Queering Gender, Sexuality, and Becoming-Human in Qing Dynasty Zhiguai

Queering Gender, Sexuality, and Becoming-Human in Qing Dynasty Zhiguai PDF Author: Thomas William Whyke
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 9819942586
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 258

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Book Description
This book offers queer readings of Chinese Qing Dynasty zhiguai, ‘strange tales’, a genre featuring supernatural characters and events. In a unique approach interweaving Chinese philosophies alongside critical theories, this book explores tales which speak to contemporary debates around identity and power. Depictions of porous boundaries between humans and animals, transformations between genders, diverse sexualities, and contextually unusual masculinities and femininities, lend such tales to queer readings. Unlike previous scholarship on characters as allegorical figures or stories as morality tales, this book draws on queer theory, animal studies, feminism, and Deleuzian philosophy, to explore the ‘strange’ and its potential for social critique. Examining such tales enriches the scope of historic queer world literatures, offering culturally situated stories of relationships, desires, and ways of being, that both speak to and challenge contemporary debates.

Queering Gender, Sexuality, and Becoming-Human in Qing Dynasty Zhiguai

Queering Gender, Sexuality, and Becoming-Human in Qing Dynasty Zhiguai PDF Author: Thomas William Whyke
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 9819942586
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 258

Get Book

Book Description
This book offers queer readings of Chinese Qing Dynasty zhiguai, ‘strange tales’, a genre featuring supernatural characters and events. In a unique approach interweaving Chinese philosophies alongside critical theories, this book explores tales which speak to contemporary debates around identity and power. Depictions of porous boundaries between humans and animals, transformations between genders, diverse sexualities, and contextually unusual masculinities and femininities, lend such tales to queer readings. Unlike previous scholarship on characters as allegorical figures or stories as morality tales, this book draws on queer theory, animal studies, feminism, and Deleuzian philosophy, to explore the ‘strange’ and its potential for social critique. Examining such tales enriches the scope of historic queer world literatures, offering culturally situated stories of relationships, desires, and ways of being, that both speak to and challenge contemporary debates.

After Eunuchs

After Eunuchs PDF Author: Howard Chiang
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231546335
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 291

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Book Description
For much of Chinese history, the eunuch stood out as an exceptional figure at the margins of gender categories. Amid the disintegration of the Qing Empire, men and women in China began to understand their differences in the language of modern science. In After Eunuchs, Howard Chiang traces the genealogy of sexual knowledge from the demise of eunuchism to the emergence of transsexuality, showing the centrality of new epistemic structures to the formation of Chinese modernity. From anticastration discourses in the late Qing era to sex-reassignment surgeries in Taiwan in the 1950s and queer movements in the 1980s and 1990s, After Eunuchs explores the ways the introduction of Western biomedical sciences transformed normative meanings of gender, sexuality, and the body in China. Chiang investigates how competing definitions of sex circulated in science, medicine, vernacular culture, and the periodical press, bringing to light a rich and vibrant discourse of sex change in the first half of the twentieth century. He focuses on the stories of gender and sexual minorities as well as a large supporting cast of doctors, scientists, philosophers, educators, reformers, journalists, and tabloid writers, as they debated the questions of political sovereignty, national belonging, cultural authenticity, scientific modernity, human difference, and the power and authority of truths about sex. Theoretically sophisticated and far-reaching, After Eunuchs is an innovative contribution to the history and philosophy of science and queer and Sinophone studies.

Gender and Sexuality in Modern Chinese History

Gender and Sexuality in Modern Chinese History PDF Author: Susan L. Mann
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521865142
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
Gender and sexuality have been neglected topics in the history of Chinese civilization, despite the fact that philosophers, writers, parents, doctors, and ordinary people of all descriptions have left reams of historical evidence on the subject. Moreover, China's late imperial government was arguably more concerned about gender and sexuality among its subjects than any other pre-modern state. Sexual desire and sexual activity were viewed as innate human needs, essential to bodily health and well-being, and universal marriage and reproduction served the state by supplying tax-paying subjects, duly bombarded with propaganda about family values. How did these and other late imperial legacies shape twentieth-century notions of gender and sexuality in modern China? In this wonderfully written and enthralling book, Susan Mann answers that question by focusing in turn on state policy, ideas about the physical body, and notions of sexuality and difference in China's recent history, from medicine to the theater to the gay bar; from law to art and sports. More broadly, the book shows how changes in attitudes toward sex and gender in China during the twentieth century have cast a new light on the process of becoming modern, while simultaneously challenging the universalizing assumptions of Western modernity.

The Emerging Lesbian

The Emerging Lesbian PDF Author: Tze-Lan D. Sang
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 9780226734781
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 400

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Book Description
In early twentieth-century China, age-old traditions of homosocial and homoerotic relationships between women suddenly became an issue of widespread public concern. Discussed formerly in terms of friendship and sisterhood, these relationships came to be associated with feminism, on the one hand, and psychobiological perversion, on the other—a radical shift whose origins have long been unclear. In this first ever book-length study of Chinese lesbians, Tze-lan D. Sang convincingly ties the debate over female same-sex love in China to the emergence of Chinese modernity. As women's participation in social, economic, and political affairs grew, Sang argues, so too did the societal significance of their romantic and sexual relations. Focusing especially on literature by or about women-preferring women, Sang traces the history of female same-sex relations in China from the late imperial period (1600-1911) through the Republican era (1912-1949). She ends by examining the reemergence of public debate on lesbians in China after Mao and in Taiwan after martial law, including the important roles played by globalization and identity politics.

