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Rel. 310: Death, hell and rebirth in Chinese history “A tour of the byways of the unseen realm, so that you will know of the retribution that follows upon sins….” – From the 5th century Mingxiang ji 冥祥記 |
K.E. Brashier ETC 203 Office hours: M 10-11, F 11-noon Spring 2017 |
Religious communication navigates between “imagistic” and “doctrinal” modes of religiosity,[1] between painture and parole that within the Western discourse have been regarded as the two “portals to the house of memory” ever since the thirteenth century. This course will utilize both of these portals as we focus on death – and more particularly, on hell – in late imperial China. In terms of painture, Chinese “hell scrolls” (dìyù juànzhóu 地獄卷軸) depict the bureaucratic underworld courts where sinners are tortured and viewers are treated to a morality play; they are an amalgamation of ethics, entertainment and an education on how the cosmos works, their purpose being to warn us about the certainties of karmic retribution. In this course, we will not only analyze the world’s largest online collection of such scrolls (our own!), we will also be contributing to the global knowledge of this genre by each of us producing original high-quality teaching videos to be incorporated into this website (www.hellscrolls.org).
In terms of parole, this course is also devoted to mastering the long textual tradition of visits to hell, beginning in the 2nd century BCE and ending in the 20th century CE. Some of these visits are three pages long; others are three hundred pages long. From sutras to fine literature, from opera scripts to popularly produced morality books, these textual encounters with hell will in turn inform our teaching videos, ensuring that they will be meaty contributions to the field of scholarship. We will of course be reading several available secondary studies on Chinese hell (and we’ll read some theory to apply to it as well), but the bulk of our reading in this course will be primary sources in translation.
I. Overview: A
long tradition on images and texts about hell
For most of its imperial history, China’s traditional entrance to hell has been at Fengdu, now a tourist town that in recent years has boasted dark dungeons filled with life-sized automatons being tortured under the angry gaze of the underworld’s ten kings. Yet Fengdu’s hell has fallen upon hard times, and the last time I was there, I saw demons covered in thick dust, their weapons missing from broken hands. A headless corpse rose out of his coffin, but his headless-ness was only because the wooden neck had snapped, his head still lying inside the coffin. Hell had gone to hell.
The two-dimensional representations of hell on hanging scrolls have not fared much better than their three-dimensional cousins. They have a long history, their earliest predecessors ranging from simply painted hand scrolls to elaborate artistic wall scrolls from the Tang (618-907) and Song (960-1279) dynasties respectively. They also have a rich contextual frame, from scores of texts about visiting hell to annual rituals giving respite to the damned and even to extremely famous folk operas that double as village exorcisms. Yet a combination of modernity, the Cultural Revolution and a disregard for these tattered-and-torn religious tools (rather than seeing these painted scrolls as artworks in their own right) has resulted in the loss of almost the whole genre. Our own collection of one hundred and thirty-three hell scrolls from the 18th to 21st centuries is merely a tiny remnant of a once-grand tradition.
The hell scrolls in our collection[2] range from cartoonish folk art to elaborate, painterly canvases, but most are hand-painted images that were manufactured at production-line artisan workshops. (We will pause to consider their production techniques as well.) Amidst the variety of styles and compositions, there are thematic constants. The first scroll depicts a sinner’s entrance into hell where his or her life is reviewed and punishments duly assigned; the last scroll is overseen by the Wheel-turning King as the now-tortured soul is allocated one of six forms of rebirth. In between, these scrolls not only chart the dead’s torturous journey, they reveal what people worried about, from arson, murder and theft to gossipy neighbors, corrupt officials and farmers who neglected to clean up after their livestock. In other words, these scrolls aren’t just about the “otherworld”; they also provide a unique access point to the world of the living in late imperial China – to their anxieties, their ethics and their stories.
What makes the Chinese hell scrolls special – and what first attracted me to this genre – is that they themselves combine painture and parole in their educating the laity and enforcing an ethic. Displaying both pictures and texts (the latter in the form of cartouches, couplets and admonishments), they merge the provocative, colorful aesthetics of the grotesque with the grander canonical message of karmic retribution that was well known from narratives and sutras. They force us to rethink our assumptions about how these media separately functioned to communicate a religious doctrine.
