Cracking the Conundrum of China's Political-Economy

Description

After 13 rounds of on again, off again trade negotiations that began last year, the U.S. and China agreed this month (October, 2019) to a partial truce in their trade war of tariffs and counter-tariffs.  But distrust remains high, and tensions over technology, investment, and economic ties have become increasingly entangled in ideological divisions.  Are the tensions between the U.S. and China really about trade dominance, or is this a great power competition for economic and strategic supremacy?

The Chinese political-economy is a sui generis entity of remarkable definitional complexity.  The scale of its growth is unparalleled.  It is run by an authoritarian government which nonetheless leaves most sectors mostly free to make profits.  Its state-owned enterprises are lumbering behemoths, inefficient but largely profitable.  The banking industry is huge and run for the good of the state, rather than for financial imperative.  And the whole system is underpinned by a Communist party structure.

China is an "abnormal" economic power, for sure.  Media coverage has soared because China's rise is now challenging the world's geopolitical balance of power.  Yet one is likely to read about its possible financial collapse as its emergence as the world's largest economy.

To understand why there is such extreme variation in perceptions about China's economy is the goal of this SDG.  Understanding these differences is critical to forging more constructive relations between China and the rest of the world.

To this end, we will use Yukon Huang's Cracking the China Conundrum as our core book, supplemented by a course packet containing up-to-date topical materials from news media and think tanks.  Yukon Huang is an American economist of Chinese origin.  He worked at the World Bank for years and at the end of the 1990s was the World Bank's first country director for China.  He currently is a Senior Fellow at Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, D.C. and a frequent featured commentator on China for the Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times.

Weekly Topics

Week 1.    Overview

Week 2.    Global public perceptions of China's economy and the contrasting views shaped by economic and political considerations

Week 3.    Origins of China's growth model:  How Deng Xiaoping's reform and opening up of the economy more than three decades ago laid the basis for China's growth model which underpins the current debate about its economic challenges

Week 4.    China's unbalanced growth

Week 5.    China's debt dilemma

Week 6.    Emergent economic, social, and political tensions facing China and their relationship to economic developments

Week 7.    China's trade and capital flows

Week 8.    China's foreign investment in the U.S. and European Union

Week 9.    China's impact on the global balance of power

Week 10.  Conclusion

Bibliography

Huang, Yukon.  Cracking the China Conundrum.  Oxford University Press, 2017.

Course packet containing up-to-date topical material from news media and think tanks.

Indispensable Composers: A Guide

Description

We shall study what distinguishes the great composers from the merely good.

Anthony Tommasini, the chief classical music critic of The New York Times, recently published a book, in which he presents 17 indispensable composers. He is a writer of immense musical knowledge who shares his insights about many favorite pieces.

The book is intended as a guide and perfectly fulfills its aim: it presents highly readable mini-profiles of the greats. The author is entertaining, highly enthusiastic, and very knowledgeable.

Each of our presentations can be illustrated by musical examples played (via computer) in the class. 
We strongly encourage you to do so; a tutorial will be provided.

Weekly Topics

1. Introduction; Claudio Monteverdi                   1

2. J.S. Bach                                                                  39 

3. G.F. Handel                                                             65 

4-5. The “Vienna Four”: F.J.Haydn                       91 

6. W.A. Mozart                                                         113

7. L. van Beethoven                                                145

8. Franz Schubert                                                    175

9. Frederic Chopin & Robert Schumann           205

10. Giuseppe Verdi & Richard Wagner              247

11. Johannes Brahms                                              307

12. Claude Debussy                                                 339

13. Giacomo Puccini                                                369

14. A. Schoenberg, I. Stravinsky, B. Bartok       397

Note: The 14 chapters had been collapsed into 13 presentations as the 4th chapter is very short and serves just as an introduction to “The Vienna Four’ (Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert). This can easily be expanded by splitting into two Chapter 10 (the longest) or by one additional class where each participant presents her/his favorite composition (in 5-6 minutes).

