Sex and Society in Modern China

Catalog description

This course traces changing gender relations across China’s “long 20th century.” We begin by examining lives and relationships of men and women in the late 19th century, before the fall of the Qing dynasty. We then investigate the ways that external and indigenous forces have changed (or not) gender relationships during the rapid and often violent transitions of the twentieth century, from the Republican period (1911-1949) to the People’s Republic; from the Nanjing Decade (1927-37) to the Maoist period (1950-1976) and the period of economic reform (1976-present day). Why did Chinese politicians see the reform of family and gender relations as central to their larger political goals? What were the “new” gender relations supposed to be? How was gender reform carried out (or not) and what were its effects, intended and unintended?