The Reception Of George Bernard Shaw In China 1918 1996

This book explores the cultural bridges connecting George Bernard Shaw and his contemporaries, such as Charles Dickens and Arthur Miller, to China. Analyzing readings, adaptations, and connections of Shaw in China through the lens of Chinese culture, Li details the negotiations between the focused and culturally specific standpoints of eastern and western culture while also investigating the simultaneously diffused, multi-focal, and comprehensive perspectives that create strategic moments that favor cross-cultural readings. With sources ranging from Shaw's connections with his contemporaries in China to contemporary Chinese films and interpretations of Shaw in the digital space, Li relates the global impact of not only what Chinese lenses can reveal about Shaw's world, but how intercultural and interdisciplinary readings can shed new light on familiar and obscure works alike.

SHAW 25 offers eighteen articles, thirteen initially presented at the International Shaw Society conference, 17-21 March 2004, Sarasota, Florida. Additional conference and Shaw Festival Symposia information is provided in the Introduction. Stanley Weintraub's conference keynote, "Shaw for the Here and Now," considers modernizing Shaw's plays, validating Shaw's creative force for today and into the future. Dan H. Laurence's delightful "Shaw's Children" shows a warm, caring, playful Shaw--a giver of self. Howard Ira Einsohn's article on gifting brings together Shaw, Ricoeur, and Derrida to explore the ethics of giving "superabundantly" but not foolishly. Jay Tunney reflects on the ways in which his father, boxer Gene Tunney, fits the personal and professional shoes of Shaw's Cashel Byron, with life imitating art. In "Machiavelli, the Shark, and the Tinpot Tragedienne," Bernard F. Dukore delivers a rereading of Major Barbara that highlights characters and traits, revealing an ensnarling web of beliefs, values, actions, and consequences. Sidney P. Albert's essay explores connections between Major Barbara and Plato's Republic. Using a current theoretical lens, Vicki R. Kennell sees Pygmalion as a narrative literary bridge that predicates postmodern critiques. L.W. Conolly's research on Phillipa Summers reveals a model for Vivie Warren and provides insights into women's lives and education at the turn of the century. In "Who's Modern Now? Shaw, Joyce, and Ibsen's When We Dead Awaken," Kathleen Ochshorn looks at the interrelationships of the three dramatists. Miriam Chirico rewrites critical opinion of You Never Can Tell, arguing that the play is a serious social critique, particularly of marriage. Citing two well-documented instances of Shaw-bashing, John A. Bertolini explores Shaw's responses and reveals Shaw's fair-mindedness. Hannes Schweiger's detailed research substantiates Shaw's influential connection to Viennese culture and politics. Valerie Barnes Lipscomb analyzes Shaw's use of age differences to subvert romantic expectations, thereby drawing greater attention to serious sociocultural issues. Part II continues the legacy of Shaw scholarship with Charles A. Carpenter's must-read bibliographic piece, which reads like a mystery and gives a wealth of research information on Shaw. Focusing on the importance and difficulties of cycle plays, Julie Sparks looks at Man and Superman, Heartbreak House, Back to Methuselah, and current offerings such as Kushner's Angels in America. Kay Li, tracing the influence of Shaw on Chinese drama, argues that modern Chinese drama emerged from the failure of Mrs. Warren's Profession. Frank Duba's article analyzes the evolving role of the Preface in Shaw's works, focusing especially on Man and Superman. Coming full circle, the volume returns to Stanley Weintraub's presentation of Shaw and the fascinating story of Lady Colin Campbell--a story that asks us to consider what it means to be endowed with beauty, fame, and ambition, and what it means to finally lose them. Finally, Michael W. Pharand's addendum to SHAW 24 gives supplementary bibliography on Shavian matters related to love, sex, marriage, and women. SHAW 25 also includes reviews as well as John R. Pfieffer's "Continuing Checklist of Shaviana."

The past century witnessed dramatic changes in the lives of modern Chinese women and gender politics. Whilst some revolutionary actions to rectify the feudalist patriarchy, such as foot-binding and polygyny were first seen in the late Qing period; the termination of the Qing Dynasty and establishment of Republican China in 1911-1912 initiated truly nation-wide constitutional reform alongside increasing gender egalitarianism. This book traces the radical changes in gender politics in China, and the way in which the lives, roles and status of Chinese women have been transformed over the last one hundred years. In doing so, it highlights three distinctive areas of development for modern Chinese women and gender politics: first, women’s equal rights, freedom, careers, and images about their modernized femininity; second, Chinese women’s overseas experiences and accomplishments; and third, advances in Chinese gender politics of non-heterosexuality and same-sex concerns. This book takes a multi-disciplinary approach, drawing on film, history, literature, and personal experience. As such, it will be of huge interest to students and scholars of Chinese culture and society, women's studies, gender studies and gender politics.

