Week 2

Bcourses

• Discussions> Submit argumentative responses (strict deadline; 0 if late)
  
• Discussions> Participation (respond/comment/questions)
• Files> Other resources

Section Facilitation Logistics

• Select week to facilitate (1-2 students). - clear involvement and roles
• To prepare:
  • Closely analyze readings: How does this reading connect to concepts/historical context from class? What is the central theme? Why does this matter?
  • This is not a 50 minute presentation.
  • Read and think through your classmates' responses
• Submit notes of facilitation by 7PM Sunday/Monday. (no 400 word response during your facilitation week)
• Post notes of facilitation + discussion points by Friday 7PM

Section Facilitation Breakdown

• <5 minute OPENING STATEMENT (main argument of reading, central questions, themes)
• <5 minute RESPONSE & REFLECTION (commentary on Bcourses, critical thinking discussion questions)
• Be creative, efficient and effective use of class time

everyone else

• Bring hard copy of argumentative response.
• Bring reading.
• Ask questions, actively engage in discussion.
• Don't make your classmate look bad.

Questions to ask and think through for Critical Reading

Bcourses>Files>Papers

Next Meeting: Week 4

• Herbert Spencer, Kang Youwei, Mao Zedong
• No lecture 1/29 (read lecture assigned readings)
• Office hours, reading/study groups

 

 

 

Week 3

style: Cautious academic language

• could, may, possibly, perhaps
• It is said that society, in Spencer's view, could be seen as an organism.
• Spencer viewed society as an organism.

Reading your argument

• Your thesis should not take more than 1 minute to find
• Be brave and confident: just say something that I can disagree and engage
  • Descriptions and comments do not lend themselves to conversations.

on deck for Week 4: D2

Karl Marx, the Manifesto of the Communist Party (aka The Communist Manifesto). This reading is in the assigned textbook: The Marx-Engels reader Pg. 473-500 or https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ .

 

N.B. Not all the weeks include a 'Reading Guide and Questions' handout to supplement the reading and assist you in writing your argumentative paper.

 

I strongly suggest you write out at the top the 'Question' you will answer in your writeup.

try building a Vocabulary

 

 

 

Week 4

Argumentative Response

1. exchange papers
2. underline thesis
3. number 2-3 points that reinforce and support the thesis
4. come up with a counterargument to the thesis

 

• History is a progressive series of different economic systems, punctuated by class struggle & revolutions

 

• Class consciousness: the awareness that a social class possesses of its situation in society, and its ability to act collectively as a class in its own best interests.
• Revolution: the seizure of the means of production (the base), and the end of alienation (by reconciling man with his labor) and exploitation (by fairly distributing profit).

--> replacement by new system
 

on deck for Week 5: D3

 Edgar Snow, Red Star over China (1937):

11-18, 129-289, 352-364

(There is a ‘reading guide/questions’ but try to come up with your own question. Also note the different page numbers.)

 

 

 

 

Week 5

Facilitators

• Email me Gameplan + Questions Sunday/Monday 7PM
• 7PM Read through students' responses + post Questions
• Facilitation during section
• Friday 7PM Post on Discussion Board Questions + commentary on our discussion

argumentative responses

• Citation (page number) ...(345) or Chicago Manual of Style
• proofread--grammatical mistakes, run on's
• messy arguments, general statements

participation

• Can comment/ask followup questions on Bcourses up until Friday 7PM
• If no contribution in discussion OR on discussion board = 0 for participation

on deck for Week 5: D4

 Mao Zedong, “On Guerrilla Warfare” (1937) on Marxist.org;  Vo Nguyen Giap (selections)

(There is a ‘reading guide/questions’ but try to come up with your own question. Also note the different page numbers.)

 

 

 

 

Week 6

Tuesday section

• facilitator move to last week on The Little Red Book

required check in office hours

• Everyone is required to check in with me in office hours at least once this semester.