Stephen Teiser, author of The scripture on the ten kings and other works on Chinese hell, writes, “The Chinese Buddhist understanding of purgatory should also be a part of an unfortunately neglected side of Buddhist studies, the investigation of beliefs and practices distributed widely across a given culture.” Even though belief in these hells spanned most social classes, most regions and most religions in late imperial China, study of them has remained sparse. Our course will attempt to address this lacuna in Chinese and religious studies, not just for ourselves but – with the production of our teaching videos – for the rest of the world as well.
II.
Requirements
As you probably already know, this course will
probably be like no other course you’ve taken because
you won’t just be absorbing information about the colorful fiery realms of
Chinese hell, you’ll also be producing something real and tangible to teach
your colleagues across the world and into the future.
Our online study
collection of Chinese hell scrolls is used internationally, serving as (for
example) the basic introduction to Chinese underworld gods in Columbia
University’s “Asia for educators” website. Eileen Gardiner references us both
in her Buddhist hell anthology (which
we’ll be reading) as well as on her own website.
Stephen Teiser (a Princeton professor cited above and we’ll be reading one of his books, too) uses it
for his own undergraduate teaching purposes. Yet as well trafficked as it may
be, our website lacks an enjoyable-yet-thorough introduction to this
fascinating religious phenomenon. It’s a bit ... flat. As a group and with extensive
support from Computer and Information Services (CIS), we will remedy this
flatness by creating a playlist of high-quality teaching videos to introduce
this site to future visitors. I envision the resulting playlist as a resource
that teachers can assign as homework for their students, each teaching video on
that playlist introducing through visual image and spoken word a fundamental
feature of the late imperial Chinese hells. As you will see on the schedule
below, CIS will spend much time teaching us how to make high quality teaching
videos, and with their help, we will draw upon our thousands of images – all
for which we ourselves possess the copyright – and at the same time I will
spend this semester leading you through scores of primary sources so that, in
the end, you will have plenty of texts to marry to those images.
Hence in terms
of course requirements, many of them will be unique in nature. I’ll still
resort to several of my “standards” (e.g. exploratories), but in no other course have I ever included
“storyboards” and “rough cuts” among the evaluated materials.
·
Conference participation. I expect active participation every day, so please be fully prepared
for each conference, preparation consisting of both reading and thinking
about the materials. Appended to this syllabus are some suggestions on
conference dynamics. If conference does not seem to be going well in your
opinion, please talk to me, and we will endeavor to remedy the situation. I
seek your comments and take them very seriously. Because we are a small group,
full and thoughtful participation throughout will greatly affect our conference
dynamics.
·
Four exploratories. Most of you have had courses with me before and so know what
I mean by “exploratory,” but I attach a reminder to the back of this syllabus
anyway and urge you to re-read it. Because this is an upper
level course, I will allow you as a group to decide whether they will be
due a day in advance (so I can read through them and orchestrate our
discussion) or due in conference itself. If the latter, there is a price to pay
as you will be called on in conference to introduce your topic and lead us in
brief discussion on it. (When introducing your chosen topic, feel free to call
on people to read out passages, express opinions, etc.) Note that a couple of
these exploratories will be narrower in focus than
normal and are intent on getting you to apply the readings to our image
database. (I want you to get as familiar as possible with our database to
improve your video productions.)
|
A Niutou demon at Fengdu |
·
One guided tour as Niutou 牛頭.
Niutou or “Ox head” is one of the guards and guides
of the underworld, often depicted with a pitchfork or mace in hand and
leading the damned to their tortures. Near the end
of the semester when we reach the 1970s, I will ask each of you in turn to
serve as our Niutou to get our conference started.
As Niutou, you will become the guide for fifteen to
twenty minutes, leading us through either Hsuan
Hua’s sermons or the Taiwanese monks’ personal explorations of hell. You can
highlight what you think is important and point out significant principles at
work. A good Niutou will do three things: 1.
In brief
compass summarize the argument (five minutes); 2.
Contextualize
that argument in terms of our syllabus (five minutes); 3.
And give
your own argument (five+ minutes). As
your followers (a.k.a. torture victims), we will reverently ask you questions
after your tour. |
·
And finally Purgatory Pictures presents...
·
The storyboard. Your first
teaching video task will be to develop your theme on paper, preparing the
initial draft of your script that also exhibits a consciousness of the images,
the visual and audio manipulation techniques and so forth along with the
content. CIS will help us define the parameters for our storyboards. Note “our”
– I’m going to be learning and producing alongside
you! (Think of the storyboard as on par with the first formal paper.)