Shaw, now in its twenty-third year, publishes general articles on Shaw and his milieu, reviews, notes, and the authoritative Continuing Checklist of Shaviana, the bibliography of Shaw studies.

The volume reveals an astonishing richness in the theatrical approaches to Ibsen across the world: it considers political theatre, institutional 'high art', theatre for development, queer and transgender theatre, Brechtian techniques, puppetry, post-dramatic theatre, rural village performance and avant-garde touring companies. Investigating varied renegotiations of his drama, including the work of Thomas Ostermeier in Germany and other parts of the world, versions of A Doll's House from Chile and China, The Wild Duck in Iran and productions of Peer Gynt in Zimbabwe and Egypt, Frode Helland provides a deeper understanding of a cross-cultural Ibsen. The volume gives an in-depth analysis of the practice of Ibsen in relation to political, social, ideological and economic forces within and outside of the performances themselves, and demonstrates the incredible diversity of his work in local situations.

"Try Something Different. Something Really Chinese" The Happy Hsiungs recovers the lost histories of Shih-I and Dymia Hsiung, two once highly visible, but now largely forgotten Chinese writers in Britain, who sought to represent China and Chineseness to the rest of the world. Shih-I shot to worldwide fame with his play Lady Precious Stream in the 1930s and became known as the first Chinese director to work in the West End and on Broadway. Dymia was the first Chinese woman in Britain to publish a fictional autobiography in English. Diana Yeh traces the Hsiungs' lives from their childhood in Qing dynasty China and youth amid the radical May Fourth era to Britain and the USA, where they rubbed shoulders with George Bernard Shaw, James M. Barrie, H. G. Wells, Pearl Buck, Lin Yutang, Anna May Wong and Paul Robeson. In recounting the Hsiungs' rise to fame, Yeh focuses on the challenges they faced in becoming accepted as modern subjects, as knowledge of China and the Chinese was persistently framed by colonial legacies and Orientalist discourses, which often determined how their works were shaped and understood. She also shows how Shih-I and Dymia, in negotiating acceptance, "'performed" not only specific forms of Chineseness but identities that conformed to modern ideals of class, gender and sexuality, defined by the heteronormative nuclear family. Though fêted as 'The Happy Hsiungs', their lives ultimately highlight a bitter struggle in attempts to become modern. "In the 1930s, China became briefly fashionable again, after decades of Fu Manchu-style demonising. This switch coincided with the rise of anti-fascism in the West and a new visibility of Chinese art. In a path-breaking contribution to the study of artistic production by British Chinese, Yeh recovers the Hsiungs' forgotten history, their role in this new China wave, and their struggle against hostile stereotyping. Shedding light on a history few can have expected, the book shows high narrative skill and the author's strong empathetic imagination brings everything to life." —Gregor Benton, author of Chinese Migrants and Internationalism and The Chinese in Britain "Through the riveting story of a successful couple of British Chinese artists, the Hsiungs, this book contributes to our understanding of the real struggles involved in the acceptance of 'Chineseness' not as a fixed identity governed by unchanging tradition (as Western Orientalism would have it), but as a resolutely modern performative invention shaped by a confluence of globally circulating hybrid ideas, concepts and images." —Ien Ang, author of On Not Speaking Chinese: Living Between Asia and the West "Thanks to the phenomenal success of his play Lady Precious Stream, Shih-I Hsiung was a household name in the US and UK during the 1930s. Diana Yeh explores the Hsiungs' role in representing China and Chineseness to the rest of the world forcing us to rethink our vision of the British Chinese as invisible and insular, with little social, cultural or political impact on wider society." —Anne Witchard, author of Lao She in London and Thomas Burke's Dark Chinoiserie "The story of Shih-I and Dymia Hsiung fills a gap in our understanding of the Chinese experience in England—and highlights how very different it is from that in America. Yeh does a remarkable job in unravelling the relationship between the Hsiungs, the couple who landed in London in the 1930s, and the Hsiungs as personas, constructs designed to suit as well as to subvert British tastes for and preconceptions of Chineseness." —Ronald Egan, Professor of East Asian Languages and Cultures, Stanford University