Traditionally, East Asia has been on the margins of Victorian Studies, eclipsed by sites of formal imperialism such as South Asia. However, the region was deeply intertwined with the “Victorian” world through transimperial networks of trade, migration, and geopolitical competition. Rather than locating East Asia at the margins, this cluster of lesson plans explores the figurative and historical centrality of East Asia to Victorian Studies

Gao, Menglu

Hsu, Sophia

Loh, Waiyee

Park, Hyungji

Valdez, Jessica R.

Yan, Rae X.

Undetermined

University of Denver

University of Denver Digital Commons @ DU English and Literary Arts: Faculty Scholarship English and Literary Arts 2022 Transimperial Networks: East Asia and the ‘Victorian’ World: Introduction Sophia Hsu Menglu Gao Waiyee Loh Hyungji Park Jessica R. Valdez See next page for additional authors Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.du.edu/english_literaryarts_faculty  Part of the African History Commons, Asian History Commons, East Asian Languages and Societies Commons, English Language and Literature Commons, European History Commons, European Languages and Societies Commons, and the Other History Commons This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Transimperial Networks: East Asia and the ‘Victorian’ World: Introduction Publication Statement Copyright is held by the authors. User is responsible for all copyright compliance. This lesson plan was originally created as: Sophia Hsu, Menglu Gao, Waiyee Loh, Hyungji Park, Jessica R. Valdez, and Rae X. Yan. “Transimperial Networks: East Asia and the ‘Victorian’ World: Introduction.” Undisciplining the Victorian Classroom, October 2022, https://undiscipliningvc.org/html/lesson_plans/east_asia_transimperial_introduction.html. Authors Sophia Hsu, Menglu Gao, Waiyee Loh, Hyungji Park, Jessica R. Valdez, and Rae X. Yan Transimperial Networks and East Asia | Undisciplining the Victorian Classroomhttps://undiscipliningvc.org/html/lesson_plans/east_asia_transimperial_introduction.html[11/16/2023 6:23:37 PM]Transimperial Networks and East AsiaLesson Plan Cluster Production DetailsCluster Developer: Sophia Hsu  ContactLesson Plan Developers: Menglu Gao, Waiyee Loh, Hyungji Park, Jessica R. Valdez, RaeX. YanLesson Plan Pages: 1) Psychoactive Revolution and Transnational Networks  2) JapaneseAesthetics: British Perceptions and Japanese Responses  3) Visualizing Korea  4) ChineseMigration and Forms of Global Circulation  5) Victorian Realism, China, and the Politics ofFormCluster Timeline: WebpagePublication Date: 2022Undisciplining the Victorian Classroom Transimperial Networks and East Asia | Undisciplining the Victorian Classroomhttps://undiscipliningvc.org/html/lesson_plans/east_asia_transimperial_introduction.html[11/16/2023 6:23:37 PM]Lesson Plan User GuideVisitors to this site may find the lesson plans in this cluster helpful in revising existing courses orin developing new ones. We designed these lesson plans to be suggestive not exhaustive, andpeople should feel welcome to use all or part of them as prompts for rethinking their teachingand research on the transimperial networks that connected Europe, Asia, Africa, and theAmericas. If you draw on our lesson plans for your work, including in your own syllabi, pleasebe sure to acknowledge the developers by using the citation information provided at the bottomof each page.IntroductionTraditionally, East Asia has been on the margins of Victorian Studies, eclipsed by sites offormal imperialism such as South Asia. However, the region was deeply intertwined with the“Victorian” world through transimperial networks of trade, migration, and geopoliticalcompetition. Rather than locating East Asia at the margins, this cluster of lesson plansexplores the figurative and historical centrality of East Asia to Victorian Studies.Although this cluster is geographically focused, East Asia is not meant to be read in isolation,nor should the term “East Asia” be adopted uncritically. The lesson plans emphasize thetransimperial networks – what Lisa Lowe calls “the intimacies of four continents” – thatinterlink Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Americas. An attention to East Asia helps tocomplicate understandings of British imperialism by reframing the nineteenth century in thecontext of competing empires. Both foreign powers and empires already established withinthe region, such as Imperial Russia and the Qing, fought each other for territory andinfluence. This transimperial approach de-emphasizes a unitary conception of empire infavor of shifting historical actors, interests, and relations.Broadening the scope of Victorian Studies to include locations in East Asia raises questionsof methodology. The many discussions we had during our year-long collaboration oftencentered on the issue of periodization. What happens when we engage with peoples andTransimperial Networks and East Asia | Undisciplining the Victorian Classroomhttps://undiscipliningvc.org/html/lesson_plans/east_asia_transimperial_introduction.html[11/16/2023 6:23:37 PM]places whose histories stretch the temporal frameworks of our field? As we quicklydiscovered, the dominant historical categories of Victorian Studies are too limited for thetransimperial networks that our lesson plans examine.For us, the “long nineteenth century” opens not with the French Revolution but with theopium trade, in which the British East India Company exported Indian opium in exchange forChinese tea, porcelain, and other goods. This triangular trade inaugurated a series ofhistorical events and processes that brought the different territories of East Asia into new andunsettling relations with the “West” and one another. Yet even as we claim a differentbeginning for the nineteenth century, our timeline actually starts much earlier in 1402 with theoldest surviving East-Asian produced world map, the Korean Kangnido. Commencing in thefifteenth century and ending in the mid-twentieth with the fall of the Japanese Empire and theChinese Communist revolution, our lesson plans challenge Eurocentric narratives of the“Victorian” past by taking this long view. Moreover, they challenge our field’s assumptionsabout which histories Victorianists should know, a challenge that has consequences for bothundergraduate and graduate education.Centering East Asia has also prompted us to consider issues of language accessibility, theavailability of materials, and translation concerns. In keeping with the purpose of this cluster,our lesson plans introduce lesser known English-language texts that we juxtapose withmaterials originally produced in East Asian languages. Our team drew upon languageproficiency in Mandarin, Japanese, or Korean – ranging from rudimentary to fluent – inaccessing materials and providing annotations or summaries. Our transimperial focus insome instances asked for comparative work and fluency in more than one East Asianlanguage, but this was a luxury that none of us enjoyed.Because our target audience is Anglophone (and we assumed no East Asian languagecompetence on the part of either instructor or student in designing the lesson plans), wewere limited in our choice of non-English materials by the availability of translations. In caseswhen we found untranslated texts of value, we substituted secondary sources or criticalarticles that described or introduced them. However, we were unable to evaluate theaccuracy of the translated pieces we cite. Our project thus reminded us yet again of theimportance of supporting translation projects to increase the availability of East Asianmaterials for Anglophone scholars and classrooms. Additionally, we faced unevenTransimperial Networks and East Asia | Undisciplining the Victorian Classroomhttps://undiscipliningvc.org/html/lesson_plans/east_asia_transimperial_introduction.html[11/16/2023 6:23:37 PM]institutional support. Since many of these materials are less mainstream from theperspective of librarians in the Anglophone world, our respective home institutions hadvarying levels of budget allocations for East Asian materials. That said, the increasingdigitization of nineteenth-century texts has made our work possible in a way that would havebeen unthinkable even a decade ago.These methodological considerations are a result of our interdisciplinary goal to connect EastAsian and Victorian Studies. While there are a number of studies focusing on the influence ofVictorian culture on East Asia, there are few that examine the reverse. This asymmetry isunsurprising given our field’s Eurocentric and white imperialist legacies. Yet examining EastAsia’s significance is imperative for understanding the self-making of the Victorian world. Atthe same time, Victorianists must be cautious, for such an approach risks falling into a formof academic imperialism. The last thing we want is to transform the “margins” into anauxiliary of Victorian Studies or to reiterate East Asia’s otherness.To avoid simply adding new materials and frameworks, we look at what other scholarly fieldsand interdisciplinary approaches can be used in conjunction with Victorian Studies to enrichour comprehension of the long nineteenth century. The complex transimperial networkslinking East Asia and Britain compel us, for example, to engage Postcolonial Studies. Hence,we ask how East Asian “Others” were represented as well as how they wrote back toprovincialize the Anglophone world. Our examination of these encounters also illuminatesthe intersection of Empire Studies and the Medical and Environmental Humanities, theintimacy between Asian Diaspora and Black Studies, and the important role of visual culturein Comparative and Transimperial Studies. Furthermore, we hope that the cluster’sdiscussions of multilingualism, transimperial aesthetic forms, and East Asian literary criticalinterventions invite you to