History 380/Women’s Studies 380
Spring 2005 MWF 10-10:50
ITE 233; Office: Adm. 723
Prof. Constantine N. Vaporis
email: vaporis@umbc.edu
Tel. (410) 455-2092

   History of Women and Gender in East Asia

Contents:
Course Description
Goals/Objectives
Required Textbooks and Other Readings
Course Requirements and Grading
Academic Honesty
Some Web Links on Asian Women
Reference/Bibliographical Works on Interest
Important Journals and Other Library Resources at UMBC
Audio-Visual Resources on East Asian Women Available at UMBC
Schedule of Classes, Reading Assignments
 
 

Course Description:

     Traditionally women have been largely excluded from general narratives of East Asian history. This course aims to rectify this situation in part by offering an examination of the role of women and gender in Japan, China, and Korea since ancient times. It will introduce students to the sources of women’s social, economic and political power in these three East Asian countries; it also aims to provoke thought on, and discussion about, the ways in which ideology and other factors worked to try to limit that power. However, we hope to avoid simplistic and Orientalist views of Chinese, Japanese, and Korean women as oppressed victims of traditional cultures--victims who were liberated only through the importation of Western values and education. Rather, we will explore the contradictory but coexisting poles of both victimization and agency; that is, the way in which women were able to create their own identities by operating within and even manipulating the limitations imposed on them.
 
   We will take a comparative, historical approach, within a broad chronological framework, to the status of women in all three societies. Specific topics include the role of the state in structuring gender relations (gender construction); the influence of gender in work, marriage, sexuality, and language; the relationship between class and gender; birth control practices; the development of women’s movements; changing discourse on women; comparative conceptions of feminism; the body and gender; and, the representation and reproduction of images of the feminine. Scholarly analyses, historical fiction and film will be used. Class format will be largely discussion-based.
 
 

Goals/Objectives:

• Historical : How have the lives of women in East Asia changed since ancient times? What part did they play in wider historical developments such as revolution and economic growth? To what extent does our placement of women at the center of historical inquiry call into question conventional models of periodization?

• Comparative (History and Feminism): Do women across the globe have the same problems and want the same things? (How has the experience of East Asian women differed from that of “Western” women?) Within East Asia, how do the views and experiences of women differ: from country to country? within each country from period to period? from social class to social class?

• Critical: Analyze how East Asian women are represented in the materials used; compare Western and/or male representations (the “male gaze”) with those of East Asian women themselves; analyze what the various sources can and cannot tell us about the lives of women? (utility, limitations)

Required Textbooks and Other Readings:
    Dorothy Ko, Jahyun Kim Haboush, Joan R. Piggott, ed., Women and Confucian Cultures in Premodern China, Korea, and Japan.
    Murasaki Shikibu, The Tale of Genji (trans. Edward Seidensticker).
    Pa Chin, Family.
    Vera Mackie, Feminism in Modern Japan.
    Xinran, The Good Women of China
    Susan Mann, East Asia (China, Japan, Korea)--to be used as a reference work

Other Readings: available on e-reserve (designated with an "*") or will be posted on course Blackboard site. Please see the professor for the necessary user name and password.
 

Course Requirements and Grading:

• Midterm (3/16), 25%
• Final Exam (5/23, 8-10 a.m.), 25%
• (Reading/Viewing) Journal (25%): required weekly journal entry, sometimes based on question posed by professor, other times to follow parameters set in handout (Reading Journal Instructions); participation in Blackboard group discussions of reading or the viewing of visual materials (art images, videos, DVDs)
• Participation (25%): includes brief oral report (every student will be asked to read one of the suggested readings and give a brief (5 minute) oral report on it during the class. Please select a topic (article or portion of a book) as soon as possible. These will be assigned on a first-come, first-serve basis. You are free to find your own source for the particular topic in questions, but must get it approved by the professor before-hand.)
• An open mind, non-judgmental attitude; respect for the opinions of others which may differ from your own. While a vigorous exchange of ideas will be encouraged, ad hominum (personal) attacks will not be tolerated.
• Regular access to a computer is essential, as many course readings are on electronic reserve and the professor will communicate with you (and you with your fellow students) via Blackboard.