• **Please sign up for one 10 minute time slot and shoot me an email when you do sign up with the time, date, and topic you want to discuss (responses, class, and/or research paper).

• I will confirm with you if that time still is available. If you do not hear from me, then that time is not confirmed yet and there might be someone else waiting to see me in office hours during that time.

  **Please be mindful of the location of the office hours: Dwinelle 2116 or outside patio Yali's Stanley Hall**

Guerrilla War, Protracted War, War of Attrition, People's War

on deck for Week 8: D5

Mao Zedong "On Practice" and "On Contradiction"

(There is a ‘reading guide/questions’ but try to come up with your own question. Also note the different page numbers.)

 

 

 

 

Week 8

On practice:

1. What are the different types of knowledge? Which one is the most important?
2. Thesis, Antithesis, Synthesis of “On Practice”

On Contradiction:

1. How do internal contradictions change over time/history? (stages, interlocking contradictions)
2. Universality and particularity of contradiction; what are some examples in China?
3. What is the principal contradiction of 19th-20th c China?
4. Unity and struggle of opposites? (e.g. Creation and destruction of CCP)

            “Discover the truth through practice, and again through practice verify and develop the truth. Start from perceptual knowledge and actively develop it into rational knowledge and actively guide revolutionary practice to change both the subjective and objective world. Practice, knowledge, again practice, and again knowledge. This form repeats itself in endless cycles, and with each cycle the content of practice and knowledge rises to a higher level. Such is the whole of the dialectical-materialist theory of the unity of knowing and doing"

(On Practice)

         

  “Consider the contradiction between the exploiting and the exploited classes. Such contradictory classes coexist for a long time in the same society, be it a slave society, feudal society or capitalist society, and they struggle with each other; but it is not until the contradiction between the two classes develops to a certain stage that it assumes the form of open antagonism and develops into revolution"

(On Contradiction).

         

Week 9

Bcourses

Veronica, Amy, Ramsey: Purges, 'goodness', and errors

"Because Mao represents the Party and the Party indirectly represents Mao's early ideas, taking down the portrait would essentially mean taking down the Party."

Research Paper

• Proposal/Outline (5%)  Monday 04/20 3PM
• **Section** Writing Workshop Thursday 04/23 3:30PM
• Rough Draft (15%)  Friday 05/01 3PM
• Final Draft (20%) Finals Week Monday 05/14 3PM

What the research?

• What is a historical research paper?
• Where do I start?
• slc.berkeley.edu/writing

Proposal/Outline (5%)

Week 14 Monday 04/20 3PM

A good outline is not only a summary and a roadmap, it is crystallized version of the paper waiting to be turned into prose.  (1.5-2 pages single space)

*example in Bcourses>files>writing

• Title
• Argumentative thesis statement
• Main primary source(s)
• Roadmap/sections 
• • main argument sentence(s) (I argue that...)
  • supporting evidence sentence(s)
• Working Bibliography
• Personal Timeline/deadlines

*Section that Week- Writing Workshop*

Rough Draft (15%) 

Friday 05/01 3PM

1. Submit your rough draft as a word document with your student ID and no name.
2. You will receive a peer's paper to comment via track changes in Word.
3. You will grade the rough draft based on a grading rubric.
4. The commented/graded rough draft is due Monday 05/04 3PM.

 

• Principal: Comments
• Secondary: Grade
• Critique Sandwich + - +

One sentence exercise: Dialectics of Form & function, grammar & argument

• overuse of it, there is, that is
• do not use more than 2 commas in a sentence (unless list..and lists aren't great either)
• try not to use -ing verbs

Examples: Eugene, Katie, Veronica, Ivan

 

 

 

Week 12

 

Secondary Sources

• http://bmc.lib.umich.edu/bas
• Jennifer Dorner- Asia Guide http://guides.lib.berkeley.edu/history/asia
• (on AirBears or Proxy)
  • http://www.jstor.org/
  • http://www.worldcat.org/ + ILL
• http://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/#
• look at author's bibliography
• look at call numbers nearby

http://bannedthought.net/

Primary Sources

Citing sources

• MLA & Chicago citation style guides in 'Writing' in Bcourses
• zotero.org (senior theses)

