Dr. Tracy Steele

Office Phone:(936)294-1480

Office: AB4, Room 461

Home Phone: (281)292-1665
Department Secretary's Office: (936)294-1475
E-MAIL ADDRESS: his_tls@shsu.edu
Web Address: http://www.shsu.edu/~his_tls/

Contact

E-mail Contact - Contact will be primarily through the internet. I check my e-mail regularly, but will definitely be online during my campus office hours below. Students should expect to set aside one evening a week to join a chatroom discussion on Blackboard for this class. These discussion periods will last between 1 and 2 hours. Any student who is unable to participate in a “live” chatroom discussion, will have questions posted on Blackboard on discussion board. Once the course begins, I will ask students to select an evening to join a discussion. I have found in past semesters that this is one of the best ways to re-create the atmosphere of a seminar. It allows contact among and between students and professor as well as a full discussion of topics. I will be willing to devote at least two evenings per week to this type of discussion in order to meet the needs of all the students. 

Telephone contact – I have provided both my office and home phone numbers. Some questions are easier to resolve via telephone than internet. Please feel to call either number - I enjoy having a chance to talk to students in internet courses.

My campus office hours for Fall 2009 are:

Tuesday/Thursday: 9:00 to 9:30; 12:15 to 2:00, and 3:30 to 4:30

I am also available by appointment.  

Blackboard and Computer Support

The telephone number for the Help Desk is (936)294-1950.   Sam Houston State University's Help Desk is open from 8:00 AM to 5:00 PM Central Standard Time, Monday through Friday.  Jacob Spradlin is in charge of the Blackboard system.  His number is 936-294-3929.  I would recommend that you call him if you have a serious problem with the system.  I have found in the past few years of teaching this online course that when you have problems with Blackboard, I usually am experiencing the same problems and it is because Blackboard is down for updating.  These problems are normally sorted out within a few hours, certainly within 24 hours.

Getting Started -- First Steps for this Class 

1. Please ALWAYS use the same e-mail address throughout the duration of this course in order to avoid confusion.  Students must use their student accounts to participate in the course via blackboard.

2. Any updates to the syllabus will be posted on Blackboard and students will be sent e-mail notification as well. Please check your student e-mail account regularly (at least once or twice a week). 

3. This is an intensive course schedule and it will require a great deal of commitment and self-discipline, but will be rewarding.

4. Please provide me with the physical address where you wish to receive your graded course work from Dr. Steele (via the US Post Office).

5. Please inform Dr. Steele by August 28 which evening you prefer for the weekly discussion. Please note if you are abroad and will have to respond to discussion board instead. Please try to provide at least two nights that would normally work for your schedule. Understandably, there may be some weeks when students may conflicts and will have to join the discussion board on Blackboard instead.

6. Download the Template for the Student Reading Discussion Guide from “Assignments” on Blackboard. These templates will be used for each book.

Course Texts

Please note that all these texts are available either through Amazon or can be obtained through the library at interlibrary loan. I informed the librarian responsible for the history collection of the books selected for this course. Please note that (first) or (sixth) to the left of the author’s name indicates the order in which the books will be read for this course.

(first) Jonathan Fenby, Modern China: The Fall and Rise of a Great Power, 1850 to the Present, Ecco, 2008

(third) Wenqian Gao, Zhou Enlai: The Last Perfect Revolutionary, Public Affairs, 2008 (The university library is ordering the online version of this book.)

(sixth) Chaozhu Ji, The Man on Mao's Right: From Harvard Yard to Tiananmen Square, My Life Inside China's Foreign Ministry, Random House, 2008

(fourth) Roderick MacFarquhar and Michael Schoenhals, Mao's Last Revolution, Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2008

(seventh) Philip P. Pan, Out of Mao's Shadow: The Struggle for the Soul of a New China, Simon & Schuster, 2008

(Second) Jay Taylor, The Generalissimo: Chiang Kai-shek and the Struggle for Modern China, Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2009

(fifth) Ziyang Zhao (Author), Pu Bao(Editor), Renee Chiang (Editor), Adi Ignatius (Editor), Prisoner of the State: The Secret Journal of Premier Zhao Ziyang, Simon & Schuster, 2009

Important Dates for Fall 2009

August 24  MONDAY. Daytime on-campus classes begin. Late Registration, process class schedule changes. Refer to the Schedule of Classes for details and deadlines. Monday Night (MN) classes begin (on-campus and off-campus).

August 29  FRIDAY.  Please inform Dr. Steele of which day of the week works best for you for an evening discussion (they will usually start at 7 PM and last an hour or two).

August 31  MONDAY. Last day to register and to process schedule changes.

September 7  MONDAY. Labor Day. Holiday for students and faculty.

September 9  WEDNESDAY. Twelfth Class Day. Last day to drop with a "Q" and receive 100% refund.

September 9  WEDNESDAY. Degree applications to filed in Registrar's Office by students graduating in December.

October 9  FRIDAY. Submit draft thesis/dissertation to Library for format and style review.

November 6   FRIDAY. Last day to complete a public defense of the thesis/dissertation.

