[Alexis Marianiello]

These lectures and readings were quite full of information and potential connections to my classrom. 

 

As Tom said above, there is a great opportunity to draw a connection between the historical silk route and other important trade routes and the BRI. 

 

I find that my students (and myself if I'm being transparent) struggle to wrap their heads around much Asian history. I believe the non-familiarity of Chinese words and names (I did a little bit of reading on the ways that the English characters used to represent sounds from the different Chinese characters are not always prounounced as we would expect them to be) and a lack of desire to familiarize with them can contribute to a resistance to learning and remembering. Additionally, the unfamiliarity that many of us have with historical Chinese culture can contribute as well, I believe. 

 

After reading and hearing about the Uyghur Muslims in China and the BRI, I am wondering whether a non-chronological world history class would encourage students interest and investment in parts of the world that are usually overlooked by the curriculum, by teachers, and by students. Students may not be familiar with the teachings of the Muslim religion or the inner workings of the PRC, but they will certainly understand tensions between government and minority groups, as well as infrastructure projects, and even trade to an extent. Also, teaching about world religions through a modern lense (rather than a historical or "discovery" lense) could also foster more authentic connections for students. 

[Alexis Marianiello]

In my course, I always have students begin with a mini-unit on the major world religions. Although all of the religions that we speak about were founded and spread before the chronological start of my class, it's important that the students undertand the tenets of each religion as those religions are often at the forefront of major historical events, eras, and motivations. 

 

 

I really appreciate all of this as background information for myself; thinking about buddhism in this new, deep light has sparked new ideas of how I can teach religion in a deeper way in my classroom. 

 

One of the things you spoke about in the lecture and that was about the challenges of spreading the Buddhist religion to new places that already had belief systems, and some of the things entailed such as the need to translate the texts. I would now pose this question to my students: what challenges did you think Buddhism (or another religion) may have faced in its growth? Different groups of studnets could look more deeply at one religion and its growth, and share the information with their classmates. 

 

I engaged my roommates in a discussion about Buddhism yesterday evening after watching the lectures and beginning my reading, and we came to the consesus that Buddhism (perhaps more-so than other religions) can coexist with others. My roomate (who was raised in the Reforming Jewish faith) feels connected to Buddhism as well. So many qualities of Buddhism (it's ascetism, non-violent philosophy, non-worship) make it so that people can follows the ways and observe another religion as well. (This was all our opinion, of course.) However, this inspired me to want to ask my students: can someone observe two religions at one time? I like to pose discussion questions to the students as a group so that they can bounce off of each other. This year, I may pose this as a question in which they can respond to each other on a discussion board instead. 

 

As I continue to read I'd like to pose this question: most curriculum that I have seen classifies buddhism as non-theistic. This seems to be correct in the sense that there is no worship of gods, but as I learn more it seems apparent to me that gods exist in the Buddhist universe. Are we doing a disservice to our students be oversimplifying this?

[Alexis Marianiello]

Unfortunately, when I opened up the first PDF, it took me direcly from this page and deleted what I had here regarding the two lectures, but I will do my best to recreate my original response. 

 

For the most part, introducing K-Pop into my classroom would be new learning, rather than a way for students to connect what they know and like to what we learn in the classroom. I teach in a rural, isolated school that is not very diverse. Our student population is almost exclusively Black or White, and are not well-versed in culture that is not "theirs." Furthermore, some of my students will be outright hostile toward unknown cultures. I like to incorporate a lot of resources and activities that show my students the world beyond their community, and particularly I like to focus on resources that they might be able to relate to their own culture. (For example, we spend time inquiring as to similarities between different world religions; the students are often shocked at how many commanilities there are between their religion (or whichever is most familiar to them) and religions that seem "strange." And so, while I'm not sure that I could use K-Pop in the sense that my students are already familiar with it, exposing the students to K-Pop and pop culture from other countries could be an interesting entry activity for students, giving them perspective on how different societies around the world may have percieved other cultures as interaction increased between them through trade and other ways. 
 