 

   Cheating: Knowingly using or attempting to use unauthorized material, information, or study aids in any academic exercise.
    Fabrication: Intentional and unauthorized falsification or invention of any information or citation in an academic exercise.
    Facilitating Academic Dishonesty: Intentionally or knowingly helping or attempting to help another commit an act of academic dishonesty.
    Plagiarism: Knowingly representing the words or ideas of another as one's own in any academic exercise, including works of art and computer-generated information/images.

    Academic misconduct could result in disciplinary action that may include, but is not limited to, suspension or dismissal. Students should consult UMBC's Academic Conduct Policy for information on policy and procedures for upholding UMBC's high standards for academic integrity. Students who have questions or concerns are encouraged to talk with a member of the faculty or administration for assistance.

    For examinations the desk area in front of you should be completely clear, except for the test materials, blue book, and your writing implement(s). All electronic equipment must be placed inside a knapsack, coat pocket, etc., not on the floor, and must remain there for the duration of the test. Should any electronic equipment be visible to the professor or teaching assistant during an exam the student will be instructed to turn over his/her exam and will receive a failing grade.
 
 

Some Web Links on Asian Women (others can be found in the text for individual weekly assignments).
  1. Internet Women’s History Sourcebook--contains a section on East Asia
(www.Fordham.edu/halsall/women/womensbok.html#Japan)??

  2.  JPOLL, the Japan Public Opinion Location Library, contains more than 150  separate Japanese public opinion questions and statistics dealing with issues of women's rights, abortion, status, and gender equity. Also contains an archive of some journal articles, e.g. on the Japanese Equal Employment Opportunity Law.  The JPOLL database can be found at: www.ropercenter.uconn.edu/jpoll/JPOLL_welcome.htm

 3. an excellent site on Japanese studies: www.lib.duke.edu/ias/eac/japanesestudies.html

 4. Japanese gender issues, with many links: darkwing.uoregon.edu/~felsing/jstuff/gender.html

 5. 4th World Conference on Women in Beijing (Oct. 1996):
http://dir.yahoo.com/government/international_organizations/united_nations/fourth_world_conference_on_women/
 and Beijing 1995: Women, Power and Change: www.womensnet.apc.org/beijing/   (among others)

 6. Contemporary Japanese magazines:
a) www.shufunotomo.co.jp/ (Shufu no tomo--The Housewife’s Friend)
b) www.magazine.co.jp/ (Magazine House)
c) www.nikeihome.co.jp/woman (Nikkei Woman)
 

Reference/Bibliographical Works of Interest:
    Koh, Hesung Chun, et al. Korean and Japanese Women: An Analytical Bibliography (1982)
    Hershatter, Gail; Hong, Emily; Mann, Susan; and Rofel, Lisa, eds. Guide to  Women’s Studies in China. (1998)
    Huber, Ruth Huber.  Women in Japanese Society. An Annotated  Bibliography of Selected English Language Materials
(1992).
    Lan, Hua R. and Fong, Vanessa L., eds., Women in Republican China, A Source  Book (1998).
    Kodansha Encylopedia of Japan (one set in reference, another in stacks)
    Research on Women in Modern Chinese History (journal with articles in  both English and Chinese, published in Taiwan).
    Wei, Karen T. Women in China: A Selected and Annotated Bibliography  (1984)
    Barbara Bennet Peterson, Notable Women of China, Shang Dynasty to the Early Twentieth Century
 

Important Journals and Other Library Resources at UMBC:
Nan Nu: Men, Women and Gender in Early and Imperial China (new)
Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society
Journal of Women’s History
Journal of Family History
Journal of Asian History
Journal of Japanese Studies
U.S.-Japan Women’s Journal
“Contemporary Women’s Issues” database. To use, type “Contemporary Women’s Issues” in the “Find a Database” box of the Kuhn Library home page.

