Tag Archives: asian-pacific history

Kubla Khan

Posted on May 15, 2020 | Leave a comment

“”Kubla Khan: A famously unfinished, opium-induced poem by Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834), who had claimed to have written down as much as he could of what he had just been dreaming before being interrupted by the arrival of ‘a person on business from Porlock.’ Composed while Coleridge was living in Somerset in 1797-8, the poem was first published in Christabel and Other Poems (1816). It bears little relation to the historical Kublai Khan (1215-94), the grandson of Genghis Khan. Kublai led the Mongol conquest of China and made himself the first emperor of the Yuan dynasty in 1279. He was made famous in Europe by Marco Polo, who spent 20 years at Kublai’s court.”

Excerpted from: Crofton, Ian, ed. Brewer’s Curious Titles. London: Cassell, 2002.

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Matsuo Basho II

Posted on April 24, 2020 | Leave a comment

“Refinement’s origin:

The remote north country’s

Rice-planting song.”

Matsuo Basho

Poem (translation by Bernard Lionel Einbond)

Excerpted from: Schapiro, Fred, ed. The Yale Book of Quotations. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006.

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The Weekly Text, April 24, 2020, Asian Pacific American Heritage Month Week IV: A Reading and Comprehension Worksheet on the World War II Era Internment Camps

Posted on April 24, 2020 | Leave a comment

This week’s Text, in the continuing–but premature–observation of Asian Pacific American Heritage Month 2020–returns to the subject with which I began the month, to wit, this reading on the internment camps in which American citizens of Asian Pacific descent were held during World War II along with its vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet. We Americans think ourselves exceptional, but nationalism, tyranny, and bigotry are anything but exceptional–they are the tedious crap to which we as a species have subscribed for centuries.

That’s something worth remembering as our idiot president uses locutions like “Chinese virus” and violence against Americans of Asian descent is on the rise.

If you find typos in these documents, I would appreciate a notification. And, as always, if you find this material useful in your practice, I would be grateful to hear what you think of it. I seek your peer review.

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Ukiyo-e

Posted on April 23, 2020 | Leave a comment

“Ukiyo-e: (Jap., pictures of the floating world) Woodblock prints, both monochrome and colored, made as popular ephemera in Japan from the mid-17th century onward. The genres of subjects include theater stars, courtesans, caricatures, and eventually, Hokusai’s great Fuji landscape series (1823).”

Excerpted from: Diamond, David G. The Bulfinch Pocket Dictionary of Art Terms. Boston: Little Brown, 1992.

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Common Errors in English Usage: Islam and Muslim

Posted on April 23, 2020 | Leave a comment

Here is an English usage worksheet on differentiating the nouns Islam and Muslim. Don’t forget that May is Asian Pacific American Heritage Month 2020 (and that I began posting materials for it a month early because, like–increasingly–the days of the week, I lost track of the month).

If you find typos in this document, I would appreciate a notification. And, as always, if you find this material useful in your practice, I would be grateful to hear what you think of it. I seek your peer review.

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Japonaiserie

Posted on April 17, 2020 | Leave a comment

“Japonaiserie (Fr., article of Japanese craft) In a specific sense, those items of Japanese creation that began to be imported into Europe in the 1850s and 1860s: woodblock prints, textiles, porcelain, fans, furniture, and metalwork. The influence on the painting of the Impressionists is called japonisme.”

Excerpted from: Diamond, David G. The Bulfinch Pocket Dictionary of Art Terms. Boston: Little Brown, 1992.

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The Weekly Text, April 17, 2020 Asian Pacific American Heritage Month Week III: A Reading and Comprehension Worksheet on Hokusai

Posted on April 17, 2020 | Leave a comment

This week’s Text is this reading on the influential Japanese artist known simply as Hokusai along with a vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet to accompany it.

If you find typos in these documents, I would appreciate a notification. And, as always, if you find this material useful in your practice, I would be grateful to hear what you think of it. I seek your peer review.

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Matsuo Basho I

Posted on April 17, 2020 | Leave a comment

“An old pond—

A frog tumbles in—

The sound of water.”

Poem (translation by Bernard Lionel Einbond)

Excerpted from: Schapiro, Fred, ed. The Yale Book of Quotations. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006.

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Independent Practice: Shogunate

Posted on April 17, 2020 | Leave a comment

Here is an independent practice worksheet on the shogunate, a form of governmental organization in Japan that lasted for almost 700 years. The word comes from shogun and indicates a military dictator.

If you find typos in these documents, I would appreciate a notification. And, as always, if you find this material useful in your practice, I would be grateful to hear what you think of it. I seek your peer review.

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Evelyne Accad

Posted on April 16, 2020 | Leave a comment

“Evelyne Accad: (1943-) Lebanese poet, novelist, and literary critic. Born in Lebanon, she emigrated to France in her twenties. Among her critical works is Sexuality and War: Literary Masks of the Middle East (1990), which draws upon her experience of the civil war in Lebanon, feminist and antiwar theory, and an extensive reading of such authors as Tahar Ben Jelloun and Etel Adnan. Accad’s only novel available in English, L’Excisee (1982; tr The Excised Woman, 1989), analyzes ritual clitoridectomy and its effects on young Muslim women, usually ‘female excision’ as a metaphor that includes the suppression of women on a broader, cultural level. Accad has authored five other works of criticism, fiction, and poetry.”

Excerpted from: Schapiro, Fred, ed. The Yale Book of Quotations. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006.

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