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Conference programme: Re-envisioning gender in China

Free entrance with registration.

Register here


Day 1 | Thursday, 14 February

Salle Somville – Bâtiment S.

13:00 Registration
14:00–14:15 Conference opening and welcome address
Vanessa Frangville (ULB), Jennifer Bond, Chang Liu, and Coraline Jortay
14:15–15:45 Keynote address
Gail Hershatter (UC Santa Cruz)
Blindspotting, gender, and China’s revolutions
15:45 Coffee break
16:00–17:45 Panel 1 | Re-envisioning audiences: gender, bodies, and readability
Discussant: Jennifer Althenger (KCL)
Chair: Coraline Jortay (ULB)
XIE Chen (Birmingham), Tang Women and the art of writing
GENG Yushu (Cambridge), A gendered reading public: obscene publications and spectatorship in Republican China
WANG Yang (U Colorado), The internalizing gaze: urban subjectivity and ink representations of peasant women in the early PRC
ZHOU Yunyun (Oxford), Narrating Funü ganbu: new discourses and visualisations of women cadres in China’s post-socialist media
18:00 Speakers’ dinner

Day 2 | Friday, 15 February

Grande salle du CIERL

8:30 Morning coffee
9:00–10:30 Panel 2 | Beyond Chineseness: intersectional approaches
Discussant: Vanessa Frangville (ULB)
Chair: Chang Liu (CUHK Shenzhen)
ZHU Jing (Humboldt), Visualising human differences in late imperial China: body, nakedness, and sexuality
Yasser NASSER (Chicago), The pedagogy of pan-Asian sisterhood: Xin Zhongguo funü and defending the peace of Asia
Aurélia ISHITSUKA (Genève), Visual encounters in global Shanghai: racial and gendered arrangements of bodies in a coworking space
10:30 Coffee break
10:45–12:30 Panel 3 | Gender, networks, and solidarities
Discussant: Gail Hershatter (UC Santa Cruz)
Chair: Jennifer Bond (Durham)
Rebecca Karl (NYU), Tracing feminist origins of Marxism in China
PI Chenying (Heidelberg), Becoming guimi (闺蜜): singleness, friendship, and the cosmopolitan city in Chinese popular culture
Harriet Evans (LSE), The invisibility of nannü pingdeng in an ‘old Beijing’ neighbourhood: grassroots perspectives on changing gender relations since the eve of the PRC
Béatrice Zani (Lyon 2), Towards a transnational ‘mutuality of being’: gendered solidarity networks, and affections between China and Taiwan
12:30 Lunch break
13:30–14:30 Talk
Derek Hird (Lancaster)
Re-envisioning China through gender: a critical gaze on masculinities and postsocialist modernity
14:45 Coffee break
14:45–16:30 Panel 4 | Queering masculinities on the page and screen
Discussant: Stephanie Hemelryk Donald (University of Lincoln)
Chair: David Paternotte (ULB)
HEE Wai-Siam (Nanyang Technological University), From amorous histories to sexual histories: tracing the origins of the term pi
GU Jingyi (UIUC), ‘Fanchuan’ on TV and ‘drag’ in the dance hall: gender impersonation and the legibility of Chinese queer identity
Pamela Hunt (Oxford), Good fellows on the road: masculinity and the Han Han phenomenon
Corrado Neri (Lyon 3), The SCUD enigma
16:30 Coffee break
16:45–18:30 Panel 5 | Gender in the digital age
Discussant: BAO Hongwei (Nottingham)
Chair: ZHOU Yunyun (Oxford)
Kara CHAN & Giovanna PUPPIN (Hong Kong Baptist University & Leicester), In the name of love? Exploring the representation of women, loving relationships, and marriage in Chinese controversial advertising campaigns
GUAN Zexu (Leiden), Beauty blog and micro-business: two ways to sell beauty in digital China
LIU Chiu Wan (SOAS), Changing marital power relations in the digital era? Negotiating the role of breadwinner and housekeeper in the Chinese Taobao families
Taliesin Thomas (Institute for Doctoral Studies in the Visual Arts), Asexual sex: expanding visions of gender in contemporary Chinese art
20:00–21:30 Film screening & round table
WEI Tingting, Bichina (48 mins, OV with EN subtitles)
Salle de projection de la Maison des Arts (J56.3.303)
Stijin Deklerck (KUL/Liège, producer of Bichina), Stephanie Hemelryk Donald (University of Lincoln), Berenice M. Reynaud (Lyon 3), and Marie Vermeiren (Elles Tournent/Dames Draaien Film Festival).

Day 3 | Saturday, 16 February

Grande salle du CIERL

8:30 Morning coffee
9:00–10:45 Panel 6 | The body as a temple: inscribed mythologies
Discussant: Françoise Lauwaert (ULB)
Chair: Pamela Hunt (Oxford)
MA Xu (UC Irvine), Boudoir and temple: re-imagining women’s social spaces in later imperial China
Rachel Marsen & Linda Pittwood (University of the Arts London & Nottingham), ‘Gender scars’: women artists in China and beyond
Zhan Feifei (SOAS), Narcissus meets Cinderella: gaze, body, and mother-daughter relationship in Narcissus Went with Carp
Doris Sung (U Alabama), Sirens: the enchantresses of contemporary art in China
10:45 Coffee break
11:00–12:00 Talk
Pierre Kaser (Université Aix-Marseille)
Variations érotiques dans les fictions de Li Yu (1611–1680)
12:00–13:30 Concluding round table
Out of the ‘house of gender’ and into the world
Chair: Gail Hershatter
Jennifer Altehenger, Bao Hongwei, Stephanie Hemelryk Donald, Harriet Evans, Vanessa FrangvilleDerek Hird, and Rebecca Karl.
13:30 Beers & Brain
Join us to discuss the network’s future around drinks

Scientific committee: Jennifer Altehenger (KCL), Hongwei Bao (Nottingham), Jennifer Bond (Durham), Stijn Deklerck (KU Leuven), Eric Florence (Liège/CEFC HK), Derek Hird (Lancaster), Denise Y. HO (Yale), Michel Hockx (Notre Dame), Andrea Janku (SOAS), Françoise Lauwaert (ULB), Chang Liu (CUHK Shenzhen), LIU Jieyu (SOAS), David Paternotte (ULB).
Organizing committee: Vanessa Frangville, Eric Florence, Coraline Jortay, Chang Liu, Jennifer Bond.

Organized by China Academic Network on Gender(CHANGE) together with the Center for East Asian Studies (EASt) and the Structure de recherche interdisciplinaire sur le genre, l’égalité et la sexualité (STRIGES) at the Maison des Sciences humaines (MSH-ULB).
In partnership with the Université de Liège, the Centre for Gender Studies, SOAS, the SOAS China Institute, the Department of History at King’s College London, and the Centre for Gender and Cultural Studies at East China Normal University (ECNU).

OpenEdition suggests that you cite this post as follows:
Chang (January 22, 2019). Conference programme: Re-envisioning gender in China. China Academic Network on Gender — CHANGE. Retrieved April 22, 2025 from https://doi.org/10.58079/mn60


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