Bibliography

The Indispensable Composers by Anthony Tommasini, Penguin, 2018

THE PLANTAGENETS - The Warrior Kings and Queens Who Made England

Description

Are you curious about who were the Plantagenets and how they influenced the founding fathers of America? Join us for an exciting trip back to the Middle Ages where we will explore Dan Jones’ riveting narrative history The Plantagenets: The Warrior Kings and Queens Who Made England. Dan Jones entertains and educates us with stories about this powerful family of leaders and misfits. We will read about the murder of Thomas Becket; Richard’s battles against Saladin on the Third Crusade; the Barons’ war against John and the ratification of the Magna Carta; Edward II’s romance with Piers Gaveston and his dismal abdication in 1327; Edward III fighting alongside The Black Prince, capturing the King of France and creating the Order of the Garter.  Let us not forget the Queens: Matilda, who plunged the country into a bloody civil war rather than give up her right to the throne; and Eleanor of Aquitaine, trumpeted as the most beautiful woman in Europe, who was first the Queen of France and later the Queen of England and the mother to two kings – only to be locked away for years by her husband, Henry II.

It all starts with Geoffrey, Count of Anjou a handsome, belligerent, redheaded Frenchman born in France in 1113. He customarily wore a sprig of yellow broom blossom (Planta genista) in his hat. He never made it to England but his descendants, known as the Plantagenets, ruled England for more than two centuries from his son Henry II, crowned in 1154, to Richard II, who lost the crown in 1399 to Henry Bolingbroke.  England’s Henry I (fourth son of William the Conqueror) had twenty-two illegitimate children but his only son and heir died a tragic death.  Henry I chose his daughter Matilda, the former Empress of the Holy Roman Empire to be his heir.  He married her off to Geoffrey – she was 26 and he was 15. After becoming better acquainted, they had three sons – the eldest of whom was ultimately crowned King of England.  Henry I died in France and his nephew Stephen of Blois raced across the Channel to crown himself King of England.  Matilda, having none of this, enlisted the aid of her half-brother Robert Earl of Gloucester and started a civil war in England.  The ensuing period has become known as The Anarchy when “It was as if Christ and his saints were asleep.”  

The Plantagenets invented England as a political, administrative and military entity, and as a political force to be reckoned with on the European continent. They helped invent the very idea of the England we know today and gave it many of its laws and political habits, which American founders borrowed when it came time to create our own government. 

Please join us as we discuss Henry II, Richard Lionheart, John (was he really so bad?), Henry III, Edward, Edward II , Edward III, the Black Plague, the Black Prince, Robert the Bruce, the Battles of Crecy and Poitiers and the commencement of the Hundred Years’ War, and Richard II, along with Matilda, Eleanor, Becket, de Montfort, the Magna Carta, the Peasants’ Revolt, and the reality behind Ivanhoe and Robin Hood.  Gripping storytelling - The Plantagenets is a satisfying as well as an enjoyable read.  There is no need for added goblins in this real life Game of Thrones. There will be crowns for all.

Weekly Topics

1    Preface; Age of Shipwreck (1120-1154)

        The White Ship; Hunt for an Heir; Shipwreck; Ambition; A Scandalous Wife; Henry the Conqueror

2    Age of Empire, Part I (1154-1189)

        Births & Rebirth; L'Espace Plantagenet; Unholy War; Succession Planning; The Eagle's Nest; Henry Triumphant; A World on Fire

3    Age of Empire, Part II (1189-1204)

        King Richard; Hero of the East; Treachery; An Unexpected Detour; Return of the Lionheart; Lackland Supreme; John Softsword; Triumph & Catastrophe; Lackland Undone

4    Age of Opposition, Part I (1204-1246)

        Salvaging the Wreck; A Cruel Master; Beginning of the End; To Bouvines; The Magna Carta 

5    Age of Opposition, Part II & Age of Arthur, Part I (1246-1277)

        Securing the Inheritance; Kingship at Last; Holy Kingship; The Provisions of Oxford; The Battle of Lewes; From Imprisonment to Evesham; The Leopard 