Audio-Visual Resources on East Asian Women Available at UMBC (on reserve):
    "Mulan" UMDVD 685 (China)--Disney meets Chinese women
    "Secrets of a Geisha"  UMVID 3615 (Japan)
    "Bounce Ko Girls" UMDVD 676 (Japan), feature film on teenage prostitution, 1997
    "Small Happiness: Women of a Chinese Village" UMVID 594 (China), documentary on Long Bow village women, with discussions on footbinding, new birth control policy, work, love and marriage
    "Women's Story" (Cu jen di gu shi, China) UMVID 1316, feature film, banned in PRC, on three rural women's experiences in the big city
    "China's Lost Girls," National Geographic program, on order
    "A Taxing Woman" (Marusa no onna) UMVID 4218, Japanese feature film on a female tax collector, directed by Itami Juzo, 1999
 

Schedule of Classes, Reading Assignments
Week 1
Session #1 (1/31): Introduction to the Course

#2 (2/2): Defining Gender
Readings:
    Linda Nicholson, “Interpreting Gender,” Signs 20, 1 (1994), 79-105.*
    Women and Confucian Cultures in Premodern China, Korea, and Japan (WCC), p. 1-7.
 

#3 (2/4): Women and Political Power in the Ancient World (1)
Readings:
    Diana Paul, “Empress Wu and the Historians: A Tyrant and a Saint of  Classical China,” in Unspoken Worlds: Women’s Religious Lives in  Non-Western Cultures, eds. Nancy Auer Falk and Rita M. Gross (1980),  pp. 191-206. *
    Lien-sheng Yang, “Female Rulers in Imperial China,” Harvard Journal of  Asiatic Studies 23 (1960-1961), pp. 47-61.*

Recommended Reading:
“Empress Wu.” Chapter 9 in John Wills, Mountain of Fame (1994), pp. 127-148.
 

Week 2
#4 (2/7): Women and Political Power in the Ancient World (2)
Readings:
   Hiroko Sekiguchi, "The Patriarchal Family Paradigm in Eighth-Century Japan," (WCC), 27-41.*
   Joan R. Piggott, "The Last Classical Female Sovereign" (WCC), 47-68.*

Recommended Readings:
    Essays on Empress Jingu and Jito Tenno in Chieko Irie Mulhern, Heroic With  Grace. Legendary Women of Japan, pp. 3-76.
    E. Patricia Tsurumi, “The Male Present versus the Female Past: Historians and Japan’s Ancient Female Emperors,” Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars 14 (1983), pp. 71-75.*
 

#5 (2/9): Ideological Roots of Gender Practices (Confucianism)
Required Readings:
    Pan Chao (Ban Zhao). “Lessons for Women.” In Nancy Lee Swann. Pan Chao: Foremost Woman Scholar of China, pp. 82-99. *
    Roxann Prazniak, “Reflectionson Gender Relations: Views from Ban Zhao and Christine de Pisan,” in her Dialogues Across Civilizations, 27-46.*

Recommended:
John E. Wills, “Ban Zhao” (Chp. 6 in his Mountain of Fame), pp. 90-99.
 

#6 (2/11): Ideological Roots of Gender Practices (2): The Story of Mulan (1)
Visit this website devoted to Mulan which contains, among other things, the lyrics to songs from the film: www.meekosmulanpage.com/lyrics.html
 
 

Week 3
#7 (2/14): Ideological Roots of Gender Practices (2): The Story of Mulan (2)
Required Reading:
    Joseph Allen. “Dressing and Undressing the Chinese Woman Warrior.” Positions. East Asian Cultures Critique 4, 2 (1996), pp. 343-79.*

#8 (2/16): Ideological Roots of Gender Practices (3): Filial Piety
Required Reading:
"The Book of Filial Piety for Women Attributed to a Woman Nee Zheng (ca. 730)," pp. 47-67*

#9 (2/18) Confucianism's Impact on Korea
Required Reading:
    Hai-soon Lee, "Representation of Females in Twelfth-Century Korean Historiography," CCS, 75-92.*

Suggested Reading:
    Martina Deuchler, “Confucian Legislation: The Consequences for Women,” in her The Confucian Transformation of Korea, 231-281.
 

Week 4
#10 (2/21): Hair
Required Readings:
    “Introduction: Hair Tropes” and “Afterward,” in Alf Hitebeitel and Barbara  Miller, eds., Hair. Its Power and Meaning in Asian Cultures, 1-9, 281-86.*
    Sarah M. Nelson, “Bound Hair and Confucianism in Korea,” in Ibid.,  105-21.*

Recommended:
    Gary L. Ebersole, “Long Black Hair Like a Seat Cushion: hair symbolism in Japanese popular religion,” in Ibid., 75-103.
    Anne Allison, “Cutting the Fringes: pubic hair at the margins of Japanese censorship laws, “ in Ibid., 195-217.
    Weikun Cheng, “Politics of the Queue: agitation and resistance in the  beginning and end of the Qing China,” in Ibid., 123-139.

