Modern China/ASSIGNMENT.

read the following article:
Jonathan Hay, “Painting and the Built Environment in Late 19th-century Shanghai,” in Maxwell Hearn and Judith G. Smith, eds., Chinese Art/Modern Expressions (New York, 2001), pp.60-101

This is an exercise in active and critical reading as well as clear writing.  You are not reading the article for facts and information only, but also to understand the larger significance of the essay and how the author puts together his argument and evidence.  Your essay is an analysis of the essay in terms of what is it about and how it is put together.

Warning: this can be harder than it looks and time-consuming.  You should expect to read the essay several times.  Do not think about the essay in terms of its obvious subject, but rather, how and why the author talks about this subject.

Reading:
While reading, consider the following questions:
–what is the subject of the article?  What does the author wish to prove?
–what is his thesis – where does he state it?
–how is the essay organized?  How is the argument structured?
–what is the author’s evidence (suggestion: look at the footnotes and how they are used)?
–what are the author’s assumptions: can you discern any biases or sense of what the author finds valuable?
–what are the author’s conclusions?
–What was the author’s goal and does he succeed?  How does this essay add to our understanding and knowledge of the subject?

Reading strategies:
Some study guides recommend a process called SQ3R (Survey, Questions, Read, Recite, Review):
1.  Survey or skim the reading to get an idea about the argument being made; pay special attention to title, introduction, conclusion, illustrations, headings or subheadings.
2.  Develop questions about essay: use the subheadings to provide clues
3.  Read the essay carefully, take notes, outline or annotate your text – highlighting or underlining alone is fairly passive.
4.  Jot down answers to your questions, add new questions, look up terms you don’t know or understand.
5.  Break down the text in outline form, summarize each paragraph in a sentence
5.  In the review stage, summarize what you have read, check whether your questions have been answered, pay attention to ideas that do not seem clear.  Evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of the argument.
6.  After doing all this, you should be able to state the essay thesis clearly, walk through the essay’s main points, and have an opinion on the essay and what it has or has not achieved.

Writing:
Your paper should provide some summary of the essay, but overall it should be a critical reflection on what the essay achieves.

Technically, your paper should be organized and clearly written, with its own thesis, introduction and conclusion.
–please provide a title, double-space, use 12-point font, and one-inch margins
–paper length should be three-to-four pages
–check your grammar and spelling
–n.b. minimize quoting and even paraphrasing (your paper definitely should NOT have long quotes from the article) – summarize the essay’s content, discuss what it achieves, how it achieves it and whether or not it does it well.

Modern China/ASSIGNMENT.

read the following article:
Jonathan Hay, “Painting and the Built Environment in Late 19th-century Shanghai,” in Maxwell Hearn and Judith G. Smith, eds., Chinese Art/Modern Expressions (New York, 2001), pp.60-101

This is an exercise in active and critical reading as well as clear writing.  You are not reading the article for facts and information only, but also to understand the larger significance of the essay and how the author puts together his argument and evidence.  Your essay is an analysis of the essay in terms of what is it about and how it is put together.

Warning: this can be harder than it looks and time-consuming.  You should expect to read the essay several times.  Do not think about the essay in terms of its obvious subject, but rather, how and why the author talks about this subject.

Reading:
While reading, consider the following questions:
–what is the subject of the article?  What does the author wish to prove?
–what is his thesis – where does he state it?
–how is the essay organized?  How is the argument structured?
–what is the author’s evidence (suggestion: look at the footnotes and how they are used)?
–what are the author’s assumptions: can you discern any biases or sense of what the author finds valuable?
–what are the author’s conclusions?
–What was the author’s goal and does he succeed?  How does this essay add to our understanding and knowledge of the subject?

Reading strategies:
Some study guides recommend a process called SQ3R (Survey, Questions, Read, Recite, Review):
1.  Survey or skim the reading to get an idea about the argument being made; pay special attention to title, introduction, conclusion, illustrations, headings or subheadings.
2.  Develop questions about essay: use the subheadings to provide clues
3.  Read the essay carefully, take notes, outline or annotate your text – highlighting or underlining alone is fairly passive.
4.  Jot down answers to your questions, add new questions, look up terms you don’t know or understand.
5.  Break down the text in outline form, summarize each paragraph in a sentence
5.  In the review stage, summarize what you have read, check whether your questions have been answered, pay attention to ideas that do not seem clear.  Evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of the argument.
6.  After doing all this, you should be able to state the essay thesis clearly, walk through the essay’s main points, and have an opinion on the essay and what it has or has not achieved.

Writing:
Your paper should provide some summary of the essay, but overall it should be a critical reflection on what the essay achieves.

Technically, your paper should be organized and clearly written, with its own thesis, introduction and conclusion.
–please provide a title, double-space, use 12-point font, and one-inch margins
–paper length should be three-to-four pages
–check your grammar and spelling
–n.b. minimize quoting and even paraphrasing (your paper definitely should NOT have long quotes from the article) – summarize the essay’s content, discuss what it achieves, how it achieves it and whether or not it does it well.