Proposal/Outline (5%)

Week 14 Monday 04/20 3PM **can submit early

A good outline is not only a summary and a roadmap, it is crystallized version of the paper waiting to be turned into prose.  (1.5-2 pages single space)

*example in Bcourses>files>writing

• Title
• Argumentative thesis statement
• Main primary source(s)
• Roadmap/sections 
• • main argument sentence(s) (I argue that...)
  • supporting evidence sentence(s)
• Working Bibliography
• Personal Timeline/deadlines

TIMELINE of Significant Events:

• June 30, 1949 - On the People’s Democratic Dictatorship
• October 1, 1949 - Founding of the People’s Republic of China
• March 5, 1953 - Stalin dies
• 1953 - China begins its first Five Year Plan, based on the Soviet model for economic and
industrial expansion, and marked a shift in focus away from the peasants toward urban industrial
projects
• February 25, 1956 - Khrushchev’s “Secret Speech” denouncing Stalin- On the Cult of Personality and Its Consequences

*background Sino-Soviet Split https://www.marxists.org/history/international/comintern/sino-soviet-split/
• April 1955 - The Afro-Asian Bandung Conference, 29 nations declare opposition to both
colonialism and neocolonialism not only by European power, the U.S., and the Soviet Union
• June 1956 - Hungary’s leader Mátyás Rákosi, an ardent Stalinist, removed under pressure from
Soviet Politburo
• October 23, 1956 - Hungarian Revolution began
• February 27, 1957 - On the Correct Handling of Contradictions Among the People

 

 

 

Week 13

 

Rough Draft (15%) 

Friday 05/01 3PM

1. Submit your rough draft electronically. Do not have your name on the document. Name the File with your name.
   1. Your rough draft should be at least 6 pages double spaced, have a working bibliography, citations, clear introduction, section headings, and complete sentences. If there is a section you have not yet written, you can include a few bullet points. (keep this limited)

------Review Due Monday 05/04 3PM

1. You will receive a peer's paper to comment via track changes in Word OR write up a 1 page single spaced list of comments, suggestions, questions
2.  You must have at least 10 comments/edits. (not just 'good job' '?')
3. Complete the "Review Summary & Rubric"
4. Submit your rough draft electronically. Do not have your name on the document. Name the File with your name.

 

Track changes in word

production and circulation

Foreword to the Second edition - lin biao

Study Chairman Mao's writings, follow his teachings, and act according to his instructions. Comrade Mao Tse-tung is the greatest Marxist-Leninist of our era. He has inherited,
defended and developed Marxism-Leninism with genius, creatively and comprehensively and has brought it to a higher and completely new stage.

The New Voice

World Proletarian Strategy...
Study Theory of Three Worlds (1977)

•Mao Tsetung put forward the theory of three worlds. He said, “In my view, the United States and the Soviet Union form the first world. Japan, Europe and Canada, the middle section, belong to the second world.” “The third world has a huge population. With the exception of Japan, Asia belongs to the third world. The whole of Africa be-, longs to the third world, and Latin America, too.” (Chairman Mao’s talk with a third world leader, February 1974)

•https://www.marxists.org/history/erol/ncm-1a/nv-3.htm

We urge all readers of The New Voice to study the article, “Chairman Mao’s Theory of the Differentiation of the Three Worlds Is a Major Contribution to Marxism-Leninism.”

 

 

 

Week 14

 

See 'Writing a Good History Paper' pdf in  'File>Paper'

• Do not write in the passive voice.
• Do not forget to write a clear topic sentence for each section.
• Do not use more than two to three commons in one sentence.
• Do not use words that you are not certain of the definition.

example of my own 'checklist' of what not to do in a paper