and contemporary accounts, the course will look at the lives of groups such as rickshaw pullers, factory workers, beggars, prostitutes, migrants and refugees, and poor peasants. Throughout, attention will be paid to issues of gender and class, state attempts of regulate the poor, as well as to how colonialism, war, and revolutionary movements shaped the everyday lives of these people.
The course is a senior seminar, for which each student will engage in a research project (and write a 15-20 page research paper). Parts of most class sessions will focus on the process of selecting topics, identifying sources, formulating an argument, producing and revising a draft, and preparing a final paper.
Course requirements:
1. Participation. This class meets once a week. It is therefore imperative that you be at every class session. As this is a senior seminar, class time will be devoted to discussion (not lectures!), so it is crucial that you complete the assigned readings. If, for reasons of illness or family emergency, you need to miss class, you should inform me in advance and provide appropriate documentation of the reasons for your absence. For any class session that is missed, you will be required to write a 4-5 page essay about the readings assigned for that week.
2. Research paper. One of the most engaging aspects of this seminar will be the production of research papers (15-20 pages). These projects will begin early in the quarter, and in subsequent weeks specific parts of the project will be due (topic/questions; preliminary bibliography; rough draft). It is crucial that all segments are completed by the due date, particularly because we will devote part of class sessions to discussing the projects, and will spend substantial time commenting on rough drafts. The final papers are due during finals week.
Research paper schedule:
Week 2 / Discuss potential topicsWeek 3 / Paper topic
Week 4 / Library session on research/Assemble preliminary list of sources
Week 5 / List of sources
Week 6 / Prospectus
Week 7 / 5-page segment of paper
Week 9 / Rough draft
Finals week / Final paper due
SCHEDULE OF CLASSES
Week 1 (Jan.7) : Introduction
Week 2 (Jan. 14): Writing Lives
Ida Pruitt. Daughter of Han: The Autobiography of a Chinese Working Woman.
Week 3 (Jan. 21): Rickshaw Pullers
David Strand. Rickshaw Beijing, 20-65, 241-83
Lu Hanchao, “The World of Rickshaws” in Beyond the Neon Lights: Everyday Shanghai in the Early 20th Century (online thru Cruzcat), pp. 67-105.
Elizabeth Perry. Shanghai on Strike: The Politics of Chinese Labor, pp.226-233. (Online through Cruzcat.
Emily Honig, “Ethnicity at Work: Subei Natives in the Shanghai Labor Market,” in Creating Chinese Ethnicity.
Film: “Rickshaw Boy” (Camel Xiangzi).
Topic due
Week 4 (Jan. 28): Hard times in the Mills
Xia Yan, “Contract Labor,” Chinese Literature.
Emily Honig, Sisters and Strangers: Women in the Shanghai Cotton Mills.
Gail Hershatter, “Seas of Wheels and Belts: The Cotton Mill Workers,” in The Workers of Tianjin.
Preliminary bibliography due.
Week 5 (Feb. 4):Beggars
Hanchao Lu,“Becoming Urban: Mendicancy and Vagrants in Modern Shanghai,”Journal of Social History, Vol. 33, No. 1 (Autumn, 1999), pp. 7-36.
Zwia Lipkin, “Modern Dilemmas Dealing with Nanjing’s Beggars, 1927-37,” Journal of Urban History, 2005.
Week 6(Feb. 11): Sex workers
Gail Hershatter, Dangerous Pleasures (pick chapters)
Weikun Cheng, “The Challenge of the Actresses: Female Performers and Cultural Alternatives in Early Twentieth Century Beijing and Tianjin,”Modern China, Vol. 22, No. 2 (Apr., 1996), pp. 197-233.
Prospectus due
Week 7 (Feb. 18): Peasants, poverty, and polemics
Isabel Crook and Christina Gilmartin, Prosperity’s Predicament.
5-page segment of paper due.
Week 8 (Feb. 25): On Their Behalf
Angelina Chin, “Social Control through Charity,” in Bound to Emancipate: Working Women and Urban Citizenship in Early Twentieth-Century China and Hong Kong.
Ruth Rogaski. Beyond Benevolence: A Confucian Women’s Shelter in Treaty-Port China,” Journal of Women’s History, 1997.
Vivian Shue. “The Quality of Mercy: Confucian Charity and the Mixed Metaphors of Modernity in Tianjin,” Modern China (2006)
Elizabeth Remick, "The Origins of China's Prostitution Regulation Regime" and
“The Jiliangsuo—Prostitute Rescue Institutions,” in Regulating Prostitution in China: Gender and Local Statebuilding, 1900-1937, Cruzcat online.
Week 9 (March 4): The State and Regulation of the Poor
Janet Yang. Guilty of Indigence: The Urban Poor in China, 1900-1953. (ebook on cruzcat)
Rough draft due.
Week 10 (March 11): Paper presentations
Primary Sources:
I thought you might be interested in this item at
Title: Shanghai : political and economic reports, 1842-1943; British government records from the international city Vol. 5 1863 - 1866
Author: Robert L Jarman
Publisher: Slough Archive Ed. 2008
Missionary records:
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