History 370:
Women and Gender in East Asia

Dr. Yi-Li Wu
Albion College
Fall 1998

Texts and readings

The following required texts can be purchased at the college bookstore:  

• Pruitt, Ida. A Daughter of Han: The Autobiography of a Chinese Working Woman. Stanford University Press, 1967.
• Bernstein, Gail Lee, ed. Recreating Japanese Women, 1600-1945. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991.
• Ishimoto, Baroness Shidzue. Facing Two Ways: The Story of My Life. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1984.
• Kendall, Laurel. The Life and Hard Times of Korean Shaman: Of Tales and the Telling of Tales. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1988.
• Honig, Emily and Gail Hershatter. Personal Voices: Chinese Women in the 1980s. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1988.

Additional required readings (articles and book excerpts) are on reserve at the college library, filed by the author's last name. See class schedule for details.

Schedule of class meetings, readings, and assignments

Part 1: East Asian Traditions

Week #1: Introduction: What is an "East Asian woman?"

• In-class films: "Picturing Oriental Girls," "Slaying the Dragon" 

Week #2: Gender norms and idealized Chinese women

• "Women's Virtues and Vices," in Ebrey, Chinese Civilization, pp. 72-76.
• Bray, Francesca. Technology and Gender, Chs. 8- 9: "Reproductive Medicine" and "Reproductive Hierarchies," pp. 317-368.
• Mann, Susan. "Grooming a Daughter for Marriage." In Watson and Ebrey, eds. Marriage and Inequality in Chinese Society, pp. 204-229. 
• Sangren, P. Steven. "Female Gender in Chinese Religious Symbols," Signs 9, no. 1 (1983), pp. 4-25.

Week #3: Negotiating gender in traditional China

• Wu, Yenna. "The Inversion of Marital Hierarchy," Harvard Journal of Asian Studies 48, no. 2 (1988), pp. 321-362.
• Murray, Dian, "One Woman's Rise to Power," in Guisso and Johannesen, Women in China, pp. 147-162.
• Ko, Dorothy. "Pursing Talent and Virtue," Late Imperial China, 13, no. 1 (June 1992), pp. 9-39.
• Sommer, Matthew. "The Uses of Chastity," Late Imperial China 17, no. 2 (December 1996): 77-130.

Week #4: Chinese women and social class

• Pruitt, A Daughter of Han

Week #5: Women in traditional Japan

• Recreating Japanese Women, pp. 17-150

Part 2: Transitions in the 19th and early 20th century

Week #6: Chinese women, revolution and reform

• Ye, Weili. "Nü liuxuesheng: The Story of American-Educated Chinese Women, 1880s-1920s." Modern China 20, no. 3 (July 1994), pp. 315-346. 
• Rankin, Mary Backus. "The Emergence of Women at the End of the Ch'ing: The Case of Ch'iu Chin." In Women in Chinese Society, ed. Wolf and Witke, pp. 39-66. 
• Gilmartin, Christina K. "Gender, Political Culture, and Women's Mobilization in the Chinese Nationalist Revolution, 1924-1927." In Engendering China, Christina K. Gilmartin, et al., eds., pp. 195-225. 
• Feuerwerker, Yi-Tsi. "Women as Writers in the 1920's and 1930's." In Women in Chinese Society, ed. Wolf and Witke, pp. 143-168. 

 Week #7: Japanese women and the modernizing state (part 1)

• Recreating Japanese Women, pp. 151-216, 239-314

Week #8: Japanese women and the modernizing state (part 2)

•  Ishimoto, Facing Two Ways

Part 3: Women and gender in late 20th c. East Asia

Week #9: Religious life--Korean women and spiritual communities

•  Kendall, Laurel, The Life and Hard Times of a Korean Shaman
• In-class film (discussion leader will preview): "An Initiation Kut for a Korean Shaman."

 Week #10: Chinese women in the post-Mao era

• Honig and Hershatter, Personal Voices (all read Chs. 1, 5, 7; Chs. 2-4, 6-8 to be divided up among class members)
• In-class film (discussion leader will preview): "Small Happiness"

Week #11: Asian Feminisms

• Palley, Marian Lief, "Feminism in a Confucian Society: The Women's Movement in Korea," in Gelb and Palley, eds. Women of Japan and Korea, pp. 274-296.
• Ueno Chizuko, "Are the Japanese Feminine?" in Broken Silence, pp. 272-302.
• Honig and Hershatter, Personal Voices, Ch. 9.
• Li, Xiaojiang, "Economic Reform and the Awakening of Chinese Women's Collective Consciousness" in Gilmartin, et al., ed., Engendering China, pp. 360-382.

 Paper #2 due: "Women, culture and class"

Week #12: Asian men and Asian women

• Kittredge Cherry, Womansword: What Japanese Words Say About Women (selections).
• Ide Sachiko, "Women's Language, Men's Language" in Buckley, Broken Silence, pp. 32-65 
• "The Changing Portrait of Japanese Men," in Japanese Women, Fujimura-Fanselow and Kameda, eds., pp. 229-254.  
• Kim, Elaine. "Men's Talk: A Korean-American View of South Korean Constructions of Women, Gender, and Masculinity," in Elaine H. Kim and Chungmoo Choi, eds. Dangerous Women: Gender and Korean Nationalism (New York and London: Routledge, 1998), pp. 67-118.

Week #13: The Politics of Sexuality and Reproduction

• Nakanishi Toyoko, "Our Bodies, Ourselves," in Broken Silence, pp. 185-225
• White, Tyrene. "The Origins of China's Birth Planning Policy," in Engendering China, pp. 250-278.
• "The One Child Family" in Ebrey, Chinese Civilization, pp. 478-481. 
• WuDunn, Sheryl, "Japan May Approve the Pill, but Women May Not," New York Times November 27, 1996, p. A1, A10.
• Kristof, Nicholas D., "Baby May Make 3, but in Japan That's Not Enough," New York Times, October 4, 1996, Sec. 1, p. 3.

 Week #14: Gender, Nationalism and Imperialism

•  Moon, Seungsook. "Begetting the Nation," in Dangerous Women, pp. 33-66.
• Moon, Katharine H.S. "Prostitute Bodies and Gendered States in U.S. Korea Relations," in Dangerous Women, pp. 141-174. 
• Chai, Alice Yun. "Asian-Pacific Feminist Coalition Politics: The Chongshindae/Jugunianfu ("Comfort Women") Movement," Korean Studies 17 (1993):67-91. 
• Aoki Yayoi, "Feminism and Imperialism" in Broken Silence, pp. 1-31.

 Week #15: Modern film representations of traditional Asian women

•  Yang, Mayfair Mei-hui. "Of Gender, State Censorship, and Overseas Capital: An Interview with Chinese Director Zhang Yimou," Public Culture 5 (1993): 297-313. 
• Zha, Jane Ying, "Excerpts from Lore Segal, Red Lanterns, and Exoticism," Public Culture 5 (1993), 329-32.
• Dai, Qing. "Raised Eyebrows for "Raise the Red Lantern," Public Culture 5 (1993): 333-37.
• In-class film (discussion leader will preview): "Raise the Red Lantern."