[Matthew Hurwitz]

I really enjoyed this series of lectures. As a history teacher, I came in excited to learn more about a part of history that I'm not as familiar with, and to learn about ways of integrating that new historical information into my curriculum. I think the most exciting and surprising part of the experience was not the new historical knowledge I gained, although I learned a lot, but rather the way that it forced me to reexamine how I approach history and teach it to my students. As a history teacher, I look at multiple historical sources when analyzing historical events, read tons of primary and secondary sources, and look at tons of maps. While I often look at different perspectives, I don't often look at history through different lenses. One of the things that I appreciated about the sessions was that they included talks on architecture, economics, and popular culture, and introduced me to ways of examining and analyzing history through these different lenses, that I wouldn't normally have looked at. 

When I think about how I can apply what I've learned into my classroom, I think that a similar type of approach would be incredibly instructive to my students. Getting them to look at historical facts from the perspective of a modern historian is important, but so is getting them to experience and learn about history the same way that we live it: through our photos, our music, our culture, and the things all around us that we take for granted. In addition to making me think about a greatly expanded list of supplemental sources of information that I can use, the class also made me look critically at my own understanding of the "East" and the ways in which I teach the history of the region in my class. I'm a huge fan of geography, so I'm excited to do mapping activities with students, looking at how power and history are conveyed through all the different elements of a map: the size and placement of countries, the names of landmarks and places, and the language that they're written in. 

Lastly, like all teachers, I'm always looking for great new places to find information, and was happy to learn about, through discussion with other teachers in the class and in the lectures a vast trove of new places to find amazing primary source documents, from letters to diary entries, to data sheets and photos. I'm excited to bring all the different things I learned, as well as all the new resources I learned about, into my curriculum going forward.

[Matthew Hurwitz]

I think that this is a great question to pose to students! The idea of "distinctiveness", the value of distinctivess, and the loss of distinctiveness would be a great entry point for students to not only look at China, but to compare how their own country has addressed this problem. Or is it a problem? I think an interesting follow up question, both in looking at the Qing Dynasty, and at our own American culture would be: "Is cultural homogenization in a country a positive or a negative?" Students could draw on their knowledge of almost any period of American history to answer the question, and it would help put into context the struggles and challenges faced by a country that otherwise seems remote and far away, both culturally and geographically, from their own daily lives and experiences. As teachers, we're always looking for how to get student buy in, and I think you're suggested guiding questions would be a great way to get there for this topic.

[Matthew Hurwitz]

I thought of this too, because as History teachers one of our first instincts is to show a map that will give students context for the historical events that we are teaching about. But we rarely, either because of a lack of knowledge ourselves, or because of a lack of time, go into the context of the maps that we're giving for context. Maps are often used to show history, but are not often seen AS history, and this lecture made me think about how we can examine the "official" maps given to us in our district approved textbooks, and compare them with other maps, with students analyzing why one map is the official one and one is not, and what that tells us about the politics of our moment and the importance of perspective. The difficult part is doing both: using maps to give context for historical events, while also telling them that maps are not neutral, that they change, are arbitrary, and that there are a multitude of names that can be used to describe a variety of cities, countries, and oceans. Doing the latter tends to make the former harder. Nonetheless, I think it's an important part of our job to at least attempt to do both, even if no one has figured out the magic of doing both perfectly. (Although if anyone has figured out the trick, I'd love to hear it!)

[Matthew Hurwitz]

I was also shocked at how few people in China are members of the Communist Party, and it made me question how China is able to call itself the "People's" Republic, and consider itself a Communist country when the "People's" party that is in charge comprises only 7% of the population. This feels like to me one of the central tensions in the way that China, and people who talk about China have faced since the integration of China into the global Capitalist market in the 1990s. When students ask what kind of country China is, what do we say? When students ask if China is Communist, what do we say? Do we tell them what the Chinese government would say? Do we tell them what people in China would say? What people in Hong Kong would say? Do we go by the definition of Communist in the dictionary? It's all very confusing, which makes it both really interesting as a case study of how Communism and Capitalism, Dictatorship and Democracy can be merged (either successfully or unsuccessfully depending on who you ask). But it also makes it difficult to teach in a clear way in the couple of days or week that teachers are able to spend teaching modern China in their classes.  I think that in my more advanced classes (AP), I could pose the question of "Is modern China Communist?" or "Is it possible to merge dictatorship and democracy together?" using evidence from their notes on China to back up their argument, but I wonder if there is a strategy or way of conveying the complexities of modern China to a sheltered class or a class with students at all different levels, in a couple days, in a way that avoids the easy labels and definitions but is still easy to understand. Or is that just wishful thinking?

