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Conference Programme: Voicing Gender in China

Fourth Conference of the
China Academic Network on Gender

Register here

KEYNOTES :
Howard Chiang (UCSB)
Rachel Harris (SOAS)

organized by the
China Academic Network on Gender & Université Sorbonne Nouvelle

DAY 1 – TUESDAY 17 June

Salle Athéna, maison de la recherche, 4 Rue des Irlandais, 75005 Paris

REGISTRATION & WELCOME COFFEE
9 :00

CONFERENCE OPENING & WELCOME ADDRESS
9:30-9:45
Anne Isabelle FRANCOIS (GIS Institut du Genre & Université Sorbonne Nouvelle)
Coraline JORTAY (CNRS – THALIM)

 OPENING KEYNOTE ADDRESS
09:45-11:00
Howard Chiang (University of California, Santa Barbara)
Trans Without Borders: Voices from the Decolonial Past

PANEL 1: AFFECTIVE OUTLETS: VOICE AND EMOTIONS IN CONTEMPORARY CHINA
11:00-13:00
Discussant: Rachel HARRIS (SOAS)

  •  ZENG Jinyan (Lund University)
    Affective Podcasting: Forging Feminist Community for Sinophone-Tibetans
  • HUANG Fei (University of St Andrews)
    Support-Seeking Attitudes and Emotional Sharing Practices Among Stay-at-Home Fathers in Urban China
  •  Arianne M. GAETANO (Auburn University)
    Gendered Subjectivity and Embodied Resistance of Single Women in Urban China

 Lunch
13:00-14:00

PANEL 2: STAGING TRANSGRESSIVE VOICES
14:00-16:00
Discussant: Howard CHIANG (University of California, Santa Barbara)

  • ZHU Ke & LI Jinghui (University of Amsterdam)
    Lip Syncing and the Trans-Asian Art of Dragging in China
  • LI Yizhuo (City University of Hong Kong)
    “Voicing the Villainess: Gender Transgression in Qing Drama”
  • LI Leshan (Heidelberg University) 
    Masculinized Appearances, Feminized Voices: Revolutionary Women in Chinese New Opera, 1949–1966
  • HUANG Yixuan (University of Edinburgh) 
    The Indeterminate Nü-Er: Cross-Dressing of Pre-Teen Boyish Girls in 1960s Hong Kong Cinema

Coffee Break
16:00-16:30

PANEL 3: MARGINALIZED VOICES FROM THE INNER QUARTERS
16:30-18:30
Discussant: Jennifer BOND (University College London)

  • XU Ning (University of Hong Kong)
    Soundscape in Women’s Sphere: Cross-Class Cultural Community of Tanci in the Ming and Qing Dynasties
  • XIA Shi (New College of Florida) 
    Excluding Concubines: The Contested Politics of Progressive Women’s Groups in Republican China (1912-1949)
  •  Anne KERLAN (CNRS – EHESS – Université de Paris)
    The Silences of Ruan Lingyu (1910-1935), Movie Star and Woman

Conference dinner
19:00     

 

DAY 2 – WEDNESDAY 18 June

Salle Athéna, maison de la recherche, 4 Rue des Irlandais, 75005 Paris

PANEL 4: PAPERS VOICES: GENDER IN TRANSMEDIAL PERSPECTIVES
09:00-11:00
Discussant: Coraline JORTAY (CNRS – ENS – Université Sorbonne Nouvelle)

  • Chloe ESTEP (University of Pennsylvania)
    Vulgar Classicism: The Book of Odes, the Dance Hall, and the Cinema
  •  CUI Wendong (Chinese University of Hong Kong) 
    Tracing Female Heroes’ Voices: Tang Hongfu’s Gendered Translations Amid Cultural Tensions in Early Twentieth-Century China and Japan  
  •  SHI Bingbing (University of St Andrews)
    Spy Number One and the Creation of the First Chinese Female Spy Film
  •  ZHENG Qijun (École Pratique des Hautes Études)
    Echoes of Emancipation: A Century of Women’s Voices, Gender Dynamics and Religious Authority at Maoshan in China (1912-2012)