#11-12 (2/23, 2/25): Re-reading the Tale of Genji: Heian (Japanese Aristocratic Women, 1-2)
Required Reading:
Edwin Seidensticker, trans., The Tale of Genji
Web assignment: Examine aristocratic women's clothing at "The Costume History" website: http://www.iz2.or.jp/english/fukusyoku/menu.htm
and think about how clothing and living conditions affected Heian women's lifestyles and health.
 

Week 5
#13 (2/28): Re-reading the Tale of Genji: Heian (Japanese Aristocratic Women 3)
Required Reading:
Edwin Seidensticker, trans., The Tale of Genji

Recommended:
    Richard Bowring. “The Female Hand in Heian Japan: A First Reading.” The  Female Autograph, ed. Donna C. Stanton,
pp. 49-56. (1987)
    Peter Nickerson. “The Meaning of Matrilocality. Kinship, Property and  Politics in the Mid-Heian Period.” Monumenta Nipponica 48, 4 (1993),429-67.
    Lynne K. Miyake. “The Tosa Diary: In the Interstices of Gender and Criticism,” in Paul Schalow and Janet Walker, ed., The Woman’s Hand. Gender and Theory in Japanese Women’s Writing (1996), pp. 41-65.
    William McCullough, “Japanese Marriage Institutions in the Heian Period,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 27(1967), 103-39.
    Hayakawa, Noriyo. “The Development of Women’s History in Japan.” In Karen Offen and Ruth Roach Pierson, eds., Writing Women’s History, pp. 171-79 (1991)
    Joan Ericson. “When Was Women’s Literature.” In her Be a Woman. Hayashi  Fumiko and Modern Japanese Women’sLiterature, pp. 18-38. (1997)
    Edith Sarra. Fictions of Femininity. Literary Inventions of Gender in  Japanese Aristocratic Memoirs(1999)--chapters on Genji, Kagero  nikki, The Pillow Book

b) Other Diary Literature by Women
    Richard Bowring. Murasaki Shikibu. Her Diary and Poetic Memoirs.
    The Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon (Penguin Classic)
    Karen Brazell, trans., The Confessions of Lady Nijo.
    Edwin Seidensticker, trans., The Gossamer Years (Kagero nikki), 1964
    Sonja Arntzen, trans.. The Karego Diary. A Woman’s Autobiographical Text  from Tenth-Century Japan. (1997)
    Edwin Cranston, trans. The Izumi Shikibu Diary: A Romance of the Heian  Court (1969) Ivan Morris, trans. As I Crossed a Bridge of Dreams: Recollections of a Woman in Eleventh Century Japan (1971)
 

#14 (3/2): Marriage and the Lives of Chinese Women (1)
Required Reading:
    Patricia Buckley Ebrey. The Inner Quarters. Marriage and the Lives  of Chinese Women in the Song Period, 1-20.*
    Jian Zang, "Women and the Transmission of Confucian Culture in Song China" (WCC), 123-38.
    Click HERE to view a map of Song China.

#15 (3/4) Marriage and the Lives of Chinese Women (2)
Required Reading:
    Patricia Buckley Ebrey, The Inner Quarters. Marriage and the Lives of Chinese Women in the Song Period, 21-44, 152-71.*

Recommended:
    Susan Mann. “The History of Chinese Women Before the Age of  Orientalism,” Journal of Women’s History  8, 4 (Winter 1997), pp. 163-175. (Review essay of Ebrey and Ko (see below)).
    Dorothy Ko. Teachers of the Inner Chambers. Women and Culture in  Seventeenth-Century China.
    Rubie S. Watson. “Marriage and Gender Inequality.” In Rubie S. Watson and  Patricia Buckley Ebrey, Marriage and Inequality in Chinese Society,  pp. 347-65.
 
