Readings In Chinese Women S Philosophical And Feminist Thought

Readings in Chinese Women's Philosophical and Feminist Thought gathers 40 original writings on women by 32 authors (many of whom are women) from the Yuan dynasty to the Republics, an important 700-year historical period during which women's learning in China blossomed as a result of economic prosperity, the development of commercial printing, and the interaction between East and West. Selections are made not only from canonical texts on women's virtues, but also from less orthodox literary works such as plays, poetry, novels, essays, and revolutionary writings that illuminate the lived experience of women and the perception of gender. With many texts translated into English for the first time, this reader provides the context needed to understand them. It features: - Chronologically organized readings in the sequence of the Yuan, Ming, Qing dynasties, and the Republics to demonstrate historical progression of thought (or the lack of) - Introductions to each section and chapter covering essential information about the authors and the cultural, historical, and philosophical background to their work - A chronology of dynasties, Republics, key events, and a map Recovering discourse so often neglected in discussion of Chinese thought, this is the first collection to pay special attention to women-authored works from the late 13th to the early 21st century. By bringing these readings together in a single volume, it juxtaposes and compares female and male perspectives from the same time and creates a new narrative of Chinese philosophical thought.

"Readings in Chinese Women's Philosophical and Feminist Thought gathers 36 original writings on and by women in China from the Yuan dynasty through to the Republic, an important historical period when women's learning in China blossomed as a result of economic prosperity, development of commercial printing, and the interaction between the East and the West. Selections are made not only from canonical texts on women's virtue, but from less orthodox literary works such as plays, poetry, novels, essays, and revolutionary writings that illuminate the lived experience of women and the perception of gender. With many texts translated into English for the first time, this reader provides the groundwork needed to understand them. It features: - Chronologically organised readings in the sequence of the Yuan, Ming, Qing Dynasties and the Republic(s) to demonstrate historical progression of thought (or the lack of) - Introductions to each sections covering the authors, and the historical background to their work - A chronology of dynasties and writers, maps and a glossary Recovering discourse so often neglected in discussion of Chinese thought, this is the first collection to pay special attention to women-authored works from the late 13th to the early 21st-century. By bringing these readings together in a single volume, it juxtaposes and compares female with male perspectives from the same time and creates a new narrative of Chinese philosophical thought"--

Readings in Chinese Women's Philosophical and Feminist Thought gathers 40 original writings on women by 32 authors (many of whom are women) from the Yuan dynasty to the Republics, an important 700-year historical period during which women's learning in China blossomed as a result of economic prosperity, the development of commercial printing, and the interaction between East and West. Selections are made not only from canonical texts on women's virtues, but also from less orthodox literary works such as plays, poetry, novels, essays, and revolutionary writings that illuminate the lived experience of women and the perception of gender. With many texts translated into English for the first time, this reader provides the context needed to understand them. It features: - Chronologically organized readings in the sequence of the Yuan, Ming, Qing dynasties, and the Republics to demonstrate historical progression of thought (or the lack of) - Introductions to each section and chapter covering essential information about the authors and the cultural, historical, and philosophical background to their work - A chronology of dynasties, Republics, key events, and a map Recovering discourse so often neglected in discussion of Chinese thought, this is the first collection to pay special attention to women-authored works from the late 13th to the early 21st century. By bringing these readings together in a single volume, it juxtaposes and compares female and male perspectives from the same time and creates a new narrative of Chinese philosophical thought.

In this collection of original essays, international scholars put Asian traditions, such as Hinduism, Buddhism, Daoism, and Confucianism, into conversation with one or more contemporary feminist philosophies, founding a new mode of inquiry that attends to diverse voices and the complex global relationships that define our world. These cross-cultural meditations focus on the liberation of persons from suffering, oppression, illusion, harmful conventions and desires, and other impediments to full personhood by deploying a methodology that traverses multiple philosophical styles, historical texts, and frames of reference. Hailing from the discipline of philosophy in addition to Asian, gender, and religious studies, the contributors offer a fresh take on the classic concerns of free will, consciousness, knowledge, objectivity, sexual difference, embodiment, selfhood, the state, morality, and hermeneutics. One of the first anthologies to embody the practice of feminist comparative philosophy, this collection creatively and effectively engages with global, cultural, and gender differences within the realms of scholarly inquiry and theory construction.