[Matthew Hurwitz]

This article stood out to me for a couple of reasons. The first was that this seems to be a great example that can be used in class to show the power of control, and the ways in which a government can instill fear, obedience, and total conformity while at the same time avoiding overt signs of physical oppression. In my government classes, this could be used in one of our early units, when we look at different types of goverments, and where each type of government gets it's power from. It would be interesting to ask students to answer a question like: "To what extent is China a democracy?" based on a variety of sources, with this being one of them. An article on the recent elections in Hong Kong in local elections might be another source that could be used to stimulate student discussion and debate on the question.

 I also thought that this article was particularly relevant given the protests in Hong Kong, and the governments response to the protests there. The government (at least for the moment) has avoided sending in the army to suppress the protestors, but it seems like this kind of digital surveillance and oppression, which is not phsycially violent and thus won't grab international headlines, is both the very kind of thing that protestors are afraid of, and seems like the depressingly likely end result when the world inevitably gets distracted by a different humanitarian crisis, the global spotlight shifts away Hong Kong, and the Chinese government reasserts control.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/04/04/world/asia/xinjiang-china-surveillance-prison.html

[Matthew Hurwitz]

I liked that Professor Peck focused on the different ways of saying "no", and it made me think about how we read texts, whether literary or informational, from other countries. How often do we misread certain things when we take them as literal rather than as a suggestion of something else? How often do we as teachers therefore reinforce incorrect readings of texts to our students based on our own cultural assumptions and understandings of what certain words mean and our own understanding of what authors are trying to say with their words. Literary analysis is already so difficult, and thinking about this added layer made me both really excited to learn more, and also made me really stressed thinking about all the different obstacles that ltierature teachers have to navigate when tackling certain texts

[Matthew Hurwitz]

While our presenter was talking about translation and cultural differences that makes business meetings a minefield of miscommunication, I was thinking about how translation and different cultural understandings influence the way that we read translated texts in class. No matter how good the translator is, or how well they are able to capture the essence of a text or book, there is always something that gets lost in translation. I remember in college being asked to get a specific translation of Anna Karenina, balking at the price, and deciding to get the cheaper Barnes and Noble classic version that was $5.99 vs. $22.99 instead. I figured that it didn't really make a difference, since both books were the same story. And although that was largely true, when I compared the version I had to the one that many others in the class had, there were key words and phrases that were different. Not to say that one was right or wrong, but even small changes altered the way that I read whole chapters. Given all the issues that Professor Beck pointed out with business cards, seniority, and the variety of linguistic tools that are used to convey the word "no" without actually saying it, I was trying to think about the translated texts that I use in class, and whether I know anything about who translated them, how they were translated, and if there are other translations that might exist that are more accurate, or are better at conveying the tone of the original author. It might also be a good opportunity to have students think about this question, and look at sourcing not just in terms of how different authors tackle the same story, but how different translators present the same author. Potential essential question: "Is it possible to tell a story without bias?"

[Matthew Hurwitz]

I thought the currency discussion was interesting for the way it touched on the differences between legal and symbolic equality, and ACTUAL equality. It shows some of the tension in Japan that the government is making an effort to make women legally equal and to put them in more prominent positions on the money, and yet culturally there is still so far for women to go. It made me think about how that tensions manifests in the United States, where we have had a similar struggle between symbolic, cultural, and legal equality, albeit it in a different way than in Japan. Having just seen the movie Harriet, and knowing that she was scheduled to be on the $20, but will not be because of the current administration makes me think that we should include currency more regularly in our examination of primary source and period specific resources that we look at in history classes as a way of assessing cultural and political values of different time periods. 

[Matthew Hurwitz]

I was also really interested in the construction materials that were used, and how something so basic says so much about the way societies approach things. The idea that buildings as temporary, and the idea of tearing down and rebuilding things every set number of years is shocking to many of us.When I visited Japan a few years, one of the things that I couldn't wrap my head around was how/why many of the historic shrines could be demolished and rebuilt. I just did not get why anybody would do that. We've been taught that buildings are built to "last" and that our most precious buildings are those historic buildings that have lasted for hundreds of years. So many things to think about after this lecture!

[Matthew Hurwitz]

I was also really interested to hear about the lack of Japanese pushback on Trump compared with many of our European allies, who make no effort to hide their displeasure with him. I hadn't really thought about the reasons why Japan would avoid that kind of conflict, and find it interesting to learn about the ways in which the U.S. and Japan tiptoe around each other because of the way each relies on each other, where both countries can be agressive or cavalier when it comes to our interaction with other countries. Our presenter mentioned that "Geography is fate" and I thought that that aptly summed up a lot of what we have learned the last couple of weeks about geopolitical rivalries, occupations, cultural imperialism, wars, and alliances between different countries, including the alliance between the U.S. and Japan. It also sounded like a great guiding question for a unit: "Is fate determined by Geography?" I can imagine my students having a lot of heated discussions about that, and am totally making that one of my essential questions next year.