6    Age of Arthur, Part II (1277-1307)

        King at Last; A New Arthur; The Final Stand; The King's Castles; The Price of Conquest; The Expulsion of the Jews; The Great Cause &  French Trickery; The C        Conquest of Scotland; Crisis Point; Relapse

7    Age of Violence (1307-1330)

        The King & His Brother; The King Restrained; Manhunt; Promise & Disaster; New Favorites; Civil War; The King's Tyranny; Mortimer, Isabella, & Prince Edward; Endgame; False Dawn

8    Age of Glory (1330-1360)

        Royal Coup; Glorious King of a Beggared Kingdom; New Earls, New Enemies; The Hundred Years War Begins; Edward at Sea; Dominance; The Death of a Princess; The Order of the Garter; Decade of Triumph

9    Age of Revolution, Part I (1360-1386)

        The Family Business; Unraveling Fortunes; The Good Parliament; New King, Old Problems; England in Uproar; Return to Crisis

10  Age of Revolution, Part II (1386-1399) & Epilogue

        Treason & Trauma; The Reinvention of Kingship; Richard Revenged; Richard Undone; Richard Alone; Epilogue

Bibliography

Jones, Dan; The Plantagenets - The Warrior Kings & Queens Who Made England; Viking, 2012

Morality without God?

Description

Since the early eighteenth century, theists and secularists have hotly debated whether moral law requires God.  The preponderance of contemporary opinion is a resounding “no.”  Most philosophers, scientists, and writers about ethics have discarded God.  But the theists have not gone away; they have continued to put forward compelling arguments against the secular theories.  In this s/dg we will examine the arguments on both sides of this very important debate, as well as some middle grounds.  (N. b.:  We will not be debating the need for religion, but rather the need for metaphysical truth.)  We will read, among others, W. T. Stace, C. S. Lewis, George Mavrodes, Thomas Nagel, and Richard Taylor.  There will be no core book.  A packet of photocopied articles will be provided.  Most of these articles are written by philosophers, making this a challenging, but rewarding, s/dg.

Weekly Topics

1.  Introduction, part 1:  W. T. Stace, "Ethical Relativity (I) [31pp.]

2.  Introduction, part 2:  W. T. Stace, "Ethical Relativity (II); Joel Feinberg, "Pyschological Egoism"; David Cooper, "Natural Rights Theory"; A. J. M. Milne, "The Idea of Human Rights: A Critical Inquiry"; Alan Gewirth, "Human Rights" [31 pp.]

3.  The Secular Perspective, part 1:  Michael Martin, "Objections to Morality without Religion" [9 pp.]

4.  The Secular Perspective, part 2:  Louis P. Pojman, Who Are We?: Theories of Human Nature [24 pp.]

5.  Bridges over Troubled Waters:  Thomas Nagel, Mind and Cosmos; David Berlinski, "Deniable Darwin"; Yeager Hudson, "The Independence of Religion from Ethics" [39 pp.]

6.  The Theistic Persuasion: C. S. Lewis, "The Laws of Human Nature"; George I. Mavrodes, "Religion and the Queerness of Morality"; H. P. Owen, "The Moral Argument for Christian Theism" (23 pp.]

7.  Conclusion: Richard Taylor, "From the Senses to God"; C. S. Lewis, "The Cardinal Difficulty with Naturalism"; Thomas Nagel, Mind and Cosmos [31 pp.]

The Best American Nonrequired Reading

Description

Building on a project launched by David Eggers, the very strange Sarah Vowell brings together a collection of fiction, nonfiction, poetry, comics, and category-defining gems. Among the 28 pieces are contributions by Ta-Nehisi Coates ("My President Was Black"), Louise Erdrich ("How to Stop a Black Snake"), Lin-Manuel Miranda ("You'll Be Back"), and George Saunders ("Who Are All These Trump Supporters?").