November 18  WEDNESDAY. Last day to submit complete, defended and signed thesis/dissertation to the appropriate academic dean's office.

November 20  FRIDAY. Last day to submit final thesis/dissertations (defended and signed) and Route Sheet to the Director of the Library.

November 24  TUESDAY. Thanksgiving holidays for students and faculty begin at 9:00 p.m. Residence halls close at 10:00 p.m. Last day to make all final copies of thesis/dissertation and submit to the NGL for binding. Last day to submit Route Sheet to the Dean of Graduate Studies.

November 25, 26, 27  WEDNESDAY, THURSDAY, FRIDAY. Thanksgiving holidays for students and faculty.

December 11  FRIDAY. Last Class Day. Last day to resign. Last day to drop Fall Semester courses without grade of F.

December 14, 15, 16, 17  MONDAY, TUESDAY, WEDNESDAY, THURSDAY. Final examinations (includes Monday Night (MN), Tuesday Night (TuN), Wednesday Night (WN) and Thursday Night (ThN) final examinations).

December 18, 19  FRIDAY AND SATURDAY. TENTATIVE. Commencement, Bernard G. Johnson Colisuem.

December 21  MONDAY. 9:00 a.m. Deadline for filing grades with the Registrar's Office. Fall Semester Ends.

Catalog Description for HIS 591 Asian History. The topics for this course will vary from semester to semester among such subjects as the diplomatic, political, social, economic and intellectual history of specific geographical areas in Asia, i.e. East Asia, the Subcontinent, and South East Asia. Credit 3.

This semester the course will focus on modern China from 1850. The books selected range from academic monographs, histories written by journalists as well as biographies and autobiographies. All seven books have been published in the last two years and represent the latest thinking and interpretation of Chinese history. China is a rising power in the twenty first century. This course will explore how a country “humiliated” by the so-called unequal treaties of the nineteenth century, followed by a century of revolution and self-inflicted pain and suffering from the Great Leap Forward and the Great Proletariat Cultural Revolution, emerged under Deng Xiaoping after 1978 to where it is today. This course is designed to appeal to all graduate students irrespective of whether or not they have a background in Chinese or Asian history.

Goals:

1. Gaining familiarity with the latest historiography in modern Chinese history.

2. Improving writing and analytical skills.

3. Applying factual knowledge and interpretation to the today’s headline news and China’s emergence as a world power (debatable).

Main Text : Modern China: The Fall and Rise of a Great Power, 1850 to the Present by Jonathan Fenby. The author is a journalist who presently writes on China for the Guardian (http://www.guardian.co.uk). This is the first time that I will use his relatively new text for this course and it was selected because it is written in a lively manner that engages both academics as well as non specialists. My assumption is that there are students in this course who do not have a background in Chinese history. The first five weeks of this course are designed to provide students with a general background of Chinese history since 1850. Fenby’s book will do this quite nicely. It is so beautifully written that it will not bore any students who already have some background in China’s history.

Student Reading Discussion Guides

Modern China (25%) – There will not be a book review submitted for this text.

Remaining six books: (10%) – Each of these books have book reviews assigned.

Students are required to read all the chapters in each part of Fenby’s book, but each student is only required to write two Student Reading Discussion Guides for each Part (the main text is divided into 6 parts although the last one is quite short). Students will sign up on Blackboard for the two they want that week. Students may no select the same chapter to do the Student Reading Discussion Guide for until all the chapters in that part of the book have been selected. Students should post their Student Reading Discussion Guides to Blackboard’s Discussion Board on Monday of each week by 5 PM Central Time. Students will receive 5 points for completing both chapters, participating in the live chatroom (or discussion board). Points will be deducted if they are posted late or if a student misses a weekly discussion, etc. Student Reading Discussion Guides will be available under Blackboard’s Assignments. Please note that Parts 5 and 6 will be done in the same week.

All Student Reading Discussion Guides for this text should be posted to Blackboard's Discussion Board by Monday afternoons by 5:00 PM (with the exception of September 7 which is Labor Day) in the week it is to be discussed by the class.

Students will complete Student Reading Discussion Guides for only 1 chapter of each of the following books for a total of 10% of this section of the grade.

 Due Dates for for Gao, Ji, MacFarquhar/Schoenhals, Pan, Taylor, &  Zhao (et al)

Book Reviews: 60%

Please post your book reviews to Blackboard and e-mail to Dr. Steele at his_tls@shsu.edu.  Each book review book is worth 10% of the student's final grade. Each book review should be between 800 and 850 words, no more and no less.

1.   A book review is not simply an overview of a book. It is an analysis. You should give a very, very brief introduction to the author’s thesis. You should discuss how the author sets about proving his or her thesis. You should discuss how well the author proves his thesis and the quality the argument as well as its sources and documentation. You may note how readable the text may be as well as the overall quality (ie, are there numerous typos although I would not expect that to be a problem with these texts) including presentation and look. You should also discuss to who this book would be of interest, for example, a specialist or a student (possibly no one!).