[Matthew Hurwitz]

I really enjoyed getting to explore the architecture of Japan, a part of history that I feel like is often overlooked. I remember taking an AP Art History class in High School and finding it really interesting the ways in which the architecture of a period reflects the political, social, economic, and artistic beliefs of the time. To this day, that class was one of the most enjoyable I've ever taken. Of course, it didn't strike me as odd at the time, but in our entire year long class, we only studied western architecture and art. Given that Asian art and architecture was ommitted, I thought it was interesting that Professor Bharne pointed that for most of us, our understanding of Japanese architecture encompasses only two styles, both of which are unique to different periods. Whereas in western architecture, we understand that styles change along with the people and countries that make them, when it comes to architecture in other countries, our view of their architecture, and thus their societies tends to be static and stuck on one style, one understanding of what Japanese culture is and what Japanese architecture looks like. 

This lecture also made me think about how I can incorporate architecture into my lessons more. I often use architecture in my Imperialism unit as a way of showing the ways in which buildings can be used to convey power, and to show how many of those symbols and styles are still present in former colonies long after the colonizer has left. But I've never looked at contemporary architecture or architecture from other countries in a non-Imperialism context. It made me want to do more research into architecture from different time periods and cultures, and to look at where in my curriculum I can incorporate them for next year.

[Matthew Hurwitz]

I like how you touch on the way in which current events can change the way see past history. The idea that after even just a few years, things can happen that change our evaluation of things that came before. It struck me that just as the Korean War is in limbo, over and yet not technically over, so too is our understanding of the war, and the two countries in limbo. When we teach the Korean War, we often look at it as if the war ended in 1953 (even though we know it didn't). Looked at through that context, the war seems like an American success, a blow to the spread of Communism that also gave rise, with U.S. support, to a modern democratic South Korea that is a rich and powerful economic force in the region. At the same time, the war didn't end, and so the end of the story remains to be seen. As humans, I think our instinct is always to try and find narratives in history, and part of having a narrative is having a beginning, middle, and end. Putting TBD next to the modern history of Korea would feel incomplete, and yet is the only alternative to ignore key facts about it in our search for a clear arc? It made me think about whether it's possible to present all perspectives and show all angles of a particular conflict, and yet also retain the narrative aspect of history that allows us to stitch together an overall understanding of a topic.

[Matthew Hurwitz]

I was also interested in the photos that clearly show that children of party elites are better fed than ordinary children. What's fascinating is that this happens so openly in a society that is technically classless. I'm curious how people in North Korea reconcile the official Socialist positions and values when it comes to class, and the unofficial and yet very obvious hierarchies that exist in society. Do they just put up with it out of fear of reprisal? Are most citizens convinced by state propaganda that the hierarchy is normal? That disconnect would seem to be something that would cause problems for the government in the long term, and yet so far the government there has been very successful at staying in power. 

[Matthew Hurwitz]

I was also thinking about what high level thinking questions based on this topic that students could think about/debate. I like the idea of asking who was to "blame" for the Korean War. I was thinking asking students to incorporate current event stories/events into this topic and asking something along the lines of: "Who is responsble for the continued division of North and South Korea?", or "Who should be responsible for trying to reconcile the two countries?". Or even something like: "Can South Korea be called a "success story?" I'm still braninstorming, but I'm excited to try and implement a deeper, more thorough look at the Korean conflict the next time we get to the Korean War in World History. 

[Matthew Hurwitz]

Two things stood out to me during the lecture. The first was that the lecture, as previous lectures have, made me reevaluate how I teach Korea in my own class. Professor Jung-Kim mentioned that although we learn about the Korean War as part of the Cold War, it wasn't cold for the people who lived there. It seems like such an obvious point, but one which made me think about how we teach certain events through very narrow lenses, and how the titles that we give to things has weight. It made me think about how I can teach the Cold War from other perspectives, and also made me curious what the conflict was called in different parts of the world.

The second thing that stood out to me was what a rough road towards democracy South Korea has had. Partly because of the way learned Korean history, partly because it's always compared to North Korea, and party because of my own assumptions, I always thought of South Korea as this shining success story for democracy in Asia. Learning about the coups, dictators, assassinations, and scandals that have rocked the country over the last 50 years, and the fact that they've only had a fully democratic system for 30 years was surprising to me. It made me think about the ways in which our perceptions of "allied" countries are different than our perception of others, and how teachers can address or fight this societal bias we have in the way we teach about those nations.

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