This book illuminates the problem of women in Chinese philosophy through the lens of the lives and work of two contemporary Taiwanese female philosophers. It takes two approaches that have been relegated, quite unfairly, to the margins of dominant discourses. The first is concerned with the work of women philosophical theorists who are still overshadowed by their male colleagues, regardless of where they live, their theoretical potential, and the value of their research. The second approach is related to the question of the role of Taiwanese philosophy in maintaining the continuity of the Chinese intellectual tradition in the second half of the twentieth century. The book thus connects these two issues and provides a bridge linking them. Although discrimination against female philosophical theorists, on the one hand, and the failure to recognize the important contribution of Taiwanese philosophy to the development of modern Chinese philosophy, on the other, seem, at first glance, to have little in common, both harbor a problem that has its roots in discourses of exclusion emanating from the political, historical, and social inequalities associated with power structures.

The 3,000 year old I Ching is the most esteemed of the ancient Chinese classics, yet also the most enigmatic. Reading the I Ching (Book of Changes) incorporates recent advances in scholarship, such as recently excavated texts, and demonstrates how the Zhouyi (the ancient textual layer of the I Ching) was compiled from mostly oral material and how it was organized to serve as an easily consulted compendium of divination responses. In this book Geoffrey Redmond clarifies the meanings of the ancient text by examining use of literary devices such as prognostic terms, imagery from daily life, rhetorical tropes, metaphors, proverbs and set phrases. This provides insight on how the Zhouyi was composed and explains its use for divination. It also shows how, centuries later, the Zhouyi was adapted by the Confucians, who believed it to be the creation of ancient sages, and the source of their metaphysics and cosmology. Redmond also analyzes the Changes through a variety of philological heuristics, such as the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, methods of analogy and anomaly, the distinction between argumentative and context dependence, as well as modern approaches such as Jungian psychology, and critical theory. Included are the interlinear Chinese text, and a glossary of key words in English, Chinese, and pinyin, making it essential reading for students studying Chinese philosophy, Chinese religion, and early Chinese history, as well as readers looking for a clear and accessible gloss of this text.

The present volume of Critical Studies is a collection of selected essays on the topic of feminism and femininity in Chinese literature. Although feminism has been a hot topic in Chinese literary circles in recent years, this remarkable collection represents one of the first of its kind to be published in English. The essays have been written by well-known scholars and feminists including Kang-I Sun Chang of Yale University, and Li Ziyun, a writer and feminist in Shanghai, China. The essays are inter- and multi-disciplinary, covering several historical periods in poetry and fiction (from the Ming-Qing periods to the twentieth century). In particular, the development of women’s writing in the New Period (post-1976) is examined in depth. The articles thus offer the reader a composite and broad perspective of feminism and the treatment of the female in Chinese literature. As this remarkable new collection attests, the voices of women in China have begun calling out loudly, in ways that challenge prevalent views about the Chinese female persona.

The book repositions He-Yin Zhen as central to the development of feminism in China, juxtaposing her writing with fresh translations of works by two of her better-known male interlocutors. The editors begin with a detailed portrait of He-Yin Zhen's life and an analysis of her thought in comparative terms. They then present annotated translations of six of her major essays, as well as two foundational tracts by her male contemporaries, Jin Tianhe (1873-1947) and Liang Qichao (1873-1929), to which He-Yin's work responds and with which it engages. Jin Tianhe, a poet and educator, and Liang Qichao, a philosopher and journalist, understood feminism as a paternalistic cause that "enlightened" male intellectuals like themselves should defend. Zhen counters with an alternative conception of feminism that draws upon anarchism and other radical trends in thought.