Chinese 166A

Religious Studies 166A

                                                                                                Winter 2006

                                                                                                Prof. Mayfair Yang

 

Religion in Chinese Culture

Mon. Wed. 2-3:15 pm;  Building 387;  Room 103

 

Course Syllabus

                                                                                                                       

Week One                   January 9 and 11

Introduction to the Course

 

I.  Ancient Indigenous Religious and Ritual Traditions

Ancestor worship, divination, sacrifice and kingship, bronze ritual vessels

 

Ching, Julia.

1993        “The Ancestral Cult and Divination” in Chinese Religions.  Orbis Books. 

 

Chang, K.C.

1983    “Shamanism and Politics”  in Art, Myth and Ritual:  The Path to Political Authority in Ancient China.  Cambridge:  Harvard University Press. 

 

Wong, Eva.

1997        The Shambala Guide to Taoism.  Boston:  Shambala.  (Chap. 1).

 

Week Two                   January 16 and 18

Confucius and pre-Qin Confucian Thought (rujia); Imperial Confucian State Discourse

 

(January 16 – Martin Luther King Holiday)

 

Yang, Mayfair.

1994    “Using the Past to Negate the Present:  Ritual Ethics and State Rationality in Ancient China”  in Gifts, Favors, and Banquets:  the Art of Social Relationships in China.  Cornell University Press.

 

Week Three          January 23 and 25

Daoism:  Philosophy, Ritual and Deities, Cultivation of the Body

 

Wong, Eva.

1998        The Shambala Guide to Taoism.  Boston:  Shambala.  (Chaps. 2, 3, 4, 5, 9, 10)

 

Lai, Chi-Tim.

2003    “Taoism in China Today:  1980-2002”  in Religion in China Today.  Daniel L.

Overmyer, ed.  Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press.

Week Four      January 30 and February 1

II.  Introduction of Buddhism to China

Translation of Scriptures, Buddhist Sects, Monastic Life, Buddhism and Lay People

 

Ching, Julia.

1993    “Scripture and Hermeneutics:  Buddhism’s Entry to China”  and “Mysticism and Devotion:  Buddhism Becomes Chinese”  in Chinese Religions.  Orbis Books. 

 

Kohn, Sherab Chodzin.

2003    “The Life of the Buddha”  in The Buddha and His Teachings.  Samuel Bercholz and Sherab Chodzin Kohn, eds.  Berkeley:  Shambala Books.

 

Birnbaum, Raoul.

2003    “Buddhist China at the Century’s Turn”  in Religion in China Today.  Daniel L.

Overmyer, ed.  Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press.

 

Week Five                   February 6 and 8

III.  Late Imperial State Ritual System

Emperor and Officials in Late Imperial China:  Official Sacrifices, Confucian Cult, and City Gods

 

Zito, Angela.

1997    “Sacrificial Spaces” in Body & Brush : Grand Sacrifice As Text/Performance in Eighteenth-Century China. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

 

Yang, C.K.

1967    “Ethicopolitical Cults”  and “State Control of Religion”  in Religion in Chinese Society.  Berkeley:  University of California Press.

 

Week Six                     February 13 and 15

 

Monday Feb. 13: Midterm Exam in class

 

Wednesday Film Showing:  “Han Xin’s Revenge:  a Daoist Mystery”  Directed by Patrice Fava.  Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique Images, 2005.

 

Week Seven    February 20 and 22

IV.  Popular Religion

Late Imperial and 20th century Ritual and Religious Life at the Grassroots

 

(February 20 – President’s Day Holiday)

 

Feuchtwang, Stephan.

2001        “Official and Local Cults”  in Popular Religion in China:  The Imperial Metaphor.  Richmond:  Curzon Press.

 

Watson, James L.

1985        “Standardizing the Gods:  the Promotion of T’ien Hou (Empress of Heaven) along the South China Coast, 960-1960”  in Popular Culture in Late Imperial China, David Johnson, Andrew Nathan, Evelyn Rawski, eds.  Berkeley:  University of California.

 

Yang, C.K.

1967    “Religion and Political Rebellion”  in Religion in Chinese Society.  Berkeley:  University of California Press.

 

Week Eight     February 27 and March 1

 

Dean, Kenneth.

2003    “Local and Community Religion in Contemporary Southeast China”  in Religion in China Today.  Daniel L. Overmyer, ed.  Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press.

V.  Modernity, Semi-colonialism, Nationalism and Communism

Christianity, Secularization, Nationalist Ideologies, Anti-Superstition Campaigns, Religious Persecution and Post-Mao Religious Revival

 

Duara, Prasenjit.

1991    “Knowledge and Power in the Discourse of Modernity: The Campaigns Against Popular Religion in Early Twentieth-Century China”  in Journal of Asian Studies, vol. 50, no. 1, pp. 67-83.

 

Welch, Holmes.

1972    “The Decimation of the Sangha”  in Buddhism Under Mao.  Cambridge:  Harvard University Press. 

 

Week Nine            March 6 and 8

 

DuBois, Thomas David.

2005    The Sacred Village: Social Change and Religious Life in Rural North China.  Honolulu:  University of Hawaii Press.

 

Chen, Nancy.

2003    “Healing Sects and Anti-cult Campaigns”  in Religion in China Today.  Daniel L. Overmyer, ed.  Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press.

Week Ten              March 13 and 15

VII.  Transnational Religious Movements and Media

Religious reforms, commercialization, and media

 

Yang, Mayfair.

2004    “Goddess across the Taiwan Straits:  Matrifocal Ritual Space, Nation-State, and Satellite Television Footprints”  in Public Culture, vol. 16, no. 2.

 

Huang, C. Julia.

2005   “The Compassion Relief Diaspora”  in Buddhist Missionaries in the Era of Globalization. edited by Linda Learman.  Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, pp. 185-209.

 

 

 

 

Final Essays Due:  Tues.  March 21, 5:00 pm, in my Religious Studies Dep’t mailbox, 3rd floor HSSB

 

Final Examination:  Monday March 20,  4-7 pm.