Week 08: Tragedy at the court

Submit a blog post that is a 5-15 report. Your “Reading Journal” comprises the texts you read for the previous week’s classes, and anything you are reading for your Pressbooks Chapter project.

Remember to also add any tasks that are on your to-do list (not those scheduled for the whole class, but for you individually, e.g. sorting out a blog-related issue), and any open questions or issues you want to flag up for follow-up with me. These weekly reports are extremely useful for me to get an insight in how you’re working, what you make of the course and the materials, and how I can best support your learning and adjust the course.

TIP: for anything you’re not comfortable putting in a blog where others can read it, you can just drop me a message on discord OR post anonymously on the Padlet!

If you haven’t done this already:

Please check your calendars and book an appointment with me using the appointment slots (“mid-term check-in”) for this week (click this link to pick a slot). Book your appointment now, and change slots if your schedule changes. That’s better than last minute panic because our schedules don’t align. Meetings will be on Discord, I’ll create a Channel for you so we can chat in private and will share more details when I have figured it all out.

Even if you don’t need a mid-term grade, it’s good to see where we are at the middle of the semester and how you can make the second half count. Things we will discuss: what are you doing well? how are you working towards your goals/objectives for this course? how can we work better together to get you towards those goals in the second half of the semester? what have you learned so far you have not yet been able to demonstrate in an assignment? And the big question: how do you assess your work towards the chapter contribution so far?

Please prepare before class! Time estimate: 90 mins to prepare, 75mins meeting.

One of the most famous episodes of royal Korean history is the life and death of Prince Sado, the Crown Prince of king Yeongjo (Yŏngjo). His story is about as tragic as they get. He had a very strained relationship with his father, and suffered from an (undiagnosed) mental illness that led him to kill palace staff. He was executed – but because a regular execution as a criminal would taint his (i.e. the royal!) family as criminal, a different solution had to be found. You’ll find the description in the Introduction I’ve added to the PDF.

• Haboush, JaHyun Kim. Memoirs of Lady Hyegyong: The Autobiographical Writings of a Crown Princess of Eighteenth-Century Korea. University of California Press, 2013. (reissue of the 1996 translation)
  • PDF
  • Content warning: descriptions of violence (incl. murder), mental illness
  • I have indicated in red brackets the sections that will guide you through the events most easily. You may, of course, read the whole thing but I am aware of limitations on your time.
  • Questions: This document is a very unusual one in Korea, and East Asian history: a woman, writing in hangeul, giving a very detailed account of her internal emotional state and the events happening. How do you as a historian treat such a text? What additional perspective on the Joseon period do you gain from this memoir? What are the caveats to observe?
• Textbook for background: [Optional, if you are interested/have time/want to dive deeper]
  • Seth, Michael J. A Concise History of Korea: From Antiquity to the Present. 3rd ed. Blue Ridge Summit: Rowman & Littlefield, 2019. Chapter 8: “Late Chosŏn”, section “The Politics of Late Chosŏn” and “Late Chosŏn and the Confucian world order”.
  • Haboush, JaHyun Kim. “Introduction.” In Memoirs of Lady Hyegyong: The Autobiographical Writings of a Crown Princess of Eighteenth-Century Korea, 1-35. University of California Press, 2013.

Time estimate: 30-45mins (a generous estimate I think)

Below you find links to four blog posts from your fellow students. If one of the websites is your own, or it is twice the same person’s, refresh the page, and you should get new sites. [UPdated links coming on Tuesday.]

• Post 1:
• Post 2:
• Post 3:
• Post 4:

Leave feedback, questions, thoughts, insights about the contents of the posts of your fellow students, using Hypothes.is group HST259. You can ask for clarifications, point out similarities and differences with the material you covered, or with your interpretation. This should encourage you to nose around in the other materials you did not read in the first round.

Use the “Architect’s Model” of giving feedback, and engage with concrete issues. Go beyond “Yeah, I agree,” “I like” or “I think the same”, and instead explain why you have that reaction, or if you disagree, you can try to persuade the original poster of your idea or interpretation.

Remember that Hypothes.is allows for hyperlinks, e.g. to materials that support your argument, or you can include pictures (memes! [yes, there she is again]), videos etc. that help the original poster to learn more.

TIP: It’s all random, and it’s all good, so if you return to this page after commenting, you will see four different posts. As long as your comments are on four different posts in total, you’re fine! OR you can right-click and ask your browser to open the link in a new tab/window.

Time estimate: 75 mins for the meeting.

Mini-editorial meeting to think about our chapter’s line-up, and time to work on your project.

Write a 300 word abstract of your chapter, including the following:

• Working title
• Perspective/method you intend to use (e.g.primary sources, overview of secondary sources and historiography debate, analysis of literature, archaeology reports)
• Main research hypothesis or question you want to see answered and suggested answer
• Summary of what you intend to cover
• Main topic and 5 keywords

Publish as a blog post in category hst259, so we (your fellow writers and editor) can easily share feedback and suggestions!

You will continually revise and rewrite this abstract as you come to new insights during the course of your research, but it’s important to have a direction or you’ll never get anywhere!

Submit a blog post that is a 5-15 report. Your “Reading Journal” comprises the texts you read for Wed class, and anything you have read in addition for your Pressbooks Chapter project