ASIAN 2267 - Women and Society in China

(crosslisted) CAPS 2267, FGSS 2267
(GHB) (CA-AS)

Spring. 4 credits.

No prior knowledge of China necessary.

S. Son.

This course offers a broad understanding of the active and dynamic cultural, economic, and social, and political roles played by Chinese women. By challenging the dominant stereotype of the passive and victimized Chinese woman, this course aims to examine women’s struggles, negotiations, and challenges of the normative discourse of femininity and domesticity in terms of various disciplines, including philosophy, anthropology, history, and literature. Through a combination of reading original texts with secondary scholarship, this course will discuss the issues of Confucianism and patriarchal family, the female body and sexuality, education and self-expression, women’s work and religious activities, gender and the state, the modernization of women, etc. (SC)