Gender Politics in a Global Market Place response

Please respond to "Marching from the Village" from Made in China and "A Lesbian Bar" from Sweet and Sour. What are the two types of working women represented in these two kinds of life stories? What are the similarities and differences? Pay attention to how the authors weave interviews into their critical analyses. Use quotes with page numbers to support your analyses. Due Wednesday April 23 by 8 pm, comments to two other responses due by 10 pm. I look forward to reading your last reading response for this semester! 

Gender Politics after "Reform and Opening Up" response

Shanghai Baby (DVD cover, from Asian Wiki)

Please respond to "Women and Work" and "Shanghai Baby" (p1-37). "Women and Work" includes fascinating first person accounts from the 1980s and a "test" on whether you are a "good housewife" at the end, "Shanghai Baby" is considered semi auto-biographical, written by a "beauty writer" in Shanghai in the late 1990s. Pay attention to the nature of sources: Is it scholarly work? Is it fiction? Is it based on first-person narratives? Response due by Wednesday April 16 at 8 pm, comments to two other responses due by 10 pm. Enjoy reading and writing!

Gendered Body in the Socialist Discourse response

Please respond to the fascinating body of materials for this week in the following order. Due Wednesday April 9 by 8 pm. Comments to two responses due by 10 pm.
1. Respond to the two 1971 pieces ("Iron Girl" and "Good Daughter of the Party") selected from Beijing's English language magazine Chinese Literature. It is a rare opportunity to read first-hand materials from the Cultural Revolution. Cite one most memorable detail from each piece with page numbers to illustrate your reading experience.
2. Spend at least half an hour on the Chinese Posters website: chineseposters.net. Pay particular attention to the two-part section under "Iron Women and Foxy Ladies". Pick one poster and analyze its visual and other components as best representing the gendered body in the socialist discourse.
3. Read the scholarly piece "Comrade Sisters" as a way to help you synthesizing the above textual and visual representations from the socialist era. What have you learned from this scholarly piece written in the 1990s? Cite a short quote with page number to support your analysis. 

A Legendary Female Writer response

Eileen Chang (1920-1995)
Photo source: Wikimedia

Please respond to "Sealed Off" and "Love in a Fallen City" by Eileen Chang. Chang is among the leading female writers of modern China. Both her fictions and her legendary life story have been the focal point of numerous TV soap operas, films, and other popular cultural representations. Read with the following questions in mind and feel free to raise your own questions and address issues that interest you most.

1. For you as a reader, what are the memorable characters in the stories? Why do you think they are important?
2. How is love intricately connected with the wartime historical condition in the stories? What are the metaphorical “wars” been fought in these stories?
3. Do you like Chang’s writing style? Among the many writers we’ve read since the beginning of the semester, who might be comparable to Chang in terms of writing style?

Enjoy reading! I look forward to reading your responses on Wednesday April 2 by 8 pm. Comments to two other responses due by 10 pm.

Woman Soldier response

Please respond to XIE Bingying's piece “War” in A Woman Soldier’s Own Story with the following questions in mind:

1. Xie became known as a "woman soldier" because she was first and foremost a writer. Discuss the significance of writing in constructing gender politics in Xie's case.

2. Xie's writing was highly promoted by male editors and translators both inside China and internationally. Discuss the implication of promoting a "woman solider of China" to the international audience.

3. Discuss the romanticism of Xie's piece. How is it different from/similar to the romanticism in the May Fourth women writers such as Ding Ling's Miss Sophia's Diary?

Feel free to address these questions and/or raise your own question. Due Wednesday March 26 by 8 pm. Comments to two responses due by 10 pm. 

Bound Feet and Western Dress response

Please respond to Pang-Mei Natasha Chang's oral history-based memoir Bound  Feet and Western Dress, a story of two generation of Chinese women told by the Chinese American female author. What is the most intriguing insight you took away from the book? How does this oral history echo recurring issues throughout our class? How might reading this book inform you about your midterm paper? Please use quotes with page numbers from the book to support your response. Due Wednesday March 5 by 10 pm for one extra credit. 

Working Women response

Please respond to "Modernizing Sex" and "The New Woman Incident" in the context of Shanghai working women. 

"Modernizing Sex" makes six approximations of Shanghai prostitution. Which ones interest you most? What valuable lessons this essay might provide for thinking through and writing about your midterm paper? 
          