 

Week 6
#16 (3/7): Tokugawa Japan & its Gendered Travel Policies
#17 (3/9): Tokugawa Japan
Reading:
    Sone Hiromi, “Prostitution and Public Authority in Early Modern Japan,” in  Hitomi Tonomura, Anne Walthall and Wakita Haruko, Women and Class in Japanese History, pp. 169-185.*
    Diana E. Wright, “Severing the Karmic Ties that Bind. The ‘Divorce Temple’  Mantokuji,” Monumenta Nipponica 52,3 (Autumn 1997), 357-380.*
    Kaibara Ekiken. "Greater Learning for Women" (Daigaku wakumon). INTERNET ASSIGNMENT.

Recommended Reading:
    Yokota Fuyuhiko, “Imagining Working Women in Early Modern Japan.” In  Hitomi Tonomura, Anne Walthall and WakitaHaruko, Women and Class in Japanese History, pp.153-167.
    Edward McClellan, Woman in the Crested Kimono. The Life of Shibue Io and  Her Family Drawn from Mori Ogai’s ‘ShibueChusai’, pp. 1-122.
    Kathleen Uno. “Women and Changes in the Household Division of Labor.” In  Gail Lee Bernstein, Recreating JapaneseWomen, 1600-1945 (1991),  pp. 17-41. (Other recommended essays include Jennifer Robertson, “The ShingakuWoman: Straight From the Heart,” Patricia Fister,  “Female Bunjin: The Life of Poet-Painter Ema Saiko,” and Joyce  Lebra, “Women in an All-Male Industry: The Case of Sake Brewer  Tatsu’uma Kiyo,” Anne Walthall, “Life
Cycle of Farm Women in  Tokugawa Japan”)
    Constantine N. Vaporis. Breaking Barriers. Travel and the State in Early  Modern Japan (1994), chp. 3-5.
    Kaneko Sachiko and Robert E. Morrell. “Sanctuary: Kamakura’s Tokeiji  Convent.” Japanese Journal of Religious Studies 10/2-3 (1983), pp.  195-225. (Tokugawa Japan’s divorce temple)
    Susan Mann. Precious Records: Women in China’s Long Eighteenth Century  (1997)--for a view of contemporaneous
China.
 
 

#18 (3/11): Imagining the Early-Modern Japanese Body--Shunga ("spring pictures) erotic pictures
    Timon Screech, Sex and the Floating World, pp. 13-38, 88-117.*
    For color images of shunga there are, as you might imagine, many web sites--simply typing "shunga" in Google will reveal this. See, for example: www.gregkucera.com/shunga.htm

Recommended:
Lynn Hunt, ed., The Invention of Pornography.
 

Week 7:
#19 (3/14): Modernity and Household Roles
    Feuss, Harald. “Golden Age of Fatherhood? Parent-Child Relations in Japanese Historiography,” Monumenta Nipponica52, 3 (Autumn  1997),  381-397.*
     Kathleen Uno, "Women and Changes in the Household Division of Labor," in Gail Lee Bernstein, Recreating Japane
Women, 1600-1945, pp. 17-41.*
 

#20 (3/16): Midterm Exam

#21 (3/18): TBA

Spring Break, 3/21-3/25
 

Week 8
#22 (3/28): "Chun'hyang": Female Virtues in Choson Korea
Reading:
    Martina Deuchler, "Propagating Female Virtues in Choson Korea," WCC, 142-65; "Story ofCh'un-hyang" (*)

Recommended Reading:
    Lady Hong, Memoirs of a Korean Queen (1985).

#23 (4/6): Patriarchy and Polygamy
Reading:
    JaHyun Kim Haboush, "Versions and Subversions. Patriarchy and Polygamy in Korean Narratives," WCC, 279-99.

#24 (4/1): Womanly Virtue in Late Imperial China
Reading: WCC, 219-42

Recommended Reading:
    Mark Elvin, "Female Virtue and the State in China," Past and Present 104 (1984), pp. 111-52.
 