Soft power in general, however, is an extremely interesting concept that was playing a role in international relations before the term was used/introduced. This report (https://softpower30.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/The-Soft-Power-30-Report-2019-1.pdf) has some intersting portions. I did not read the entire thing, but I did read the beginning and skim. Soft power is a concept that could be introduced at the beginning of the course, and students could be helped to understand the abstract concept by thinking of it in terms of the U.S. Using this resource (or a portion of it) is also a good opportunity to coach students in being discerning of data and text that they are provided. Students should look at these conclusions with a skeptical eye. 

 

I, personally, was surprised to find that the U.S. was ranked 4th in soft power last year. Although the U.S. obviously continues to play an important role in the global economy, I understand the U.S. is not viewed positively in the eyes of the international community. The study was done by U.S. groups, so that could account for bias. It is not neccesarily so, but that is the kind of critical thinking that I believe the students could engage with when presented with the concept of soft power. Nye lists the three contributions to soft power as attractiveness of its cultural, political values, and  foreign policy. The report that I linked here includes multiple other factors (some of which come from polling data) such as liveability and education among others. It is clear between the two sources, however, that soft power (as the "soft" implies) is not neccesarily interpreted consisently. As Nye puts it, it is "elusive . . . because its measurement is a formidable challenge."

 

It is also important to note that only one Asian countries (Japan) was ranked within the top 10 for soft power; the remainder were European or North American countries born from European colonization. 

In Nye's work, he mentions early on the ideas of sticks, carrots, and soft power. It's an interesting perspective (and also reminds me of the different ways that teachers can hold influence over their classrooms) and can relate to any period in history. 

 

As far as Korea today in general goes, it is a great example of globalization and could be used to show students that globalization (even as we learn it in school) is not just the way that economies and governments collide, but the way that we share culture among each other and how that culture can influence on a large and small scale.

 

Like most of the readings/lectures today, Choi's "Hallyu 2.0" is largely outside of the scope of my world history course. That doesn't mean that important lessons about cultural perceptions cannot be borrowed for my own classroom, however. As Choi introduces the topic, speaking on how to determine what is Hallyu and what is not, I started thinking about the cultural phenomena here in the U.S. that we sometimes struggle to define, or disagree with others on how to define.  This article was an intersting background reading for me as a teacher, but I don't see its place in my classroom as a highly analytical and challenging read. I can't wait to read through other comments though, and see how others might incorporate it. 

[Alexis Marianiello]

Really interesting - both of these are ways I hadn't considered using Qian's work. 

[Alexis Marianiello]

"What's a motivation to cross boundaries?" was a question posed during our preliminary meeting on Friday. The responses given were profit, education, opportunity, discovery of culture, religion, missionary work, and seeking refuge. This question, posed to us in the seminar, would also be a good question to put to our students in high school and middile school. Another question that was posed, though that we didn't spend much time on was "how is crossing boundaries different before maps?" It would be a great question to ask students about and and opportunity to provide students with primary sources relating to exploration afterwad. 

 

How is crossing boundaries relevant to class? In my case, extremely relevant. World history cannot be taught in a vacuum. Even events that appear to be isolated in an area have often been set in motion elsewhere on the globe. Unit 2 of the MWH sequence in South Carolina is called connecting hemispheres, and is built around the (basic but important) inquiry question "What were the consquences of increased global connection and interactions." The entire unit is based around the idea that as Asians crossed the Pacific to the Americas and as Europeans crossed the Atlantic to the Americas, the world became truly "global" for the first time as cultures started mixing and clashing. I am hoping to learn more about east Asia in this course (it is a blind spot of mine, unforutnately) so that I can create a more balanced set of resources for my students to investigate and learn from. 

[Alexis Marianiello]

Qian's narrative reads quickly and is not full of challenging vocabulary, and as such could potentially be given directly to my students, though I would probably not choose this text to provide. 

 

I wonder if there would be any different takeaways if this study was conducted today, almost 20 years later. This is always a good question to pose to students about any text they read.