·
The rough cut. Here the
storyboard will be translated into the first attempt at a four- to five-minute
teaching video. Again CIS will help us define the
parameters, and we’ll spend some time as a group critiquing our work,
suggesting ways to then finally develop...
·
The final cut. This piece
will be your contribution to the Purgatory Pictures playlist.
·
The textual support. On the website,
each teaching video will also link to a supporting document that supplies all
the citations, bibliographic material, image links, external links and
suggested further readings. Furthermore, it will include an analytical essay on
the theme of your teaching video production that takes the reader well beyond
your script, contextualizing and analyzing your theme as fully as possible.
(Think of this essay as on par with a final paper. Please include a
self-addressed, stamped envelope if you want comments.)
III. Incompletes, absences and extensions –
the draconian stuff so PLEASE READ
As the great Warring States legalist Han Feizi warned, indulgent parents have rowdy kids and overly
lenient rulers have inefficient subjects; by extension, a permissive teacher
can’t maximize a student’s learning potential. By laying down the law now, we’ll also never need to raise it again in the future, and I
can pretend to be a kindly Confucian rather than a draconian legalist.
“An Incomplete [IN] is permitted in a course where the level of work done up to
the point of the [IN] is passing, but not all the work of a course has been
completed by the time of grade submission, for reasons of health or extreme
emergency, and for no other reason,” according to the Reed College Faculty Code
(V A). “The decision whether or not to grant an IN in a course is within the
purview of the faculty for that course.”
Like many of my colleagues, I read this as restricting incompletes to
acute, extreme emergencies and health crises that have a clear beginning date
and a relatively short duration only, that are outside the control of the
student, and that interrupt the work of a student who was previously making
good progress in a course. Incompletes cannot be granted to students unable to complete
coursework on time due to chronic medical conditions or other kinds of ongoing
situations in their academic or non-academic life. Accommodation requests need
to be timely and go through established channels.
Regular, prepared, and disciplined conferencing is intrinsic to this course,
and so at a certain point when too many conferences have been missed –
specifically more than six which translates into a “fail”
for the course – it would logically be advisable to drop or withdraw and to try
again another semester. There’s no shame in that.
Longer-term emergencies indeed happen, and you ought to make use of Student
Services when they do. In sum, I’ll help you out as
much as I can to get you across the finish line, but it’s the same finish line
for everyone and to be fair to your colleagues I need to have you there in the
race. To that end, I would ask that you
please email me whenever you are absent just to let me know you’re okay. (More and more students seem to be doing this
without prompting anyway, perhaps because we’ve all
become increasingly dependent upon virtual connectivity.)
I’m happy to give paper extensions for medical
problems and emergencies, and you should take advantage of the Health and
Counseling Center in such circumstances. Please note that here, too, the honor
principle provides a standard for expectations and behavior, meaning that none
of us (including myself) should resort to medical reasons when other things are
actually impeding our work. (Please just be honest. It’s as simple as that.) In non-medical situations, late
papers will still be considered, but the lateness will be taken
into account and no comments given. Ken’s Subjectivity Curve: The later it
is, the more subjective Ken becomes. It's a gamble. I’m not a legalist like Han Feizi,
but even the Confucians resorted to hard law when ritualized conduct and
exemplary leadership failed.
Karmic
retribution for missing a conference
IV. Syllabus
Introductory week
|
23 Jan |
Now hiring: A Chinese Virgil |
Introduction |
|
25 Jan |
First survey of our hellish terrain |
Familiarization with “Taizong’s hell:
A study collection of Chinese hell scrolls” at http://www.reed.edu/hellscrolls/ |
|
27 Jan |
Filming the fiery
landscape |
[with CIS] A day to learn the
theories behind creating a high-quality teaching video, overviewing the
process from storyboarding to final production. |
A psychological earthquake?