Is there a common theme to these essays? Not really. Is there a common message? Still less so. The same can be said of those popular New Yorker collections "from the 1940s", "from the 1950s", and so on. What then can participants expect? The deeply pluralist sensiblilities of a mostly younger generation of writers—a generation for whom "consensus" and "over-arching agreement" are alien constructs. The New Yorker too conveyed a common sensibility—the New Yorker "style"—but during more innocent, less divisive times.

Weekly Topics

The selections for each section can be chosen by the participants themselves. 

Bibliography

Sarah Vowell, ed., The Best Amerian Nonrequired Reading 2017 (Mariner, 2017), 375 pp.

Let's Laugh a Little, Seriously, with Gary Shteyngart

Description

Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, …gloom and doom. Some of us have spent a whole term brooding over Anna Karenina and The Brothers Karamazov.  Not a laugh for 14 weeks!  It’s time to get some laughs from a Russian, turned American, writer.  ‘Seriously’, because Shteyngart has won, or almost won, numerous awards:   The Russian Debutante's Handbook won the Stephen Crane Award for First Fiction, the Book-of-the-Month Club First Fiction Award and the National Jewish Book Award for Fiction. It was named a New York Times Notable Book and one of the best debuts of the year by The Guardian.  In 2002, he was named one of the five best new writers by Shout NY Magazine. Absurdistan was chosen as one of the ten best books of the year by The New York Times Book Review and Time magazine, as well as a book of the year by the Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, San Francisco Chronicle and many other publications. In June 2010, Shteyngart was named as one of The New Yorker magazine's "20 under 40" luminary fiction writers. Super Sad True Love Story won the 2011 Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for comic literature. His memoir Little Failure was a finalist for the 2014 National Book Critics Circle Award (Autobiography)

 In this SDG  our purpose will be to enjoy and laugh, for now. And later, we will be able to tell our grandchildren, when they  join PLATO, that we were in the first PLATO group to discover the greatest classic Russian/American writer of the 21st century. 

Weekly Topics

Week one:  The Russian Debutante’s Handbook, first half

Week Two:  The Russian Debutants’s Handbook, second half

Week Three:  Absurdistan, first half

Week Four:  Absurdistan , second half

Week Five:  Super Sad True Love Story, first half

Week Six:  Super Sad True Love Story, second half

Week Seven: Lake Success, first half

Week Eight:  Lake Success, second half

Week  Nine:  Little Failure: A Memoir

Week Ten: Articles:   https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/06/10/from-the-diaries-of-pussy-cake, https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/08/05/o-k-glass  and https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/03/20/confessions-of-a-watch-geek

Russian Short Stories

Description

The short story holds a central place in Russian literature. Many of their authors; Gogol, Tolstoy, Chekhov, Pushkin and Solzhenitsyn,  acclaimed giants of Russian literature, are well known.   But, many of these writers have only recently become known to the English-speaking world.   Taken all together the gamut of human experience they portray is great.  Some stories are tragic.  But, there is comedy -- from Pushkin's subtle wit to Kharm's dark absurdism, Dostoevsky's graveyard humor, and Zoshchenko's satirical vignettes on life after the 1917 Russian Revolution.  All of them responded to the twists and turns of Russian history.  But as we shall see, humanity, in different times and different places, does not vary that much.