 

Alternative viewpoints and situations not included in this study should also be considered. Teach students to question what they read, and not just read what is there, but wonder about what is not there. Students should also be taught to wonder about the context of the reading given to them. What was China like in the late 1980s? What was America like in the late 1980s? How did these relationships compare to American relationships? Where could they look to see examples? Additionally, this reading comes from a chapter of a book, so students should be encouraged to wonder what the rest of the book was about and why the author chose to focus on the difficulties in relationships among Chinese who moved to the U.S.

 

I don't know that I would be likely to use this reading in my classroom (because it is relatively narrow in scope and doesn't directly relate our curriculum), though I have isolated several ways in which students could read and think about this article. However, if I were to use it, it might be before my second unit, called "Connecting Hemispheres." This unit largely details the increasing global connections in the 15th-18th centuries. Qian's chapter is readable in its lexile and also accessible in its content the way that many texts used in history classrooms are not though, so it would potentially be interesting to provide this to students before the unit begins and hve them discuss (either open-ended or through guiding questions) how this cultural clash of gender roles between the U.S. and China in modern day could connect be connected to different global societies intermingling more for the first time.

[Alexis Marianiello]

This was great to read! What a practical perspective of a more figurative type of boundary. 

[Alexis Marianiello]

This response is mostly a rambling narrative of how this reading might inform or have inspired some potential ideas for instruction. It also contains some musings and questions that came up as I read this background text. 

 

From the first few sentences, Carr's narrative highlighted an aspect of global trade that is often overlooked in traditional (at least, classroom) historical narratives: the thriving trade in Central America and South America. From a classroom perspective, we often teach about the colonization of these areas by Europeans (and possibly the syncretism of those cultures), but not much else. As Carr goes on, he uses words like "cosmopolitan" and "wordly" to describe Mexico City as he descries the affluence in these European colonies that is not often mentioned. It would be interesting to use two competing narratives - one of the affluence of these societies and one of the poverty - and have students investigate whether/how social standing and race played a part in this dichotomy. 

 

Could we use visuals of Chinese and other Asian goods as compared to comparable European and European colonies goods produced around the same time? Students can analyze the images and make inferences about production methods, value, etc. based on what they see. As the reading goes on, it goes into detail about stylistic mimicry, which leads me to believe this would be an interesting and effective activity. Students could inquire as to the economic motives for producing replicas to the popular items, the geographic reasons as to why they were different, etc. If needed, teachers could provide guiding questions to the students. 

 

Could students make connection to modern cultural appropriation? Would they get their on their own reading these passages, or would they need to be guided to see the similarities? Can we discuss cultural appropriation and sycretism in the same circle? How are they connected? How are they different? These last few are questions that I myself even need clarification on and would like to hear POV from students. 

 

Students taking vocational classes and working with materials may be able to make an authentic connection to production.

 

One of the troubles with teaching world history is that there is so much and "we don't know what we don't know." I read was reading a history ed. book the other day that lamented the fact that history majors simply need to take a number of required courses in their discipline to earn their degree, and how a cohesive knowledge of history is often lacking, which I find absolutely true of myself. 

 

I wonder at the difference between peripateric and migratory? 

 

It's unlikely that I would provide this reading directly to my students. The majority of my students are reading under grade-level and only a few are reading above. I would consider modifying this reading to provide as an introduction to the activities or discussions I mentioned above, perhaps with some additional visuals and maps. In an AP or IB course, this reading would provide an interesting enrichment to the subject of trade and the blending of cultures during this era, bringing students out of the mindset of "bare bones, need to know" and what have you.

 

Additionally, it would be interesting to read about this subject matter from the perspective of China. This article speaks much on the enrichment of culture in Europe and the Americas as a result of these imports, but little about the impact of exports on China or how they recieved the European and American copycats of their art. 

[Alexis Marianiello]

Hi, I'm Lexy! I am a high school teacher in South Carolina; last year I taught modern world history and helped my state develop unit guides for the new inquiry-based standards that are being rolled out this year. Rightfully so, the new standards have a stronger emphasis on world history rather than just European history and the deep ways in which our global societies are connected, and I wanted to make sure I was prepared to teach about east Asia in depth and with fidelity!

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