Quick Links to D.K. Jordan's Fall 2026 Freshman Seminars (ANTH87)
These courses make use of materials more elaborately formatted than are easily accommodated on Canvas. Accordingly each of these classes has its own web site. All readings are on line. No materials will be provided on Canvas. Here are direct links to the entry pages for the two class sites.
Chinese Folk Religion (ANTH 87 §A00)
- Official Catalog Description:
“This course will analyze traditional Chinese religious and ‘superstitious’ practices, including exorcism, canonization, fortune telling, death lore, and ‘vernacular’ Daoism, Confucianism, and Buddhism. Sources will include folk tales, ethnographic descriptions, popular scriptures, and historical documents.”
- Comment: This is not a course in the style of “great religions of world,” but it can provide a partial background to the analysis of religious practice as studied in the social sciences.
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Link to class website
Chinese Tales and Values (ANTH 87 §002)
- Official Course Description: “This course will explore the orientations to life enshrined in some of the most famous stories and myths in Chinese popular culture, analyzed from an anthropological perspective.”
- Comment: Popular stories —the kind that are told and retold and that “everybody knows”— are different in different societies, and their culture-specific appeal links to broader themes of a given cultural system. This course will discuss Chinese love stories, ghost stories, war stories, detective stories, &c. Readings will consist almost entirely of the stories themselves, some with known classical authors, some retold depending upon their length and upon how they were traditionally encountered by Chinese children.
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Link to class website
The on-campus web site includes material developed over many years for many courses, and the total amount is immense. Only a small portion the material is relevant to any given course. But you should feel free to explore as much as you please. The shortest entry URL is dkjordan.net.
In event of questions, ambiguities, or web malfunction, feel free to contact me.
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