Gender, Family, and Society in East Asia

Catalog description

This course tracks the changes in East Asian gender roles, relationships, and family life from 1800 to the present, placing private life at the center of the history of China, Japan, and Korea. Among the topics covered are the examination of gender and family life in early modern East Asia, considering topics such as marriage customs, the cult of female chastity, birthing practices, male-male sexuality as well as tracing the remarkable shifts in gender and private life in East Asia beginning in the nineteenth century and continuing to the present. The course will likely also cover issues such as women's liberation, changing expectations for courtship, marriage and sex, homosexuality, cross-dressing and androgyny, gender and revolution, and the state's role in regulating sex and procreation.