Transmedia in Asia and the Pacific

Transmedia in Asia and the Pacific PDF Author: Filippo Gilardi
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 9811578575
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 349

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Book Description
Transmedia in Asia and the Pacific is a timely exploration of a global media phenomena that offers a unique perspective on the production, consumption and use of transmedia storytelling in the Asia Pacific region. Through close analysis of case studies from Australia, Cambodia, China, Japan, Malaysia, South Korea, and West Papua, the chapters in this book provide insight into the cultural and transcultural contexts against which transmedia storytelling takes place in the region. From community theatre and social media narratives in China; to transcultural consumption of Japanese texts in French, Spanish and English speaking countries; to the use of transmedia for education in Japan and China, examples highlight the diverse ways in which a global and commericalised media phenomenon is appropriated and recontextualised to local circumstances. This volume questions the centre/periphery dichotomy of understanding global media through perspectives that seek to enrich understanding and definitions of transmedia. It is a valuable resource for scholars and students wishing to expand their engagement with the theory and practice of transmedia storytelling. Chapters “Chapter 1-Introduction to Transmedia in Asia and the Pacific, Chapter 13 -Teaching Transmedia in China: Complexity, Critical Thinking, and Digital Natives and Chapter 14-Conclusions” are available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.

The Fragile Scholar

The Fragile Scholar PDF Author: Geng Song
Publisher: Hong Kong University Press
ISBN: 9789622096202
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 268

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Book Description
The Fragile Scholar examines the pre-modern construction of Chinese masculinity from the popular image of the fragile scholar (caizi) in late imperial Chinese fiction and drama. The book is an original contribution to the study of the construction of masculinity in the Chinese context from a comparative perspective (Euro-American). Its central thesis is that the concept of "masculinity" in pre-modern China was conceived in the network of hierarchical social and political power in a homosocial context rather than in opposition to "woman." In other words, gender discourse was more power-based than sex-based in pre-modern China, and Chinese masculinity was androgynous in nature. The author explains how the caizi discourse embodied the mediation between elite culture and popular culture by giving voice to the desire, fantasy, wants and tastes of urbanites.

On Their Own Terms

On Their Own Terms PDF Author: Benjamin A. Elman
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674036476
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 606

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Book Description
In On Their Own Terms, Benjamin A. Elman offers a much-needed synthesis of early Chinese science during the Jesuit period (1600-1800) and the modern sciences as they evolved in China under Protestant influence (1840s-1900). By 1600 Europe was ahead of Asia in producing basic machines, such as clocks, levers, and pulleys, that would be necessary for the mechanization of agriculture and industry. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Elman shows, Europeans still sought from the Chinese their secrets of producing silk, fine textiles, and porcelain, as well as large-scale tea cultivation. Chinese literati borrowed in turn new algebraic notations of Hindu-Arabic origin, Tychonic cosmology, Euclidian geometry, and various computational advances. Since the middle of the nineteenth century, imperial reformers, early Republicans, Guomindang party cadres, and Chinese Communists have all prioritized science and technology. In this book, Elman gives a nuanced account of the ways in which native Chinese science evolved over four centuries, under the influence of both Jesuit and Protestant missionaries. In the end, he argues, the Chinese produced modern science on their own terms.

International Flows in the Belt and Road Initiative Context

International Flows in the Belt and Road Initiative Context PDF Author: Hing Kai Chan
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 9811531331
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 309

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Book Description
This edited volume brings together a wide range of academics to engage with inter-disciplinary research perspectives in response to the development of The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) which opens unparalleled opportunities to gain access to new markets in Asia, Europe and Africa. The collection examines opportunities offered in key areas such as trade and investment, policy coordination, facilities connectivity and cultural exchange. It also notably considers how the historical, environmental, cultural and political background to the BRI impacts this hugely ambitious plan which has been described as the ‘new Silk Road', as well as the challenges across these spheres in a part of the world which has witnessed much instability historically. Chapter "Between Adoption and Resistance. China’s Efforts of ‘Understanding the West,’ the Challenges of Transforming Monarchical Legitimacy, and the Rise of Oriental Exceptionalism, 1860-1910” is available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.

Homoerotic Sensibilities in Late Imperial China

Homoerotic Sensibilities in Late Imperial China PDF Author: Cuncun Wu
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134312865
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
Homoerotic Sensibilities in Late Imperial China is the richest exploration to date of late imperial Chinese literati interest in male love. Employing primary sources such as miscellanies, poetry, fiction and 'flower guides', Wu Cuncun argues that male homoeroticism played a central role in the cultural life of late imperial Chinese literati elites. Countering recent arguments that homosexuality was marginal and disparaged during this period, the book also seeks to trace the relationship of homoeroticism to status and power. In addition to historical portraits and analysis, the book also advances the concept of 'sensibilities' as a method for interpreting the complex range of homoerotic texts produced in late imperial China.

Transgender China

Transgender China PDF Author: H. Chiang
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 113708250X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 304

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Book Description
This volume brings together experts with diverse disciplinary backgrounds in the China field, from cultural studies to history to musicology, to make a timely intervention—from the historical demise of enuchism to male cross-dressing shows in contemporary Taiwan—to inaugurate a subfield in Chinese transgender studies.