 

Week 9
#25 (4/4):  Sexual Violence Against Women
Reading:
    Hitomi Tonomura, “Sexual Violence Against Women: Legal and Extralegal  Treatment in Premodern Warrior Societies,” in Hitomi Tonomura, Anne Walthal, and Haruko Wakita, Women and Class in Japanese  History (1999), 135-152.*
    Vivien W. Ng, “Ideology and Sexuality: Rape Laws in Qing China,” Journal of  Asian Studies 46, 1(February 1987), 57-70.*
 

#26-#27The Modern Patriarchal Family System and the Beginnings of the Japanese Feminist Movement
4/6: Readings:
Vera Mackie, Feminism in Modern Japan, 1-12, 15-36.
Document: “The Civil Code of Japan” (Blackboard)
Film Excerpts: “Ah, Nomugi Toge” (“Nomugi Pass,” Japanese)

4/8: Readings:
Vera Mackie, Feminism in Modern Japan, 45-92.

Recommended Readings:
    Eiichi Kiyooka, trans./ed.,  Fukuzawa Yukichi on Japanese women : Selected  Works.
    Mikiso Hane, Fukuzawa Yukichi and Women’s Rights,” in Conroy and Davis,  Japan in Transition, 96-112.
    Baroness Shidzue Ishimoto. Facing Two Ways. The Story of My Life.
    Mariko Asano Tamanoi. “Japanese Nationalism and the Female Body: A  Critical Assessment of the Discourse of Social Reformers on Factory  Women.” In Tonomura, Walthall, and Wakita, Women and Class in  Japanese History, pp. 275-298.
    Kathleen S. Uno, Passages to Modernity. Motherhood, Childhood and Social Reform in Early Twentieth-Century Japan(1999)
    Sheldon Garon, "The World's Oldest Debate? Prostitution and the State in Imperial Japan, 1890-1945," American Historical Review 97, 3 (1993), pp. 710-32.
 
 
 
 

Week 10
#19-#20 (4/11, 4/13, 4/15): The Traditional Chinese Family System & Its Demise
Readings:
Pa Chin, Family (pp. 153-203, optional)
Film: “Raise the Red Lantern”

Recommended Reading:
    Ono Kazuko, Chinese Women in a Century of Revolution, 1850-1950 (C2,  pp.23-46: Between Footbinding and Nationhood”; C4, pp. 54-92:  “Women in the 1911 Revolution”; C5, pp. 93-111: “Casting Off the  Shackles of the Family”)
    Gail Lee Bernstein. Haruko’s World. A Japanese Farm Woman and Her  Community (1983). (same topic, on Japan)
    Robert J. Smith. The Women of Suye Mura (1982). (same topic, on Japan)
 

Week 11
#31 (4/18): The Body: Marking, Veiling, and Revealing Its Form
Readings:
    C. Fred Blake, “Footbinding in Neo-Confucian China and the Appropriation  of Female Labor,” Signs 19, 3 (1994), 676-708.*
    Dorothy Ko, “The Shifting Meanings of the Body as Attire: Footbinding in  Seventeenth-Century China,” The Journal of Women’s History 8, 4  (Winter 1997), pp. 8-27.*
    WWW: click HERE to link to Brooklyn College Chinese Culture site. Here in Section 5 (Gender) you can click on a number of images of women with bound feet.
 

Recommended Readings:
    Charlotte L. Beahan, Recent Scholarship on Women in Literature and the  Concept of the Body in China,” The Journal of Women’s History 8, 4  (Winter 1997), pp. 177-186.
    Beverly Jackson. Splendid Slippers. A Thousand Years of an Exotic Tradition (1997)
    Howard L.Levy. Chinese Footbinding: The History of a Curious Erotic Custom (1966)
    Charlotte Furth, “Blood, Body and Gender. Medical Images of the Female Condition in China, 1600-1850,” Chinese Science (1986), 43-66.
    Pang-Mei Natasha Chang. Bound Feet and Western Dress (1996)--a Harvard  co-ed’s account of her grandmothers life interspersed with an  interesting parallel account of her own life as a Chinese-American.
    Hill Gates, "Footbinding and Handspinning in Sichuan.” In Kenneth  Lieberthal, et al., Constructing China. The Interaction of Culture and Economics, pp. 174-194 (1997).
    John Clammer. “Consuming Bodies: Constructing and Representing the  Female Body in Contemporary Japanese Print Media.” In Lise Skov and  Brian Moeran, Women, Media and Consumption in Japan (1995), pp.  197-219.
 

