Quote Originally Posted by Cypress View Post
These two video courses are going to fill in a prominent void in knowledge for me:
– the Eastern intellectual tradition, and the history and roles of prominent women of antiquity through the Middle Ages. In my experience, this type of knowledge is not even remotely an expectation of a traditional undergraduate college education, and one has to put effort into seeking it out on your own to acquire any passing familiarity with the subject matter. I consider these courses to be a cure to my ignorance!

Great Minds of the Eastern Intellectual Tradition
Professor Grant Hardy, Ph.D. University of North Carolina, Asheville

Warriors, Queens, and Intellectuals: 36 Great Women before 1400
Professor Joyce E. Salisbury, Ph.D. University of Wisconsin, Green Bay
The Trung sisters were completely unknown to me, and that has been rectified by a video course on East Asian history. My key take-away: patriarchy was not quite as rigid and pervasive in Vietnam, in the way it was in China, Korea, and Japan. Resulting in the consequence that Vietnamese women could and did play significant roles in society.

Trung Sisters, byname of Trung Trac and Trung Nhi, (flourished AD 39–43), heroines of the first Vietnamese independence movement, who headed a rebellion against the Chinese Han-dynasty overlords and briefly established an autonomous state. Their determination and apparently strong leadership qualities are cited by scholars of Southeast Asian culture as testimony to the respected position and freedom of women in Vietnamese society, as compared with the male-dominated societies of China and India.

Trac and Nhi’s mother was a widow who raised her two daughters on her own, and this was solidly within the matriarchal tradition. She taught the girls skills usual for both women and men. She had her daughters trained in the martial arts, sword fighting, and archery, and they learned to ride the war elephants that accompanied the armies through the jungles.

In AD 39 she, with her sister Trung Nhi and other members of the aristocracy, marched on Lien Lau, forcing the Chinese commander to flee. Within a year the sisters and their allies held 65 northern citadels. At Me Linh, in the lower Red River delta, the Trung Sisters jointly proclaimed themselves queens of an independent state (of unknown name) extending from southern China to the present site of Hue.

The Trung Sisters’ revolutionaries—without peasant support, without supplies, and with untrained forces—were no match, however, for the seasoned Chinese troops of General Ma Yüan . He defeated them first at Lang Bac, near the present site of Hanoi. The Trung Sisters then retreated to Hat Mon, now Son Tay, where they were decisively beaten. Unable to face defeat, they committed suicide, drowning themselves at the juncture of the Day and Red rivers in AD 43.

Source credit: Encyclopedia Brittanica and Professor Joyce E. Salisbury, University of Wisconsin–Green Bay
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Trung-Sisters