Feminisms with Chinese Characteristics

This Women's History Month, join us for a discussion with Hui Faye Xiao and Ping Zhu of the ways in which Chinese feminist ideas have developed since the mid-1990s. Hui Faye Xiao and Ping Zhu are co-editors of the new volume, Feminisms with Chinese Characteristics and Hui Faye Xiao is a 2019 recipient of a Franklin Research Grant from the APS.

Juxtaposing the plural “feminisms” with “Chinese characteristics” both underlines the importance of integrating Chinese culture, history, and tradition in the discussions of Chinese feminisms and stresses the difference between the plethora of contemporary Chinese feminisms and the singular state feminism.

The twelve chapters in this interdisciplinary collection address the theme of feminisms with Chinese characteristics from different perspectives rendered from lived experiences, historical reflections, theoretical ruminations, and cultural and sociopolitical critiques, painting a panoramic picture of Chinese feminisms in the age of globalization.

Karen L. Thornber, Harry Tuchman Levin Professor in Literature and Professor of East Asian Languages and Civilizations at Harvard University, will moderate questions after the talk. 

Hui Faye Xiao is professor of Chinese literature at the University of Kansas. She is the author of Family Revolution: Marital Strife in Contemporary Chinese Literature and Visual Culture and Youth Economy, Crisis, and Reinvention in Twenty-First-Century China: Morning Sun in the Tiny Times.

Ping Zhu is an associate professor of Chinese literature at the University of Oklahoma and serves as the acting editor-in-chief of Chinese Literature Today. She is the author of Gender and Subjectivities in Early Twentieth-century Chinese Literature and Culture (Palgrave, 2015) and the co-editor of Maoist Laughter (Hong Kong University Press, 2019) and Feminisms with Chinese Characteristics (Syracuse University Press, 2021).