 Coffee break
11:00-11:30

PANEL 5: SPEAKING WITH AUTHORITY: WOMEN IN SCIENCE, MEDICINE AND THE ARTS
11:30-13:30
Discussant: Chang LIU (Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen)

  • HAN Kyuhuyun (University of Rhode Island)
    Women’s Voice in the Flames: Forest Fire Prevention Campaign and Women Forest Guards in the PRC, 1949–1959
  • Chiara CIGARINI (Ca’ Foscari University and Wellesley College)
    Non-Linear Hydric Futures: An Ecofeminist Perspective on Chinese Narratives, Water Policy and Affect
  • Martina MERENDA (University of Bologna) 
    Calligraphy means Feminine: A Focus on a Female Calligraphic Approach within Performance art in Contemporary China
  • Clover Yue GU (Shanghai University) 
    How Was Disability Presented? Emotions, Marriage, and Circumstances of the Stone Maiden in Late Imperial and Republican China

Lunch
13:30-14:30

PANEL 6: VOICES FROM BELOW
14:30-16:30
Discussant: Beatrice ZANI (CNRS – LISE)

  • Isabelle ATTANÉ (INED)
    Women: Forced Actors in Securing China’s Demographic and Economic Future? 
  • Marijn FENNEMA (York University)
    Voicing Allure: Shifting Social Profiles and Work Methods of Sex Workers in Early 20th-Century Yantai
  • Isabella JACKSON (Trinity College Dublin) 
    “I am a Slave-Girl, not an Adopted Daughter.” Enslaved Girls Speaking – and Being Heard – in Early Twentieth-Century China
  • LIU Xi (Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University) 
    Social Inequalities in Urbanization and Its Discontent: Representing Subaltern Women in Post-2020 Chinese Writings  

CLOSING KEYNOTE ADDRESS
16:30-17:45
Rachel Harris (SOAS)
“No Longer Baby-Making Machines”? Hearing Uyghur Women’s Voices Under the Anti-Extremism Campaigns

CLOSING COMMENTS
17:45-18:00


Organizers: China Academic Network on Gender & Université Sorbonne Nouvelle

Organizing committee: Jennifer Bond (UCL), Chang Liu (CUHK Shenzhen), Coraline Jortay (CNRS)

Scientific committee: Jennifer Bond (University College London), Aoife Cantrill (University of Oxford), Po-hsi Chen (Academia Sinica), Coraline Jortay (CNRS UMR 7172 Thalim Sorbonne Nouvelle/ENS), Chang Liu (Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen), Béatrice Zani (CNRS, LISE UMR 3302)

Conference poster photo credits: Xia Yang (@imrxia on Unsplash)

Organized with the generous support of:

Call for Papers: Voicing Gender in China

Fourth Conference of the China Academic Network on Gender

Dates: 17-18 June 2025
Location: Université Sorbonne Nouvelle, Paris (France)
Deadline for abstracts (300 words): 1 February 2025
Send to: voicinggenderinchina@gmail.com 

We are pleased to announce that the Fourth Conference of the China Academic Network on Gender will be hosted by the Université Sorbonne Nouvelle on 17-18 June 2025. Titled ‘Voicing Gender in China,’ the conference seeks to explore the multiple sites of intersection between voice and gender in Chinese society, past and present. 

Within Chinese studies, fruitful articulations between voice and gender studies have drawn from studies of women’s political activism in history and sociology, exploring the ways in which activists and organisers have articulated new political identities in rallying cries and everyday protest. Literary scholars have looked at the shaping of gendered subjectivities through self-narratives and autobiographies, paying close attention to dialogue, orality and the mechanisms of silencing within literary establishments. In recent years, an explosion of sensory histories have explored how gender is enacted and defined through music, opera, dance and song. In parallel, sound studies scholars have brought to life the gendered soundscapes of modern and contemporary China in considering, for instance, the production of socialist state-sponsored music as well as the aural experiences of everyday life. Drawing from these multivocal approaches, this conference seeks to explore ways of rewriting into academic scholarship previously silenced minority voices, paying attention to the affective and political resonances of voicing out gender issues in different spaces, academic and public-facing.