2. Heading Sample:

Publishing, Culture, and Power in Early Modern China. Chow, Kai-Wing. Stanford:  Stanford University Press, 2004. 397 pp. $49.50. ISBN 0-8047-3367-8

Tracy Steele, Sam Houston State University

3. You should consult Jules Benjamin’s A STUDENTS ONLINE GUIDE TO HISTORY chapter that discusses writing book reviews at: http://www.bedfordstmartins.com/history/benjamin/con_index.htm

Grading:

Online Discussions and Student Reading Discussion Guides for Modern China: 30%

Online Discussions and Student Reading Discussion Guides for 6 books: 10%
Book Reviews for Gao, Ji, MacFarquhar/Schoenhals, Pan, Taylor,  & Zhao: 60%
Final Grade: 100%

The semester will come to a close sooner than we think.  Therefore, students must keep up with assignments and due dates.  All assignments must be turned in by the posted due date and time.

Please notify me immediately if you have experienced some sort of trauma such as illness or car accident that will prevent your from finishing the course work within the semester.  With the permission of the department chair, terms for an IP (extension for one semester which will turn to an F at the end of the following semester if the course work is not completed) may be worked out and new due dates set.  Otherwise, the student will receive the grade as it stands at the end of the semester even if all course work has not been submitted.

Please allow at least one week before you contact me regarding grades for each assignment. 

All assignments will be awarded a letter grade based on the quality of the student's work.  Factors that are included in the grade are: punctuality, grammar, spelling, accuracy and interpretation.  This letter grade translates into a number grade which will appear online at Gradebook on Blackboard.

Grade Scale: Letter Grade and Percentages

Requirements for all written assignments submitted directly to Dr. Steele at his_tls@shsu.edu and posted on blackboard under discussion board:

Written assignments should be typed, double-spaced, Arial font, one inch margins, and in 12 pitch with page numbers.  Each paragraph should begin with an indentation (tab) of five spaces.  Written assignments must be submitted in Microsoft Word.  Proper attribution for sources is required.  Assignments will be marked down by up to twenty percent for egregious typos and grammatical errors.  If the same typos and grammatical errors continue to appear in various lessons, the lessons will be returned by Dr. Steele for corrections before a grade will be issued.

Students MUST activate their university e-mail account to use in conjunction with Blackboard. If you do not wish to use SamMail, you can have it forwarded to an email address you do use. To do this, follow the steps in the E-Mail Forwarding menu on SamInfo.

Hints on Grammar:

A sentence is supposed to convey a complete thought in a rational and organized way.  A number of sentences grouped together should contribute to a basic idea or theme that is the foundation of a paragraph.
http://www.bartleby.com/141/
http://webster.commnet.edu/grammar/

Writing Center
Students are strongly recommended to take their written assignments to the Writing Center in Wilson 114 to be previewed before submission.  Online students may submit their assignments for review online.   You will need to complete the assignment in advance of the due date in order to give the Writing Center time to review your assignment.
telephone number is 294-3680,
e-mail: wctr@shsu.edu
web address: http://www.shsu.edu/~wctr/

Course Policies

Academic Dishonesty

All students are expected to engage in all academic pursuits in a manner that is above reproach. Students are expected to maintain complete honesty and integrity in the academic experiences both in and out of the classroom. Any student found guilty of dishonesty in any phase of academic work will be subject to disciplinary action. The University and its official representatives may initiate disciplinary proceedings against a student accused of any form of academic dishonesty including, but not limited to, cheating on an examination or other academic work which is to be submitted, plagiarism, collusion and the abuse of resource materials. Please see the following web address at the Student Guidelines at http://www.shsu.edu/students/guide/dean/codeofconduct.html

For additional information on what constitutes plagiarism, please see Jules Benjamin's (A Student's Guide to History) discussion of plagiarism.

ADA Accommodations
Student requests for accommodations under the Americans with Disabilities Act must be initiated by the student.  A student seeking accommodations should contact the Counseling Center and Services for Students with Disabilities (SSD) in a timely manner.  Any student who may require an accommodation under the provisions of the Americans with Disabilities Act should contact the instructor on this matter as soon as possible.

Copyright Statement
The materials presented in this course are copyrighted. Reproduction of class notes for commercial purposes without the express permission of the copyright holder is prohibited.

Web Addresses 

Local Places of Interest: Forbidden Gardens,  Jade Buddha Temple, Museum of Fine Arts Houston

The People's Daily Online http://www.peopledaily.com.cn/english/
China Daily http://chinadaily.com.cn.net/ 

The Association of Asian Studies:  http://www.aasianst.org/

Southwest Conference on Asian Studies: http://www.trinity.edu/org/swcas/home.html

The University of Texas at Austin: http://asnic.utexas.edu/asnic/index.html

Pronounciation Guide: If you want to know how to pronounce a place name or proper name please try this web site sponsored by the Voice of America: http://names.voa.gov/index.cfm

Embassy of the People's Republic of China in the U.S.A.   http://www.china-embassy.org/eng/index.html
Permanent Mission of the PRC to the United Nations  http://www.china-un.org/eng/index.html
Chinese History Web Site: http://campus.northpark.edu/history/WebChron/China/China.html