(Goddess, 1934, Dir. WU Yonggang, with English inter-titles, video source: Youtube

The film portrays a Shanghai prostitute as protagonist)

          

(New Woman, 1935, dir.  CAI Chusheng, with Chinese inter-titles, video source: Youtube

Check out the film script in English on MCLC )

"The New Woman Incident" investigates the changing position of  film actresses, filmmakers, and the notion of the New Woman in Shanghai, using the 1935 silent film New Woman as a case study. What are the key issues surrounding the New Woman Incident? How can we better understand the case of the New Woman Incident in the context of past readings? Due Wednesday February 26 by 8 pm; comments to two other responses due the same day by 10 pm. I look forward to reading your responses! 

Representations of Women response

Please respond to DING Ling's short story "Miss Sophia's Diary." How is Sophia's story told? What kind of woman is Miss Sophia? Is she different from/similar to the female figures we encountered before? "Miss Sophia's Diary" is still considered one of the best pieces of woman's writing in 20th century China. Why do you think Ding Ling's story attracted such scholarly and popular attention over time?

Please respond to SHEN Congwen's short story "Xiaoxiao" in relation to "Miss Sophia's Diary." How are locations gendered in these readings? What can you learn from "Xiaoxiao" in regard to the relationship between the country girl and the city girl, and between the city and the countryside? How do men function in these stories? Feel free to address the above questions with quotes from the stories or raise your own questions. Due Wednesday Feb. 19 by 8 pm; comments to two other responses due by 10 pm the same day. I look forward to reading your responses! 

Male Sexuality and the Woman Question response

Yu Dafu and Wang Yingxia
Photo credit: http://mclc.osu.edu/

Please respond to LU XUN’s short story “Regret for the Past” and YU Dafu’s short story “Sinking.” What is most striking for you in these two stories? How do these short stories illustrate the interrelationship between male sexuality, images of women, and nationalism in China (and for Chinese students in Japan) in the early 1920s? Your two-paragraph responses are due Wednesday February 12 by 8 pm, and your comments to two other responses are due by 10 pm. I look forward to reading your responses!

The Beheaded Feminist response

Painting of Qiu Jin, image credit: Cafa Art Info

Please respond to "The Beheaded Feminist Qiu Jin" for Wednesday. In this lucidly written book chapter which carefully contextualizes many of Qiu's original poems in wonderful translations, Qiu appears to impersonate a range of identities from "poet and nationalist," "student and feminist", to "teacher and revolutionary". Please respond to the reading with quotations of a
single line or stanza of Qiu's poems that left the strongest impression on you. Put the poem in context just as the chapter does and explain to us why you think this line or stanza best represents Qiu Jin the poet, or Qiu Jin the feminist, or Qiu Jin whoever you consider she should be remembered as after reading this piece and the very short "Historical Introduction." Due on Wednesday 2/5 by 8 pm, comments to two other responses due by 2/5 by 10 pm. I look forward to reading your insightful responses!

Remarkable Women in the Late Qing reading response

      Princess Der Ling             Ci Xi and Der Ling             Rong Ling                    Guang Xu Emperor
                                                                                   
                                                          (Photo source: www.sudu.cc)

Please read the short excerpts from Jung Chang's 2013 book Empress Dowager Cixi (for Tuesday) and chapters 1-5 (20 pages) of Princess Der Ling's 1911 book Two Years in the Forbidden City (for Thursday). What was your impression of Cixi after reading the two short chapters titled "Making Friends with Westerners" and "Cixi's Revolution"? How's Princess Der Ling's account support or contradict Chang's portrayal of Cixi? Use brief quotations with page numbers to support your observation in the first paragraph of your response.

Do some research on Cixi, Princess Der Ling, Jung Chang and the controversy surrounding her books on China. Write a reflective paragraph focusing on how reading these two excerpts written by two women who lived almost 100 years apart complicate your understanding of gender politics in China from the early twentieth century to the contemporary moment.

Your two-paragraph response will be due as a comment to this post on Wednesday Jan. 29 by 8 pm. Your short "reply" to two other responses will be due the same day by 10 pm. I look forward to reading your responses!  

Welcome to Gender Politics in Chinese Culture!

Welcome!! This will be our class blog where I will post weekly reading questions for you to post your reading responses by 8 pm on Wednesdays starting January 29. Your comments to two other responses will be due by 10 pm the same day. Your midterm paper (and update) and final paper/project (and update) will also be due here, as links to your own blogs.

For our first day of class today, I will clarify my expectations for you in this class, and will highlight the importance of finishing assigned readings BEFORE coming to class, active participation in class with the aid of reading notes, writing thoughtful reading responses with quotes and page numbers, and working on your academic writing skills based on close reading of textual and audio/visual materials. 

We will then go over important aspects of the syllabus, get to know each other a little bit, and watch a short video on women in China. Looking forward!