Final Essay-

Final essay Reflect on the seminar experience in a 250-500 word essay.

Discuss how you intend to incorporate the course into your teaching.

Possible topics you may wish to address include attitudes, approaches, and materials.

Which issues or ideas raised in the seminar are of greatest relevance to your courses and your students?

Your unit or essay will be shared with other teachers via the web.

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The summer “Crossing Boundaries in East Asia Summer 2020” USC East Asia Seminar class has been a refresher course as well as a more comprehensive introduction to Korean, Chinese, and Buddhist influences in global history. The enthusiastic delivery of the experts made, what would have been a boring subject, enjoyable.

Of note is Dr. Lori Meeks’ discourse on the history of Buddhism and its various schools of thought. Dr. Meeks took what would have been a hum drum topic and made it very engaging.

Dr. Dru Gladney gave an exhilarating, highly informative video and lecture on the New Silk Road “Belt and Road Initiative”. There were plenty of resources to use with students and the format of the course was very well organized.

As was the case with past lectures by Professor Jennifer Jung-Kim, she enlightened us with in depth information about Korean history and its global phenomenon that is K-POP. I am grateful for the fact that we focused more on Korean culture, though inevitably, we delved further into Chinese history.

The final videos and lecture by both Sheila Melvin and Jindong Cai put a flourish on the course content as they informed us about Chinese culture, its addiction to Beethoven and how they eventually saved Classical music genre and symphonic performance from near extinction, to blessing the music world with Chinese interpretation of Classical favorites.

One wonders why, out of all classical composers: List, Bach, Hayden, and Vivaldi, what is it about Beethoven that became an essential part of the Chinese zeitgeist? Is the music of Beethoven a metaphor for the history of the Han people, its struggle to unite as a nation?  Then, after a brutal Cultural Revolution, to emerge as one of the world’s leading economies and political powers with an Industrial Revolution that took only ten years, almost fifteen fewer years than that of the United States?

I appreciated Professor Dube and Catherine Gao's  moderation of the ZOOM meetings as well as the overall format for this course. There are more than enough resources to use for students of all ages, and for that, I thank you.

I will see you at the next seminar.

Cheryl Watson