Engendering China: Spring '23 Contemporary China lecture series
Examining power dynamics and gender in China
Engendering China, the Cornell Contemporary China Initiative lecture series for spring 2023, explores the power dynamics of gender relations in China from ancient times to the present. It is directed this semester by Professor Yue (Mara) Du (History, Cornell).
In contemporary China, as in many other places of the world, the ideology and social reality of gender relations are highly paradoxical. Women are flattered for their power as consumers and commitment to the family while they are also expected to engage in wage-earning employment. Men, on the other hand, face the constant pressure of being tough and social problems such as skewed gender ratio and costly betrothal gifts as unintended consequences of a gender regime that is supposedly male-oriented. Are these paradoxes a betrayal of the socialist experiment of erasing gender differences? Are they remnants of China’s long imperial tradition? The series corresponds to a course by the same name that Professor Du taught during the spring semester in 2023: (Engendering China: CAPS2932, ASIAN 2291, FGSS 2932, HIST 2932).
All of the lectures were held from 4:45-6:15 p.m. in Goldwin Smith Hall GSH64, Kaufman Auditorium. Talk titles link to the lecture video.
Our guest speakers included:
- February 13 | Ling Ma (History, SUNY Geneseo) Men, Masculinity, and Childbirth in Early Twentieth-Century China
- March 6 | Xian Wang (East Asian Languages and Cultures, University of Notre Dame) Her Voice: Recounting Japanese Military Sexual Slavery in Chinese Literature and Film
- April 20 | Matthew Sommer (History, Stanford University) Transgender in Late Imperial China: Case Studies from the Qing Archives
- May 8 | Yige Dong (Sociology, University at Buffalo) The Fabric of Care: Women’s Work and the Politics of Livelihood in Socialist China
Along with the East Asia Program, this lecture series is co-sponsored by the Department of Asian Studies, Cornell Center for Social Sciences, Feminist, Gender and Sexuality Studies, the Department of History, ILR School's Global Labor Institute, The Levinson China and Asia Pacific Studies Program, and Cornell's Society for the Humanities.
The Cornell Contemporary China Initiative (CCCI) brings together scholars, researchers, and students with sustained research interests in contemporary China.