rethink, with us, the hegemony of Western theory and scholarship.We anticipate that our cluster will serve as a springboard for future teaching and research.For us, though, this cluster has been more than just another scholarly endeavor. Developingit has been a deeply personal experience. In “Introduction: Undisciplining Victorian Studies,”Ronjaunee Chatterjee, Alicia Mireles Christoff, and Amy R. Wong argue that “the specificitiesof our personal experiences and of our interpellation by Victorian studies… compel us toinvestigate the dynamics of race and racialization with particular urgency” (380). As a groupTransimperial Networks and East Asia | Undisciplining the Victorian Classroomhttps://undiscipliningvc.org/html/lesson_plans/east_asia_transimperial_introduction.html[11/16/2023 6:23:37 PM]of primarily women of color, many of whom identify as Asian or Asian American and/or havelived and taught extensively in Asia, we found this statement to be especially true for ourcollaborative work. Our intimacy with the material and the kinship we developed with eachother have been central to our project’s success and the care and rigor with which we builtthese lesson plans.We began discussing this cluster in late 2021 in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic and arise in anti-Asian prejudice and violence in the United States. Moreover, the publishedversion came together against a backdrop of diminishing academic freedom and draconianlegislative policies that deny our students the right to learn, speak, vote, and exist. Ourmonthly meetings, therefore, served as a space where we could respond to these conditionsby imagining and enacting academic community and labor anew. We crossed internationaltime zones, chatting late at night or early in the morning, to brainstorm how to connectstudents and scholars from across the globe. We shared our experiences and expertise,contributing to each other’s lesson plans through peer review and collaborative writing. Weextended grace to one another when other responsibilities got in the way. And weconsidered how our partnership might challenge academic hierarchies, institutionalinequities, and spatial, linguistic, and cultural divisions. As the creators of these lesson plans,then, we ask that you, when engaging with them, retain and further the spirit of generosityand mutual learning through which they were produced.Works CitedChatterjee, Ronjaunee, et al. “Introduction: Undisciplining Victorian Studies .” VictorianStudies, vol. 62, no. 3, Spring 2020, pp. 369–91.Lowe, Lisa. The Intimacies of Four Continents. Duke University Press, 2015.Naming Conventions in the Lesson PlansIn these lesson plans, UVC has decided to follow East Asian naming conventions whenreferencing most individuals of East Asian descent. Under these conventions, the surnameappears before the given name. As such, UVC has amended Western bibliographic practicesTransimperial Networks and East Asia | Undisciplining the Victorian Classroomhttps://undiscipliningvc.org/html/lesson_plans/east_asia_transimperial_introduction.html[11/16/2023 6:23:37 PM]to better accord with East Asian naming conventions. The general rule for MLA citations isfor the creator’s surname to appear first, followed by a comma separating the surname andgiven name (e.g., Dickens, Charles). However, in these lesson plans, UVC has eliminatedthe comma that usually appears between the surname and given name (e.g., Lin Shu) incertain citations of works by East Asian creators.The exception to the above is in the naming and citing of creators of East Asian descent withWestern names (e.g., Lydia Liu), those who have chosen to accord with Western namingconventions (e.g., Shu-mei Shih), and those who originally wrote in English (e.g., NitobeInazo). With these individuals, UVC has abided by Western bibliographic practices that use acomma to separate the surname and given name in citations. UVC has adopted theseguidelines after consulting scholarship from East Asian Studies.Tile/Header Image CaptionAnonymous. “Korean Cheonhado Map.” Seventeenth-eighteeenth century. Ricci Institute forChinese-Western Cultural History, Boston College. Courtesy of the Ricci Institute forChinese-Western Cultural History, Boston College.Page Citation (MLA)Sophia Hsu, Menglu Gao, Waiyee Loh, Hyungji Park, Jessica R. Valdez, and Rae X. Yan.“Transimperial Networks: East Asia and the ‘Victorian’ World: Introduction.” Undiscipliningthe Victorian Classroom, 2022,https://undiscipliningvc.org/html/lesson_plans/east_asia_transimperial_introduction.html.CC BY 4.0  , 2020-2023  | Community edition, 2023  | Peer review  , 2021  | First edition, 2021  |Project launch, 2020  | Host: GitHub   | CDN: Cloudflare   |  Design & admin: Adrian S.Wisnicki   | Contact: Pearl Chaozon Bauer   |   Site Map 

Transimperial Networks: East Asia and the ‘Victorian’ World: Introduction

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