Interdisciplinary at heart, the conference aims to bring together scholars (including doctoral, postdoctoral, early, mid and advanced career researchers) from the humanities and social sciences working on gender and China. We seek proposals that articulate issues of gender in relation to voice broadly construed, in a range of disciplines including but not limited to: gender studies, media studies, cultural studies, film studies, literature, history, sociology, anthropology, queer studies. 

During the workshop participants will be encouraged to frame their own work in discussion with other researchers’ papers. They will also have the chance to gain feedback on their research from leading scholars in the field who will act as discussants in each panel session. Outstanding papers will be considered for publication in an edited volume. 

Participating scholars
The opening keynote speaker, Prof. Howard Chiang (University of California, Santa Barbara), is a historian of queer Asian Pacific history, the author of several books, including After Eunuchs: Science, Medicine, and the Transformation of Sex in Modern China (Columbia UP, 2018) and Transtopia in the Sinophone Pacific (2021). Prof. Rachel Harris (SOAS), who is an ethnomusicologist and has worked extensively on the soundscapes of Uyghur islam in China, will also present her latest research in the closing keynote. Dr Jennifer Bond (University College London), Dr. Chang Liu (Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen), Dr Coraline Jortay (CNRS UMR 7172 Thalim Sorbonne Nouvelle/ENS), Dr. Beatrice Zani (CNRS, LISE UMR 3302) will also participate as panel discussants.

Submission
Please send a 300 word abstract to voicinggenderinchina@gmail.com, including your full name, institutional affiliation, email address, and a short bio before 1 February 2025. Applicants will be notified of the outcome by mid-February 2025, and successful applicants will need to submit full papers two weeks prior to the conference (1 June 2025). We are currently in the process of exploring options for providing funded on-site childcare for conference participants. If you would be interested in this option, please indicate the age, languages spoken, and specific needs (if applicable) of any children travelling with you in your submission email.

For further information, please contact the workshop committee at the above email address.

Calendar
– Deadline for abstract: 1 February 2025
– Notification of acceptance: mid-February 2025
– Deadline for full submission: 1 June 2025

Organisers: China Academic Network on Gender & Université Sorbonne Nouvelle

Organising committee: Jennifer Bond (UCL), Chang Liu (CUHK Shenzhen), Coraline Jortay (CNRS)

Scientific committee: Jennifer Bond (University College London), Aoife Cantrill (University of Oxford), Po-hsi Chen (Academia Sinica), Coraline Jortay (CNRS UMR 7172 Thalim Sorbonne Nouvelle/ENS), Chang Liu (Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen), Béatrice Zani (CNRS, LISE UMR 3302)

Making Gender in China

 

Third Conference of the
China Academic Network on Gender

— An online conference series —
Register here

KEYNOTES :
Joan Judge (York University)
Wang Zheng (University of Michigan)

organized by the
China Academic Network on Gender & York University

 With the generous support of the
 Canada-China Initiatives Fund (CCIF)

WEEK 1 – TUESDAY 29 March
8am Toronto – 1pm London – 8pm Beijing

Opening Keynote Address
08:00-09:15

Joan JUDGE, York University
Women as Vernacular Knowers in the Long Republic: What We Can Learn from Cheap Print

Panel 1: Quotidian Objects and Gender in the Making
09:30-11:00

Chair: Jennifer BOND (University College London)
Discussant: ZHU Jing (Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University)

WANG Yizhou (University of Heidelberg)
More than Cool Breeze: Courtesans’ Fans as Material Embodiment and Social Objects in the Everyday Life of Ming Dynasty

GENG Yushu (Trinity College Dublin)
Making and Selling ‘Hazeline Snow’ in Twentieth Century China  