Medieval China imports hell and reincarnation in the 1st-6th
centuries
|
30 Jan |
First principles from our
perspective |
·
Teiser, The scripture of
the ten kings, 1-15 (Text). ·
Faure,
Unmasking Buddhism, 44-48 (Moodle). ·
Eberhard,
Guilt and sin in traditional China, 12-59 (Moodle). |
|
1 Feb |
First principles from their
perspective |
·
Gardiner
1-14, 19-28, 33-36 (Text). ·
The questions of King Milinda
(Handout). ·
The Bodhidharma anthology (Handout). ·
Go
to Kieschnick’s http://religiousstudies.stanford.edu/a-primer-in-chinese-buddhist-writings/, click “English translation
key for volume 2” and read pp. 15-21. |
|
3 Feb |
Hell in the Buddhist nikāya
Exploratories |
Dirghāgama ·
Go
to Kieschnick’s http://religiousstudies.stanford.edu/a-primer-in-chinese-buddhist-writings/, click “English translation
key for volume 2” and read pp. 1-14. Majjhima nikāya ·
Nānamoli, The middle length
discourses of the Buddha, o 168-173 (“Four kinds of
generation” and “The five destinations and Nibbāna”); o 1016-1028 (“Bālapandita sutta”); and o 1029-1036 (“Devadūta sutta”) (all on Moodle). Samyutta nikāya ·
Bodhi,
The connected discourses of the Buddha, o 700-705 (“Lakkhanasamyutta”)
(Moodle). Anguttara nikāya ·
Bodhi,
The numerical discourses of the Buddha, o 205 (“Stains”); o 233-237 (“Messengers”); o 331-335 (“A lump of salt”); o 465-468 (“Unshakable [through
“Darkness”]); o 1090-1094 (“Fire”); o 1452-1455 (“Kokālika”): and o 1544-1547 (“Similarity”) (all
on Moodle). |
|
6 Feb |
Hell in Lingbao Daoism |
·
Miller,
Doing time in Taoist hell, 1-57
(“Introduction” and “Scripture on the great precepts in the upper chapter of
the Numinous Treasure from the most high cavern of the
sublime on wisdom and the roots of sin”) (Moodle). ·
Miller,
Doing time in Taoist hell, 92-130
(“Scripture on the most high perfected being of the sublime unity explicating
the exhortations and precepts concerning the five sufferings of the three
lower paths [of existence]”) (Moodle). |
||
|
8 Feb |
Twenty-five visits to hell in early folklore |
Campany, Signs from the Unseen Realm (all on Moodle): |
||
|
·
5:
77-84 ·
6:84-86 ·
22:
112-114 ·
23:114-116 ·
26:
120-124 ·
30:
128-130 ·
35:
134-135 ·
44:
145-148 ·
45:
148-154 |
·
54:
160-162 ·
59:
167-168 ·
65:
174-180 ·
66:
180-183 ·
67:
183-184 ·
68:
184-185 ·
77:
194-196 ·
80:
197-199 |
·
92:
216-217 ·
102:
227-228 ·
104:
229-230 ·
115:
241-242 ·
116:
242-243 ·
118:
245-246 ·
119:
247-249 ·
125:
256-257 |
||
Hell in the 9th-13th
centuries
|
10 Feb |
Dunhuang and the earliest excavated hell scrolls I Exploratories |
·
Teiser, The scripture of
the ten kings, 19-84 (Text). |
|
13 Feb |
Dunhuang and the earliest excavated hell scrolls II |
·
Teiser, The scripture of
the ten kings, 87-121, 152-79 (Text). |
|
15 Feb |
Dunhuang and the earliest excavated hell scrolls III |
·
Teiser, The scripture of
the ten kings, 180-218 (Text). |
|
17 Feb |
Excavated hell narratives at Dunhuang Exploratories |
·
Teiser, The ghost festival
in medieval China, 48-54 (Moodle); ·
Gardiner,
Buddhist hell, 37-79 (Text). |
|
20 Feb |
Paintings and sculptures of hell in the 13th
century |
·
Ledderose, “The bureaucracy of hell,” in Ten thousand things, 163-85 (Moodle); ·
Howard,
Summit of treasures: Buddhist cave art
of Dazu, China, 1-10, 38-55 (Text
provided by Ken). |
|
22 Feb |
Project Day I |
[with CIS] A day to learn
pre-production techniques and storyboard development |
Hell in the 16th-18th
centuries
|
24 Feb |
Taizong goes to hell |
·
Yu
(trans.), The journey to the West,
214-55 (Moodle). ·
Lin
and Schulz (trans.), The tower of
myriad mirrors, 65-87 (Moodle). |
|
27 Feb |
Yue Fei goes to hell |
·
Yang
(trans.), General Yue Fei, 852-869
(Moodle). ·
Gardiner,
Buddhist hell, 113-156 (Text). |
Hell in the 19th
century
|
1 Mar |
Jade records I |
·
Gardiner,
Buddhist hell, 81-103 (Text). ·
Donnelly,
A journey through Chinese hell,
107-27 (Text provided by Ken). |
||||
|
3 Mar |
Jade records II |
·
Clarke,
The Yü-li or Precious records. Please read o the whole of the first hell
