The Social Life of Inkstones Read Along: Introduction

[forestofglory]

Welcome to the first post of our read a long of The Social Life of Inkstones: Artisans and Scholars in Early Qing China by Dorothy Ko! For this post we are reading the introduction.

Since this the introduction to the book, I thought it might be nice for us to introduce ourselves, so here are some optional discussion questions:

1. What do you hope to get out of reading this book? What do you hope to get out of the read a long format?

2. What is your experience reading academic history books? (No experience necessary of course, but it's helpful for me to know for planning purposes)

3. What is your experience using an inkstone or writing languages that historically where written with inkstones?

4. In the introduction what did you find interesting and/or exciting?

Comments

[anehan]

Ooh, interesting observation about Tang Fan and Sui Zhou! This makes me want to learn more about how the exam system/civil service/ etc. thing of Chinese society worked. My background is so inadequate for this read-along that I expect the whole thing is going to be me going "oh noes, I wish I knew more about this". *g* Self-deprecation aside, I do think that's exactly what's going to happen, though it doesn't actually bother me at all.

[rhysiana]

(Catching up on replies!)

I wouldn't worry about not having a strong history background, because that feeling of "oh, now I need to go read about this! and this!" is what drives people to history PhDs. It just never ends! I actually had a long talk with my main history professor back in college about how impossible it felt to write a thesis statement for a paper because there was so much I didn't know yet. How could I possibly write a thesis statement before I'd done most of the research reading???