Weekly Topics

1. INTRODUCTION,  ALEKSANDER PUSHKIN - MIKHAIL, LERMONTOV

2. NIKOLAY GOGOL 

3. IVAN TURGENEV,FYODOR DOSTOYEVSKY 

4. COUNT LEV TOLSTOY, NIKOLAI LESKOW 

5. ANTON CHEKOV 

6. LYDIA ZINANOVYEVA - ANNIBAL IVAN BUNIN, ALEXANSDR L. LUPKIN

7. TEFFI, YEVGENY ZAMIATIN, MAXIM GORKI 

8. VERA INBER, MIKHAIL BULGAKOV, ISAAK BABEL 

9. MIKHAIL ZOSHCHENKO, LEONID DOBYCHIN, MIHAIL ARTZYBASHEV, SIGIZMUND KRZHIZHANOVSKY 

10. ANDREY PLATONOV, LEONID ANDREEV, VSEVOLOD GARSHIN

11. DANIIL KHARMS,  VARLAM SHALAMOV 

12. ALEKSANDER SOLZHENITSYN What a Pity, VASILY SHUKSHIN In the Autumn

13.  ASSAR EPPEL, SERGEI DOVILATOV, YURY BUIDA, BORIS PASTERBAK, SASHA SOKOLOVA, ANDREI SINYAVSKY, SASHA SOKOLOV

14. VLADIMIR NABAKOV, GEORGI VLADIMOV,  NADEZHDA MANDELSTRAM 

Bibliography

Russian Short Stories from Pushkin to Buida, Robert Chandler Ed. (Penguin Books, 2006.) 

Latin American Magical Realism

Description

Gabriel Garcia Marquez once stated: "My most important problem was destroying the line of demarcation that separates what seems real from what seems fantastic."    Although the term was first used by German art critic Franz Roh in 1925, It is commonly thought of as a Latin American movement.  It is related to surrealism, but it is focused on the material object as opposed to its German roots of surrealism's more cerebral and subconscious reality.  In 1949, French-Russian Cuban writer Alejo Carpentier, developed his related concept marvelous realism. Magical Realism refers to literary fiction with supernatural elements presented in an otherwise real-world setting thus revealing the magical in this world.  Fables, folk tales, and myths ae brought into contemporary social relevance.  The narrator doesn’t explain fantastic events, the story proceeds as if nothing extraordinary happened.       In Latin America, magic realism contains another feature: politics.  This is a "Third World" society.  Brutal police and army regimes, arbitrary cruelty, murder, corrupt dictators and the underlying, unspoken hand of the “American Company” are ever present in its fiction.   Amongst the sensory exuberance of the Latin American landscape, Magic is the only explanation for the unreasonable reality of daily life that surrounds the powerless individual. And his only hope.

Weekly Topics

Weekly Topics

• Week 1 and 2  Introduction: Definition of the movement. Origin. European precedents.

  Alejo Carpentier Bio (Wikipedia)

• Week 3:  Alejo Carpentier short story: Journey Back to the Source from Oxford Book

  Of Latin American Short Stories, OBLASS.  Plus his book, The Chase.

• Week 4 & 5: Miguel Angel Asturias. Selections from his short story collection,

  Mirror of Lida Sal: Tales Based on Mayan Myths and Guatemalan Legends.

• Week 6 & 7: Gabriel Garcia Marquez.  Selections from 100 Years of Solitude and

  Balthazar’s Marvelous Afternoon from OBLASS.

• Weeks 8 and 9: Isabel Allende. Selections from The House of Spirits (book) and

  The Stories of Eve Luna (book).

• Weeks 10 & 11: Julio Cortazar” Selected stories from Blow-up and Other Stories.

• Week 12: Mario Vargas Llosa: The Challenge from OBLASS and selections from

  the book Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter.

• Weeks 13 & 14: Summaries/ Reviews/ Discussion/Conclusions.

Bibliography

1) A Study Guide for "Magic Realism",  GALE Cengage learning, (Literary Movements for Students, Vol. 2, 62 pages)

2) The Oxford Book of Latin American Short Stories, Paperback, January 1997 by Roberto Gonzalez Echeverria

3) A companion to Magical Realism (Monographies A) paperback-March 18, 2019 by Stephen M. Hart and Wen-Chin-Ouyang

4) Single Stories Extracted from books by the individual authors not covered 

The Gene: A Grand Tour and Gentle Introduction

Description

Grand Tour is an apt metaphor to describe our core book and this SDG.     

It is a story of discovery with many twists and turns, put together by our tour guide, the masterful Pulitzer-Prize-winning author Siddhartha Mukherjee.  We'll take in every major advance in the field from 1850 to 2016, we'll meet the scientists as they do their work, and we'll understand their motivation for what they are doing.

