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 readings.

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 religious practice or the politics of the time or contemporary Asian society, please write about it. I am hoping that these papers will stimulate your thinking about different interpretations of landscape and that this will deepen your understanding of Chinese and Japanese art.

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. Zong Bing [Tsung Ping], “Introduction to Painting Landscape” and/or “Introduction to Poetry on Wandering at the Stone Gate by the Laymen of Mount Lu,” in Susan Bush, “Tsung Ping’s Essay on Painting Landscape and the ‘Landscape Buddhism’ of Mount Lu,” 144-46, 149-52, due Friday, Sept. 12.
   
   
2. Susan Bush and Hsio-yen Shih, comp. and ed., “The Landscape Texts,” due Wednesday, Sept. 24.
   
   
3. Poems in Alexander C. Soper, “A Ninth Century Landscape Painting in the Japanese Imperial Palace and Some Chinese Parallels,” due Wednesday, Oct. 1.
   
   
4. Comparison of Sakuteiki and Zōen, “Illustrations for Designing Mountain, Water, and Hillside Field Landscapes,” due Friday, Oct. 24.
   
   
5. Metropolitan Museum of Art, Ming Garden, due Friday, Nov. 14.