Advanced Reading in Medical Chinese

COURSE DETAILS

14 Week  Online Course beginning on September 12th
Meets Fridays from 12 – 1:30pm

Nothing beats studying Chinese medicine in the original language. Even the best translations can’t provide the clarity and immediacy of reading the original texts, and the vast majority of the more than 10,000 premodern and countless modern Chinese medical texts have not and never will be translated. The only way to read them is to do it yourself. But reading medical texts isn’t easy. They use a specialized vocabulary and even contemporary texts often blend modern and Classical Chinese. It’s hard, but a little bit of guidance and a lot of community can go a long way.

In this course we will read an untranslated Chinese medical text. Each class will be led by one of the participants who will present their reading of a section of the text while the other participants ask questions and make suggestions. The instructor, Stephen Boyanton, will also provide detailed feedback and suggestions on the reading, and we will discuss the tools to use when you just can’t seem to make sense of text.

This course is intended for students with an intermediate or advanced knowledge of Classical Chinese, but no experience translating is necessary. If you’re uncertain whether this course will be a good fit for you, reach out to Stephen at stephenboyanton@icloud.com for a personal evaluation.

Stephen Boyanton received his PhD in East Asian History from Columbia University, focusing on the medical history of China. He earned his MS in Chinese medicine from Pacific College of Health and Science (formerly Pacific College of Oriental Medicine) and has studied and followed physicians at Beijing University of Chinese Medicine and Chengdu University of Chinese Medicine. He has taught Chinese language, medicine, history, and philosophy for over a decade. His PhD dissertation focused on developments in cold damage theory from 1000-1400, and his research and translations have been published in the Routledge Handbook of Chinese Medicine, the Journal of Chinese Medicine, the journal Ancient Exchanges, and as part of Brill’s Compilation of Chinese Medicine Periodicals Online, 1897-1952. An article of his will appear in the forthcoming anthology From Tang to Song: Transitions and Creations in China’s Middle Period.