#32 (4/20): The Chinese Revolution and Women
     “Women Hold Up Half the Sky” (Chinese Communist slogan)

Reading:
    Emily Honig and Gail Hershatter. Personal Voices. Chinese Women in the 1980s, pp. 1-40 ("Growing Up Female")*

Recommended Readings:
    Evans, Harriet. “Defining Difference: The ‘Scientific’ Construction of  Sexuality and Gender in the People’s Republic of China,” Signs 20, 2  (1995), pp. 357-94.
    Li Xiaojiang and Xiaodan Zhang, “Creating a Space for Women: Women’s  Studies in China in the 1980’s,” Signs 20 (1994), pp. 137-51.
    Judith Stacey. “A Feminist View of Research on Chinese Women,” Signs  (Winter 1976)
    Judith Stacey. “When Patiarchy Kowtows: The Significance of the Chinese  Family Revolution for Feminist Theory,” Feminist Studies 2, 2/3  (1975).
 

#33 (4/22) Video: “Small Happiness: Women of a Chinese Village” (China)--women in small Chinese village of Long Bow

Reading:
    Emily Honig and Gail Hershatter. Personal Voices. Chinese Women in the 1980s, pp. 167-205 ("Family Relations").*

Extra Credit: View and write a journal entry (one page) on “China’s Only Child” (Nova, 1983)--family planning in a model  town UMVID 387.

Recommended Readings:
    Emily Honig and Gail Hershatter. Personal Voices. Chinese Women in the 1980s, chapters other than those assigned above; i.e. "The Pleasures of Adornment and the Dangers of Sexuality," "Making a Friend: Changing Patterns of Courtship," "Marriage," "Divorce," "Women and Work," "Violence Against Women," "Feminist Voices"
 

Week 12
#34 (4/25): From War to Peace in Japan
Reading:
Vera Mackie, Feminism, 99-138

Document: Postwar Japanese Constitution

Recommended Reading:
    Beate Sirota Gordon, The Only Woman in the Room (American woman who wrote Civil Rights section of postwar Japanese constitution)

#35 (4/27): Modern Japanese Feminism
 "You mustn’t be eaten by the kimono. You must eat the kimono, and  gobble it up” (Hanayanagi Genshu, Japanese feminist and avant-garde performer)

Readings:
    Samuel Coleman, Family Planning in Japanese Society. Traditional Birth Control in a Modern Urban Culture (1983), pp. 3-17.*
    Vera Mackie, Feminism in Modern Japan, 145-97, 232-35.
    WWW: sections on the “Baby Bust” and “Reproductive Medicine” from online Japan Echo (Feb. 1999):
www.japanecho.co.jp/  (Click on back issues, and then you'll find the articles listed above in Vol. 26, 1)

Recommended Readings:
    Tiana Norgren. “Abortion Before Birth Control: The Interest Group Politics  Behind Postwar Japanese Reproduction
Policy.” Journal of Japanese Studies 24, 1 (1998), pp. 59-94.
    William Lafluer. Liquid Life. Abortion and Buddhism in Japan (1992)
    Robert W. Hodge and Naohiro Ogawa, Fertility Change in Contemporary Japan (1991).
    Web site on contemporary Japanese women, Focus 5 of Japan Insight: www.jinjapan.org/insight/html  (Click on Focus 5)
    Nakano Mami, “Ten Years Under the Equal Opportunity Employment Law,” in  AMPO-Japan Asia Quarterly Review, ed.,Voices from the Japanese Women’s Movement (1996), pp. 65-81.
    Mary Brinton, Women and the Economic Miracle. Gender and Work in  Postwar Japan (1993)
Sandra Buckley. Broken Silence. Voices of Japanese Feminism
    Nakajima Michiko. “Recent Legal Decisions on Gender-Based Wage  Discrimination in Japan.” U.S.-Japan Women’s Journal, English  Supplement No. 6 (1994), pp. 27-43.
    Yuko Ogasawara. Office Ladies and Salaried Men. Power, Gender, and Work  in Japanese Companies (1998).
    Jean R. Renshaw. Kimono in the Boardroom. The Invisible Evolution of  Japanese Managers (1998).
    Dorrine Kondo, Crafting Selves: Power, Gender, and  Discourses of Identity  in a Japanese Workplace (1990)
    Robert J. Smith. Gender Inequality in Contemporary  Japan,” Journal of  Japanese Studies 13, 1 (1987), pp. 1-25.
 