(pp. 233-269); o the whole of the tenth hell
(pp. 389-400); o the introductions to the rest
(e.g. the “exhortation,” the “address,” the “new
decree,” the “proviso” – i.e. anything that’s not a numbered anecdote); and o the following twenty-five
numbered anecdotes: |
||||
|
21 23 24 26 28 |
29 33 37 43 44 |
57 69 71 75 87 |
93 94 99 106 108 |
109 114 141 143 145 |
||
|
6 Mar |
Purgatory pictures I |
Storyboards due |
||||
|
8 Mar |
Project Day II |
[with CIS] A day to learn how to
gather media and using them in the project. |
||||
Secondary studies on Chinese
hell
|
10 Mar |
Counting and transferring merit |
·
Kohn,
“Counting good deeds and days of life,” 833-64 (Moodle); ·
Brokaw,
“Spiritual retribution and human destiny,” 425-36 (Moodle); ·
Mollier, “Karma and the bonds of kinship,” 171-181 (Moodle). |
|
20 Mar |
Bureaucracy, punishment and
Confucian mercantilism |
·
Cline
and Littlejohn, “The bureaucracy of hell: Moral prioritization and
quantification in Chinese tradition,” 9-28 (Handout). ·
Brook,
Bourgan and Blue, “Tormenting the dead,” in Death by a thousand cuts, 122-51 (Moodle). ·
Guo
Qitao, Ritual
opera and mercantile lineage, 103-132 (Moodle). |
|
22 Mar |
Locally defined or universal phenomenon? |
·
Mākandeya
purāna (Handout). ·
St. Patrick’s purgatory (Handout). ·
Baxter’s
A divine revelation of hell (Handout). |
|
24 Mar |
Project Day III |
[with CIS] A day to learn how to
edit. |
Saviors descend into hell in 18th-19th
century literature
|
27 Mar |
Guanyin |
·
Yű, “Miao-shan/Kuan-yin
as savior of beings in hell,” in Kuan-yin, 320-33
(Handout); ·
Idema,
“The precious scroll of Incense mountain, Part II,”
99-159 (Text provided by Ken). |
|
29 Mar |
Mulian I |
·
Grant
and Idema, “The precious scroll of the three lives
of Mulian,” in Escape
from blood pond, 3-31, 35-76 (Text). |
|
31 Mar |
Mulian II Exploratories |
·
Grant
and Idema, “The precious scroll of the three lives
of Mulian,” in Escape
from blood pond, 76-145 (Text). |
|
3 Apr |
Woman Huang |
·
Grant
and Idema, “Woman Huang recites the Diamond sutra,” in Escape from blood pond, 31-34, 147-229
(Text). |
Other 18th-20th
century collections of hell scrolls
|
5 Apr |
The Donnelly collection |
·
Donnelly,
A journey through Chinese hell,
8-105 (Text provided by Ken). |
|
7 Apr |
Purgatory pictures II |
Rough cuts due |
|
10 Apr |
Workshop day |
A day to piece
together our teaching videos |
Hell in the 20th
century
|
12 Apr |
Dizang in 1970s’ preaching I Niutou: ____ |
· Zhiru, The making of a savior bodhisattva, 107-17. · Hsűan Hua, Sūtra of the past vows of Earth Store Bodhisattva, 17-89 (Text provided by Ken). |
|
14 Apr |
Dizang in 1970s’ preaching II Niutou: ____ |
· Hsűan Hua, Sūtra of the past vows of Earth Store Bodhisattva, 90-166 (Text provided by Ken). |
|
17 Apr |
Dizang in 1970s’ preaching III Niutou: ____ |
· Hsűan Hua, Sūtra of the past vows of Earth Store Bodhisattva, 167-227 (Text provided by Ken). |
|
19 Apr |
Touring hell in the 1970s I Niutou: ____ |
· Pas, “Journey to hell: A new report of shamanistic travel to the courts of hell,” Journal of Chinese religions 18 (1990): 43-60 (ATLA); · Orzech, “Mechanisms of violent retribution in Chinese hell narratives,” Contagion 1 (1994): 111-26 (http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/contagion/summary/v001/1.orzech.html); · Shahar, Crazy Ji: Chinese religion and popular literature, 189-95. · Voyages to hell, through Chap. 4 (pp. 1-41) (http://www.voyagestohell.com/). |
|
21 Apr |
Touring hell in the 1970s II Niutou: ____ |
· Courts 1-3, Voyages to hell, chaps. 5-21 (pp. 42-158) (http://www.voyagestohell.com/). |
|
24 Apr |
Touring hell in the 1970s III Niutou: ____ |
· Courts 4-6, Voyages to hell, chaps. 22-41 (pp. 159-290) (http://www.voyagestohell.com/). |
|
26 Apr |
Touring hell in the 1970s IV Niutou: ____ |
· Courts 7-10, Voyages to hell, chaps. 42-61 (pp. 290-429) (http://www.voyagestohell.com/). |
|
28 Apr |
Purgatory pictures
III |
Final cuts due Your first screening of their final screaming. |
