Course Schedule
Gender and Culture: East Asia
Required Texts:
Ebrey, Patricia
Ono, Kazuko
Kim, Elaine H.
Tanizaki, Junichiro
Chang, Jung
Inner Quarters
Chinese Women in a Century of Revolution
Dangerous Women: Gender and Korean Nationalism
Naomi
Wild Swans: Three Daughters in China
Week 1
Readings:
Introduction: Engendering culture
“The Social Relation of the Sexes: the Methodological Implications of Women’s
History” (Joan Kelly-Gadol)
“East Asia: Common Ground and Regional Difference” (Rhoads Murphey)
“Women in Asia” (Ramusack and Sievers)
Week 2
Readings:
Women and Antiquity
“The Book of Odes”, “The Interaction of Yin and Yang”, Chinese Mythology (excerpts),
Sources of Japanese Tradition, Volume One: From Earliest Times to 1600, vol. 1
(excerpts)
http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/shinto/
Week 3
Readings:
Confucianism
Confucius’ Analects
Zhu Xi, “Learning to be a sage”
Film: Confucianism
Week 4
Readings:
Woman’s Tao: Way of womanhood
Pan Chao’s “Perfected Women”
“Two Women” (Ebrey)
Inner Quarters (Ebrey)
What was “woman’s tao” (fudao), the way of womanhood?
How to define “Perfect Women”? What was her relationship with men and the
society? What were her responsibilities and expectations?
Week 5
Readings:
The world of certain women: class, locale, age, and ethnicity
“Women Writers of the Heian Age” & “The Status of UpperClass Women of the Heian Age” (Bingham)
The Talented Women of the Zhang Family (Mann)
Week 6
The Realm of Compassion
Buddhism
Readings:
Week 7
Readings:
Was Tang dynasty the golden era for women, too?
Women of the Tang Dynasty (Holdsworth)
Images and film
Week 8
Readings:
Goddess, beauty and love
Women in Buddhism: Images of the Feminine in the Mahayana Tradition (Paul)
Diary of Lady Murasaki (Murasaki)
Week 9
Readings:
Later Imperial period: chastity, loyalty and honor
“Widows and Remarriage in Ming and Early Qing China”
“Concubines in Song China” (Ebrey: WFCH).
“Propagating female virtues in Choson Korea”, Martina Deuchler (Ko: Women and
Confucian Cultures)
“State indoctrination of filial piety in Tokugawa Japan: sons and daughters in the Official
records of filial piety”, Noriko Sugano (Ko:Women and Confucian Cultures)
Lu Hsun’s Critique: “New Year Sacrifice”
Film: Raise the Red Lantern
Week 10
Readings:
“The Story of Yingying”
“The Tale of Chun Hyang”
Desire, danger, and the body: stories of women's virtue in late Ming China”, Katherine
Carlitz (Gilmartin)
Film: The Tale of Chun Hyang
Week 11
Readings:
Nationalism and Revolution
“Women in the 1911 Revolution” (Ono, chapter 4)
“The Early Meiji debate on Women” (Shiever)
“Nationalism and Construction of Gender in Korea (Elaine Kim)
Qiu Jin
Week 12
New Women
“The Family Prison”, “My Escape from hardship to a Free Life” (Li)
A Woman Soldier's Own Story (Xie)
“Casting off the shackles of the family” (Ono, chapter 5)
“Kyonghui”, by Na Hye-sok (Kim Yung-hee)
Naomi
Wild Swans
Film: To Live
Week 13
Week 14
Bingham, “Japanese Women and World War II”
“Military Slavery and the Women’s Movement” (Hiromi)
The Comfort Women: Sexual Violence and Postcolonial Memory in Korea and Japan
(Soh)
Film: Sandakan No. 8
Week 15
“Economic reform and the awakening of Chinese women's collective consciousness”, by
Li Xiaojiang (Gilmartin)
Japan: “Women legislators in the postwar Diet”, Sally Ann Hastings
(Imamura)
Film: China Blue