Quick Links to D.K. Jordan's Fall 2026 Freshman Seminars (ANTH87)

All one-unit, P/NP “Freshman Seminars” at UCSD have the number 87. In Anthropology they are all classified as ANTH87. The individual courses, all with separate content, are differentiated as “sections” of ANTH87. In different quarters there are different numbers of sections (or sometimes none). But in the world of ANTH87, each section is an entirely different 1-unit course.

My courses/sections make use of materials more elaborately formatted than are easily accommodated on Canvas. Accordingly, each “section” 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 §001)

• 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 Sources will include folk tales, ethnographic descriptions, popular scriptures, and historical documents.”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 and to many aspects popular understanding of the world that have been influential in China for centuries.
• 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. In China many of the same stories appeared as puppet shows, chapters of novels, or stage plays, as well as in the repertoires of wandering storytellers or in modern times in children's books, films, and TV series. This course will discuss Chinese ghost stories, love stories, war stories, detective stories, &c. Readings will consist almost entirely of the stories themselves, some with known classical authors, but many retold depending upon their length and upon how they were traditionally encountered by Chinese audiences.
• Link to class website

Further Note: My web site includes hundreds of files developed over many years for many courses. Only a small portion the material is linked into the syllabus of any given course. But most of it is freely available to the public, and you should feel free to explore as much as you please.For the main page, click here. The shortest URL (leading to the "back door") is dkjordan.net.

In event of questions, ambiguities, or web malfunction, feel free to contact me. Caution: I don’t look at email every day, so there will be delays.

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