Making unfamiliar
worlds approachable.
I want students to understand how people made sense of their worlds—and to recognize the assumptions they bring to that work. Chinese history offers opportunities to study diplomacy, migration, commerce, religion, and intellectual exchange while asking how those connections acquired meaning in particular circumstances.
Close engagement with primary sources is central to my teaching. A familiar word in translation can conceal an unfamiliar relationship. In Modern China, a student’s question about the difference between nucai (“your slave”) and chen (“your minister”) in Qing memorials became a sustained inquiry into rulership and political language, and eventually a final paper.
Students need foundations as well as freedom. I devote roughly the opening fifth of Modern China to geography, political institutions, religious traditions, and social life. I use that shared vocabulary to support increasingly independent inquiry rather than assume students already possess it.
Weekly question notes ask students to formulate a historical question, identify at least two relevant primary sources, and explain why the question matters. Through feedback and discussion, curiosity becomes an argument that others can examine.