Assignment Details

  • Each student will be assigned one historical event will have to research your event.
  • You need to find at least one book and one article, or (three articles) published by a scholarly press, that discusses the event.
  • You will pick one specific aspect of the event to discuss in your paper and presentation
  • You will use such aspect (demographic participation, army involvement, intellectual publications of the time, specific people involvement and influence) to discuss the time period in general.
  • You will have explain the historical context of the event (causes and reasons that lead to the event) and will develop your narration of the event around the aspect you picked.
  • A suggestion: search important/representative people for the event/movement and search primary sources on them
  • You will use at least one primary source (passing of a law, signing of a decree, creation of a specific movie, creation of a specific piece of art or literature) to discuss the time period and the significance of the event.
  • You will turn in your notes and everything you have gathered to create the presentation.
  • Part of your grade will be based on the research you have done to discover info on specific takes/interpretations on the event (when you turn in your material you will have the citations of the sources you used – random websites or Wikipedia are NOT good sources) and part on the creativity of the presentation of your historical event (examples of creative presentations: a poem, a theatrical adaptation, a video game, a mock interview, a poster, a painting, an act…it’s on you)
  • You will write a 5 to 7 page paper and will present your work in a 15-minute long creative presentation (we will discuss creativity ideas in class). You need to use Chicago Manual of Style. 

List of Events

  1. Long march 
  2. May 4th movement/New Culture Movement 
  3. Jesuits in China 
  4. Great Leap Forward 
  5. “Open Door” Policies 1979 
  6. New Life Movement 
  7. Cultural Revolution 
  8. The Northern Expedition and the United Front 
  9. First opium war 
  10. Second Opium War 
  11. Sino-Japanese War 
  12. China in the WTO 
  13. One child policy 
  14. 100 days reforms of 1898 
  15. Taiping rebellion 
  16. Boxer Rebellion 
  17. Kidnapping of Chiang Kai Shek (or the Xi’an incident) 
  18. Sun Yat Sen and the Nationalist party 
  19. Madame Chiang at the US congress 
  20. Self-strengthening movement 
  21. Tongzhi restoration 
  22. Nixon in China 1972 
  23. Tiananmen Square incident 
  24. Gang of four 
  25. New Policies of the Late Qing 
  26. Nian Rebellion 
  27. Kangxi Dictionary 
  28. Queue hairstyle of the Manchus 
  29. Let 100 Flowers Bloom Campaign 
  30. 4 Pests Campaign