Beyond Tradition and Modernity: Gender, Genre, and the Negotiation of Knowledge in Late Qing China

FAIN: RZ-50161-04

Rice University (Houston, TX 77005-1827)
Nanxiu Qian (Project Director: November 2003 to January 2009)

An international and interdisciplinary conference that challenges the conventional view of China's late Qing reform era (c. 1890-1912).

Focusing on gender, genre, and the construction of knowledge in China's late Qing reform era (c. 1890-1912), and moving beyond the old paradigm of Chinese "tradition" vs. Western-inspired "modernity," this international conference provides an interdisciplinary and cross-cultural examination of how reform-minded Chinese intellectuals, men and women, met the challenges facing China during this period. They were not simply swept up by the "nationalist discourse" nor did they feel the need to choose between "traditional" Chinese ideas and "modern" Western ones, as scholarship in the past has suggested. Rather, they creatively used China's historical legacy and Western and Japanese cultural resources to grapple with new geopolitical realities.

Associated Products

Politics, Poetics, and Gender in Late Qing China: Xue Shaohui and the Era of Reform (Book)
Title: Politics, Poetics, and Gender in Late Qing China: Xue Shaohui and the Era of Reform
Author: Nanxiu Qian
Abstract: In 1898, Qing dynasty emperor Guangxu ordered a series of reforms to correct the political, economic, cultural, and educational weaknesses exposed by China's defeat by Japan in the First Sino-Japanese War. The "Hundred Day's Reform" has received a great deal of attention from historians who have focused on the well-known male historical actors, but until now the Qing women reformers have received almost no consideration. In this book, historian Nanxiu Qian reveals the contributions of the active, optimistic, and self-sufficient women reformers of the late Qing Dynasty. Qian examines the late Qing reforms from the perspective of Xue Shaohui, a leading woman writer who openly argued against male reformers' approach that subordinated women's issues to larger national concerns, instead prioritizing women's self-improvement over national empowerment. Drawing upon intellectual and spiritual resources from the freewheeling, xianyuan (worthy ladies) model of the Wei-Jin period of Chinese history (220–420) and the culture of women writers of late imperial China, and open to Western ideas and knowledge, Xue and the reform-minded members of her social and intellectual networks went beyond the inherited Confucian pattern in their quest for an ideal womanhood and an ideal social order. Demanding equal political and educational rights with men, women reformers challenged leading male reformers' purpose of achieving national "wealth and power," intending instead to unite women of all nations in an effort to create a just and harmonious new world.
Year: 2015
Primary URL: https://www.worldcat.org/title/politics-poetics-and-gender-in-late-qing-china-xue-shaohui-1866-1911-and-the-era-of-reform/oclc/5906464842&referer=brief_results
Primary URL Description: WorldCat listing
Secondary URL: https://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=23257
Secondary URL Description: Publisher's listing
Access Model: Book
Publisher: Palo Alto: Stanford University Press
Type: Single author monograph
ISBN: 9780804792400
Copy sent to NEH?: Yes

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