 Our Grand Tour starts in Ancient Greece with the Pythagoreans and Aristotle.  Very soon we are riding with Charles Darwin on the Beagle.  We visit the garden of a Russian monk, Thomas Hunt Morgan's cages of buzzing fruit flies, and we attend the birth of the new science of genetics.   

That's barely the beginning of the tour offered by our superlative new core book, which we will follow closely. This is top-drawer science writing--clear and understandable for a general audience, novelistic in pace and character detail, eruditely written, engaging, and informative.

If you have ever wanted to understand modern biology, not only some of the science but also its social and moral implications, the light that science shines on what race, sex, and gender really are, and where biotechnology is rushing to take us, you will enjoy this SDG.

Weekly Topics

The Gene, our core book, has 35 chapters.  They have been grouped into the 14 weeks below not strictly by page count, but also based on how much material is covered and by how much there is to discuss in the chapters for the week.  Each line in the list below corresponds to the contents of one chapter in The Gene.  The majority of weekly readings are in the range of 28 to 38 pages.

 1    Introduction to the author's family, a recurring thread throughout.
      Heredity via philosophy: From Pythagoras and Aristotle to 1850.
       Darwin and evolution: The best-adapted variants are selected naturally.
       Darwin tries to define a theory of heredity but fails.
       Mendel finds that inherited traits are passed as discrete alleles.

 2    Rediscovered, Mendel's work becomes the basis of genetics.
       Genetics is distorted into the false "science" of eugenics.
       American eugenics in the 1920s gets into racial politics, prison, surgery.
       Genes exist on chromosomes.    Morgan and his fruit fly experiments.

 3    Fisher and Dobzhansky show how genotypes lead to phenotypes.
       Griffith: A gene is some kind of chemical.  Muller: X-rays mutate fruit flies.
       Nazis turn eugenics into the Holocaust.  Lysenko's political genetics.

 4    Avery purifies Griffith-experiment debris, is left with the chemical DNA.
       Watson, Crick, Franklin, and Wilkins deduce DNA's structure.
       How does DNA in a gene provide information to build a protein?

 5    Pardee, Jacob, and Monod discover how genes are regulated.
       How do genes control development of an organism from just one cell?

 6    Berg, Boyer, and Cohen make bacterial hybrids and clone them.
       Sanger sequences the complete genome of a virus (9 genes).
       Scientists see biohazards and propose self-regulation at Asilomar.

 7    Swanson and Boyer form Genentech, genetically engineer insulin.
      "Was my father's fall the consequence of his genes?...new ways to think."
       McKusick catalogs genetic diseases. Amniocentesis. Roe v. Wade.

 8    Neo-eugenics.  What is genetic wellness?  How can causal genes be found?
       Hemochromatosis. Genome signposts.  Huntington's.  Cystic fibrosis.
       Genomic illness: cancer & schizophrenia; even crime?  Polymerase chain reaction, fast sequencing.

 9    Human Genome Project vs. Craig Venter:  H.flu, C.elegans, fruit fly, human genome are sequenced.
       Here's a summary of what the human genome sequence reveals.

10    Human ancestry, race, genes, and intelligence. "Normal" means what?

11    Sex, gender, and gender identity. XX, XY, SRY but 1000 shades of gray.
        Is there a "gay gene"?  Genes, twins, personality, and behavior.  The role of chance.

12    Waddington. Gurdon's frogs. Epigenetic marks. Embryogenesis. RNA.

13    Embryonic stem cells. Gene therapy for OTC deficiency kills patient.
        Predicting genetic risk: BRCA1, schizophrenia, bipolar disease.  Moral hazards of preimplantation genetic diagnosis.

14    Gene therapy for Hemophilia. Inheritable therapy in germ line via embryonic stem cells & CRISPR/Cas9.
        Future:  Projects of discrimination, division, and eventual reconstruction.

Bibliography

The Gene: An Intimate History 

by Siddhartha Mukherjee 

Scribner, May 2016