Instructions for Response Papers.

From time to time throughout the semester I will be assigning short response papers, basically a one-page response to one of the assigned texts in the coursepack.

What I will be looking for in these papers is:

1. evidence that you read the text: a brief summary of what the text is about, with some attention to who wrote it and why.
2. evidence that you thought about the text in relation to the art we are looking at in class that week.
3. good writing.

Within these parameters, you can go in any direction you want with these papers. If the text makes you think about the nature of Chinese religions or the politics of the time or contemporary society, please write about it. I am hoping that these papers will stimulate your thinking about Chinese culture and that this will deepen your understanding of Chinese painting.

Please refer to the notes in your syllabus about appropriate formats for written work and about plagiarism. (Yes, plagiarism even matters here: if you quote from the text in your paper, please use a parenthetical reference.) If you have further questions about writing response papers, you might visit the HWS Writes website.

Assignments.

1. Gu Kaizhi (Ku K’ai-chih), “Technique,” in Early Chinese Texts on Painting, ed. Susan Bush and Hsio-yen Shih (Cambridge, Mass., and London: Harvard-Yenching Institute, 1985), 32-36, due Friday, Sept. 12.

2. Jing Hao, "Notes on the Method for the Brush," trans. Stephen H. West, in Ways with Words: Writing about Reading Texts in Early China, ed. Pauline Yu et al. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000), 202-13, due Wednesday, Sept. 24.

3. Susan Bush and Hsio-yen Shih, ed., excerpts from “Sung Literati Theory and Connoisseurship,” in Early Chinese Texts on Painting, 191-240, due Friday, Oct. 17.

4. Zhao Mengfu (Chao Meng-fu), “Scholars’ Painting and the Spirit of Antiquity,” in Early Chinese Texts on Painting, 254-55, due Wednesday, Nov. 19.