#36 (4/29): Comfort Women and Japanese Feminism
Readings:
Vera Mackie, Feminism in Modern Japan, 197-225.
Video: portions of "Silence Broken" (Korean Comfort Women)

Recommended Reading:
   The Comfort Women: Colonialism, War, and Sex. Special issue of  Postitions: East Asian Cultures Critique (5, 1 (Spring 1997).
    Yamazaki Hiromi. “Military Slavery and the Women’s Movement.” In AMPO  Japan Asia Quarterly Review, ed., Voices from the Japanese Women’s Movement, pp. 90-100. (1996)
 

Week 13
#37 (5/2): Women and Economic “Miracles”
Video (in class): “Noriko’s Story” (30 min.)
Readings:
    Barbara Maloney. “Japan’s 1986 Equal Employment Opportunity Law and the Changing Discourse on Gender,” Signs 20, 2 (Winter 1995), pp. 168-302.*
 
 

#38 (5/4): Consumerism and Prostitution: Kurombo, yamamba, and enjo kosai
DVD: "Bounce Ko Girls"
Web assignment: Read about Kurombo, yamamba, and enjo kosai

Recommded Reading:
    Brian McVeigh. “Commodifying Affection, Authority and Gender in the  Everyday Objects of Japan," Journal of MaterialCulture 3 (Nov.  1996), pp. 291-312.
 

#39 (5/6): Korean Contemporary Women: Nationalism and Gender
Reading:
    Chungmoo Choi, "Nationalism and the Construction of Gender in Korea," in Elaine H. Kim and Chungmoo Choi, ed., Dangerous Women. Gender and Korean Nationalism, pp. 9-28.*
    Elaine Kim, "Men's Talk: A Korean American View of South Korean Constructions of Women, Gender, and Masculinity," in Ibid, pp. 67-107.*
 
 
 
 

Week 14
(#40, 5/9): Language and Women's Identity
    Wang Ping, Aching for Beauty. Footbinding in China, 145-73.*
    Chapter of Ide Sachiko in Sandra Buckley, ed., Broken Silence. Voices of Japanese Feminism, pp. 32-64.*

Recommeded Reading:
    Cherry Kittredge. Womansword: What Japanese Words Say About Women.
    Paul Gordon Schalow and Janet A. Walker. The Woman’s Hand. Gender and Theory in Japanese Women’s Writing (1996)--contains selected  bibliography of Japanese women’s writing.
    Joan Ericson. Be a Woman. Hayashi Fumiko and Modern Japanese Women’s Literature (esp. Chp. 1: “Reading a Woman Writer,” pp. 3-15.)
    Nancy Rosenberger, Gambling with Virtue. Japanese Women and the Search for Self in a Changing World (2000)

 Videos of Interest:
    Kim Longinott and Jano Williams. “Dream Girls” (1993, 50 min.), Women  Make Films--documentary about all-female, male-run, Takarazuka  Revue.
    Nanako Kurihara, “Ripples of Change. Japanese Women’s Search for Self.”  (1993, 57 min.), Women Make Films--on women’s lib movement in  1970s and its influence on contemporary Japnese society.
    Claire Hunt and Kim Longinotto. “Eat the Kimono.” (1989, 60 min.) Women  Make Films--about Japanese feminist and avant-garde performer  Hanayagi Genshu.

#41-#43 (5/11, 5/13,
Week 15: (5/16): Contemporary Chinese Women
Reading:
    Xinran, The Good Women of China
    video: “Women’s Story” (Nuren de gushi, 96 min.), a story of three rural women who go to the big city. The film was banned in the PRC.

Recommended Reading:
    Weihui, Shanghai Baby (2001)
    Eva Kit Wah Man, "Female Bodily Aesthetics, Politics and Feminine Ideals of Beauty in China," in Beauty Matters (2000).
    Information Office of the Chinese State Council white book, "The Situation of Women," www.Indiana.edu/~chasso/women.html