WEEK 2 – TUESDAY 5 April
8am Toronto – 1pm London – 8pm Beijing

Panel 2: Sex and the Cityscape: Negotiating Gender Through Urban Spaces
08:00-10:00

Chair: LIU Chiu-Wan (National Taiwan University)
Discussant: TANG Ling (Hong Kong Baptist University)

YIP Suk Man (University of Heidelberg)
The Gendered Images of Hong Kong in the Official Newspaper Supplements in the Early 1960s

WU Ka-ming (Chinese University of Hong Kong)
The Pink Flaneur: Feminist Activism, Urban Infrastructure, and Gendered Citizen Practices in China

LYU Xinshu (Central China Normal University) 
Comparative Ethnography of Spatial Characteristics of LGBTQ and Non-LGBTQ Parks

WEEK 3TUESDAY 12 April
8pm Toronto – 2pm Honolulu – 8am Wednesday 13 April Beijing

Panel 3: Staging Masculinities: the Phonograph and the Page
08:00-10:00

Chair: Chang Liu (Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen)
Discussant: Kam Louie (The University of Hong Kong/University of New South Wales)

Chihho LIN (University of California, San Diego) 
Illustrating Socialist Heroes: The Literary-Martial Ideal of Masculinity in Railroad Guerrillas

TONG Zhenkai (SOAS, University of London)
Gendering and Selling Sports Through the Funü Zazhi, 1915-1931

WEEK 4TUESDAY 19 April 
8am Toronto – 1pm London – 8pm Beijing

Panel 4: Gadgets, Gowns and Groceries Remaking Gender Identities
08:00-10:00

Chair: Chris VOGEL (York University)
Discussant: GENG Yushu (Trinity College Dublin)

QIU Yitong (London School of Economics)
Power and Identity of Women in Qing: A Study of Women Dress by Means of Confiscation Inventory Lists

HUANG Ao (SOAS, University of London) 
Trans-gender Things: Objects and the Materiality of Trans-femininity in Ming-Qing China  

XIE Yanli (University College Dublin)
Cooking-related writings, gender making, and Chinese women in the 1920s and 1930s

WEEK 5TUESDAY 26 April 
8am Toronto – 1pm London – 8pm Beijing

Panel 5: Deflecting Gender: Mirrors Mediating Femininities
08:00-10:00

Chair: Coraline JORTAY (University of Oxford)
Discussant: Amanda ZHANG (University of St Andrews)

Keru CAI (University of Oxford)
The Proximity Effect: Agency and Isolation in Eileen Chang’s “Love in a Fallen City”

Mariana ZEGIANINI (SOAS, University of London/The Courtauld Institute of Art)
Decamping the Mirror, Inhabiting the Portrait: Late Ming Portraits of Women as Gender Performance

Angela CHEUNG (SOAS, University of London) 
The Chinese Boatwoman: Desire and Photographic Materiality in Nineteenth-Century Hong Kong

WEEK 6TUESDAY 3 May
8am Toronto – 1pm London – 8pm Beijing

Panel 6: Dressing the Part: Refashioning Gender through War and Reform
08:00-10:00

Chair: Coraline Jortay (University of Oxford)
Discussant: Anup GREWAL (University of Toronto, Scarborough)

Nicolas SCHILLINGER (University of Erlangen-Nuremberg)
Flag of Our Heroes – Masculinity and Collective Memory in The Eight Hundred 

Aoife CANTRILL (University of Oxford)
Three Capes, Playing Mahjong: Dressing the part in Zhang Ailing’s Shanghai 

ZHANG Shimin (University of Heidelberg) 
New Outfits and New Confidence: Images of Rural Women in Nongjianü Baishitong in Reform China  

Closing Keynote Address:
10:00-11:15

WANG ZHENG, University of Michigan
The Chained Woman: Exposing Sexual Slavery in the 21st Century China

Download the programme

Register here

Organizing committee: Jennifer BOND (University College London), Coraline JORTAY (University of Oxford), Chang LIU (CUHK Shenzhen), Chris VOGEL (York University)