|
10 May |
|
Textual supports due (with
SASE if you want comments) |
Fresh from “Make-up,” Yama is ready
for his close up.
V. Consciousness of conference technique
Much
of our educational system seems designed to discourage any attempt at finding
things out for oneself, but makes learning things others have found out, or
think they have, the major goal. –
Anne Roe, 1953.
At times it is useful to step back and
discuss conference dynamics, to lay bare the bones of conference communication.
Why? Because some Reed conferences succeed; others do not. After each
conference, I ask myself how it went and why it progressed in that fashion. If
just one conference goes badly or only so-so, a small storm cloud forms over my
head for the rest of the day. Many students with whom I have discussed
conference strategies tell me that most Reed conferences don't
achieve that sensation of educational nirvana, that usually students do not
leave the room punching the air in intellectual excitement. I agree. A
conference is a much riskier educational tool than a lecture, and this tool
requires a sharpness of materials, of the conferees and of the conference
leader. It can fail if there is a dullness in any of the three. Yet whereas
lectures merely impart information (with a "sage on the stage"),
conferences train us how to think about and interact with that information
(with a "guide on the side"). So when it does work....
The
content of what you say in conference obviously counts most of all, so how do
you determine in advance whether you’ve got something
worthwhile to say? The answer is simple if you don’t
just quickly read the assigned materials and leave it unanalyzed. So how do you
analyze it? A colleague and friend at Harvard, Michael Puett,
writes, “the
goal of the analyst should be to reconstruct the debate within which such
claims were made and to explicate why the claims were made and what their
implications were at the time." A
religious or philosophical idea doesn’t get written
down if everyone already buys it; it’s written down because it’s news. As new,
we can speculate on what was old, on what stimulated this reaction. Think of these texts as arguments and not
descriptions, and as arguments, your job is to play the detective, looking
for contextual clues and speculating on implications. I will give you plenty of
historical background, and if you look at these texts as arguments, you will
get a truer picture.
In
addition to content, there are certain conference dynamics that can serve as a
catalyst to fully developed content. I look for the following five features
when evaluating a conference:
1.
Divide the allotted time by the
number of conference participants. That resulting time should equal the
leader's ideal speaking limits. (I talk too much in conference. Yet when I say
this to some students, they sometimes tell me that instructors should feel free
to talk more because the students are here to acquire that expertise in the
field. So the amount one speaks is a judgment call,
but regardless, verbal monopolies never work.)
2.
Watch the non-verbal dynamism. Are
the students leaning forward, engaging in eye contact
and gesturing to drive home a point such that understanding is in fact taking on a physical dimension? Or are
they silently sitting back in their chairs staring at anything other than
another human being? As a conference leader or participant, it's
a physical message you should always keep in mind. Leaning forward and engaging
eye contact is not mere appearance; it indeed helps to keep one focused if
tired.
3.
Determine whether the discourse is
being directed through one person (usually the conference leader) or is
non-point specific. If you diagram the flow of discussion and it looks like a
wagon wheel with the conference leader in the middle, the conference has, in my
opinion, failed. If you diagram the flow and it looks like a jumbled,
all-inclusive net, the conference is more likely to have succeeded.
