Week 10: Imjin War: Korean-Japanese war

Updated schedule for final project available on this webpage. Due dates will be included in daily briefings and weekly schedule to help you stay on top of everything. Needless to say: I’m flexible with due dates if you get hit by whatever personal stuff that may come your way during this time. Just contact me with a suggestion for a new reasonable due date that fits your schedule.

Note: The Canvas Homepage is used to gather sensitive information: links to our Zoom sessions, passwords for accessing PDFs and the shared password for protecting your posts are all there. I share a lot of my course information with the wider world, but we don’t need anyone to crash the party!

Here’s the schedule for the week: tasks, assignments and reading all gathered on one handy webpage. (Scroll down for the readings we will cover this week)

Schedule
  • Monday (anytime before midnight): reflection on the past two weeks of upheaval. This first week will not be entirely representative of what the rest of the semester will look like, but I still would like you to write a reflection based on your cumulative experience in all classes during this week, not just this one. I offer some questions for guidance, but you can take a different perspective.
        • What have you learned about yourself, and about your learning process during this first (short) week of remote learning and the run up? (i.e from March 9 to March 20)
        • What surprised you? (Positive and negative)?
        • What are the challenges you faced, and what strategies or assistance will you need to overcome them?
        • What has this experience taught you about face-to-face class time?
        • What are you proud of achieving this week? From “not freaking out” to “figuring out how to share my screen in Zoom”, nothing is too small to celebrate at this point.
        • Write approx. 300 words. As always: you can go longer if you have more to say, but I prefer substance over quantity.
        • Post on your website as a blog post in the category HST259
        • You can password-protect your post if you choose, please use the one on the Canvas Homepage right above the cat picture.
  • Tuesday (anytime before midnight): Project pitch: pitch the basic idea, and give reasons why you are interested in this particular topic.
        • Dig a bit deeper than “the Korean War” (it is important, we agree)
        • What in the course so far has guided you to this topic?
        • What in the readings or the textbook, or your personal explorations has sparked your curiosity?
        • Length: 300-500 words
        • Post on your site as a blog post, category HST259
        • Note: you are not yet locked in, but this indicates a general direction
        • If you’re stuck for ideas, check out this short section on the resources page
  • Tuesday (anytime before midnight): First post on the Canvas discussion board due.
  • Wednesday Zoom session 11.30am (link on Canvas Homepage): check in with your classmates, talk about the final project and your ideas, or about the course materials for the week.
  • Thursday (anytime before midnight): Two responses to other students’ posts due, on the Canvas discussion board.
  • Friday Zoom session 11.30am (link on Canvas Homepage): “regular class”: we will go into more detail about the course materials for the week, based on the discussions.
  • Friday (anytime before midnight):  Preliminary list of sources (articles, books, sites) you have identified as potentially useful so far:
        • Includes “I haven’t looked through this yet but I think it might be useful”, “based on the title,…”, or “I saw a reference to this in another text but I’m waiting on the [Inter]library Loan.”
        • Indicate what makes you think this is possibly useful or how it connects to your project idea.
        • Aim for at least 3 potential sources.
        • Share as google doc, and allow me editing access: this gives us a space to build a collective bibliography for your project.
        • Remember there are some resources linked on the resources webpage
  • Monday March 30: reflection on the week’s course materials (back to the good old days)
Readings and course materials for the week
  • Background: Textbook: Chapter 6: sections “Military and Foreign Affairs” and “The Japanese and Manchu Invasions”
  • Primary source: Haboush, JaHyun Kim and Kenneth R. Robinson. A Korean War Captive in Japan, 1597-1600: The Writings of Kang Hang. New York: Columbia University Press, 2013. (ebook Trexler)
        • Read approximately 20 pages (more if you’d like) from the text. You can pick any chapter/section you like.
        • In the discussion, summarize your selection in 2-3 sentences. Then focus the rest of the post on analyzing the text: what do you learn about the Chinese-Japanese war by looking at it from this personal account? How can historians use this kind of text, and how should they use it?
  • Optional extras: Additional background, possibly useful for final project:
        • Haboush, JaHyun Kim. The Great East Asian War and the Birth of the Korean Nation. Edited by William Joseph Haboush and Jisoo M Kim. New York: Columbia University Press, 2016. https://doi.org/10.7312/habo17228.
              • Useful background about the way the Imjin war created (or is seen to create) a shared national consciousness through the shared experience of this Korean-Japanese war.
        • Swope, Kenneth M. Dragon’s Head and a Serpent’s Tail: Ming China and the First Great East Asian War, 1592-1958. Norman: Univ Of Oklahoma Press, 2013.
        • Swope, Kenneth. “As Close as Lips and Teeth: Debating the Ming Intervention in Korea”. In Debating War in Chinese History, edited by Peter Lorge. Leiden: Brill, 2014. (chapter in e-book)
              • Kenneth Swope has researched the Imjin War from the perspective of international relations and military history.
  • Slides (Gdrive link)
  • Video recordings of our Zoom meetings (Canvas link) are collected on this page.