International Conference on “Chinese Women in World History”

Date(s)： 2017/07/11~2017/07/14

Time： 09:00~17:00

Venue： Archives 1st & 2nd Conference Hall

Organizer： IMH

Link： http://www.mh.sinica.edu.tw/MHWeb/PGGroupStudyPlan_Page.aspx?groupStudyPlanID=19

List of participants：

Attachment：議程

Abstract PDF：Download




The last twenty years in Chinese women’s history research have been marked by great breakthroughs. From “patriarchal oppression” to “women’s autonomy,” from “her story” to “construction of gender,” figures of Chinese women in history are becoming increasingly visible, and their expressions are not limited to the mild “voiceless voice” any more. Nevertheless, just as our knowledge about Chinese women’s history is becoming abundant and detailed, we can also see its limitations, especially when adopting “China” as a research framework. The development of women’s rights in modern China cannot be separated from the development of the nation-state, hence it seems that research on modern Chinese women’s history cannot bypass nationalism. Yet, is the state the key issue for women’ history research? Can we, as Prasenjit Duara suggested more than a decade ago, rescue women’s history from the nation?

In line with this question, the Institute of Modern History at Academia Sinica will organize the International Conference on “Chinese Women in World History” on July 11-14, 2017, for the purpose of exploring Chinese women’s history beyond the boundaries of the nation-state. Adopting a more ‘inclusive’ manner, we hope to re-examine the role of Chinese women in the context of world history, for example, their imagination of the “foreign lands”; their interactions with and mis/understandings of foreigners; similarities and differences between Chinese and foreign women’s experiences, etc. At the same time, we live in a “butterfly effect” global village, where regional political upheavals, economic crises, and environmental changes are actually global issues. No matter whether we agree with the thesis of “globalization”, “global links” do offer a key perspective to understand regional culture. What is the relation between these global links and Chinese women? What kind of new perspectives and insights may a global view provide to the research of Chinese women’s history?