4.
Determine whether a new idea has been
achieved. By the end of the conference, was an idea created that was new to
everyone, including the conference leader? Did several people contribute a Lego
to build a new thought that the conferees would not have been able to construct
on their own? This evaluation is trickier because sometimes a conference may
not have gone well on first glance but a new idea evolved
nonetheless. The leader must be sure to highlight that evolution at conference
end.
5.
Watch for simple politeness.
"Politeness" means giving each other an opportunity to speak,
rescuing a colleague hanging out on a limb, asking useful questions as well as
complimenting a new idea, a well-said phrase, a funny joke.
If you ever feel a conference only
went so-so, then instead of simply moving on to the next one, I would urge you, too, to evaluate the conference using your
own criteria and figuring out how you (and I) can make the next one a more
meaningful experience. Preparation is
not just reading the assigned pages; it’s reading and
then thinking through something in that reading, developing a thought and
getting it ready to communicate to someone else.
In
the end, as long as you are prepared and feel
passionate about your work, you should do well, and if passion ever fails, grim
determination counts for something.
VI. The exploratory
Sometimes conferences sing. Yet just
when I would like them to sing glorious opera, they might merely hum a bit of country-western. After my first year of teaching at Reed, I
reflected upon my conference performance and toyed with various ideas as to how
to induce more of the ecstatic arias and lively crescendos, and I came up with
something I call an "exploratory."
Simply
put, an exploratory is a one-page, single-spaced piece in which you highlight
one thought-provoking issue that caught your attention in the materials we are
considering. This brief analysis must show thorough reading and must show your own thoughtful extension –
·
Your own informed, constructive criticism of the author
(and not just a bash-and-trash rant);
·
Your own developed, thoughtful
question (perhaps even inspired by readings from other classes) that raises
interesting issues when seen in the light of the author's text;
·
Your own application of theory and
method to the primary source;
·
Your own personal conjecture as to
how this data can be made useful; or (best of all)
·
Your own autonomous problem that you
devised using the same data under discussion.
I am not here looking for polished
prose or copious (or any) footnotes – save all that for our formal papers. (I
do not return exploratories with comments unless a
special request is made.) Exploratories are not full, open-heart surgeries performed
on the text. Instead, exploratories tend to be
somewhat informal but focused probes on one particular aspect
in which you yourself can interact with the text and can enter into the
conversation.
What
is not an exploratory? It is not
merely a topic supported by evidence from the book, nor is it a descriptive
piece on someone else's ideas, nor is it a general book report in which you can
wander to and fro without direction. Bringing in
outside materials is allowed, but the exploratory is not a forum for ideas
outside that day's expressed focus. (Such pieces cannot be used in our
conference discussions.) Also, don’t give into the temptation of just reading the first few
pages of a text and then writing your exploratory. (What would you conclude if you received a lot of exploratories that all coincidentally tackled an issue in
the first five or six pages of the reading?)
It is instead a problematique, an issue with
attitude.
The
best advice that I can give here is simply to encourage you to consider why I am requesting these exploratories from you: I want to see what ignites your
interest in the text so I can set the
conference agenda. That is why they are due the evening before a conference. Thus
late exploratories are of no use. (Being handed a
late exploratory is like being handed your salad after you've
eaten dessert and are already leaving the restaurant.) I base roughly a third to half my conferences
on exploratories, and I will use them to draw you in,
parry your perspective against that of another, and build up the discussion
based on your views. Exploratories help me turn the
conference to issues that directly interest you. They often lead us off on
important tangents, and they often return us to the core of the problem under
discussion. So if you are struggling with finding
"something to say," simply recall why I ask for these exploratories in the first place. Is there something in the
text you think worthy of conference time? Do you have an idea you want to take
this opportunity to explore? Here is your chance to draw our attention to it.
Your perspectives are important, and if you have them crystallized on paper in
advance, they will be easier to articulate in conference.
Since
I began using exploratories, most students have
responded very favorably. Students like the fact that it is a different form of
writing, a bit more informal and more frequent, somewhat akin to thinking
aloud. It forces one not just to read a text but to be looking for something in
that text, to engage that text actively. And it increases the likelihood that
everyone will leave the conference singing Puccini.