Imagine Teaching the Daode Jing!
This collaborative effort between an experienced teacher/scholar and two (then) graduate students presents three “overlapping” strategies for teaching the DDJ. The first emphasizes situating the DDJ within the context of Zhou Chinese intellectual struggles and then proceeds by student led discussions about thematically grouped chapters. The second contrasts contemporary expectations regarding gender language with the DDJ 's own use of feminine metaphors in order to help students uncover what the text may mean when it uses those metaphors in the way that it does. The third aims to turn the DDJ 's notorious ambiguity to the teacher's advantage by leading students through a series of re‐readings of the text from different points of view. This third strategy helps students to see how their understanding of the text changes with each re‐reading, and that all interpretations are context‐dependent.
Keywords: Daode jing, Tao Te Ching, Laozi, Lao Tzu, Daoism, Taoism, Chinese religion, Zhou Dynasty, gender, feminine
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