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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)

Our Gender & China Guide to AAS 2021

Below is a list of sessions and individual presentations at AAS 2021 related to gender and China, broadly construed. If anything has been missed, please email us at change@ulb.ac.be and we will be glad to add it.

This document is intended as a quick reference guide and also includes border-crossing/inter-area panels that at least include one China-related presentation. For more information on the sessions, please visit the AAS conference website: https://www.asianstudies.org/conference/conference-program/    

Sunday, March 21, 2021

9:00am – 11:00am EDT (Beijing: 9pm; London 1pm)

China Academic Network on Gender (CHANGE)

CHANGE is hosting an informal meeting for members and non-members to catch up and meet new people working in this field. Grab a cup of coffee or tea and join us for a relaxed chat. We look forward to meeting you online!

Please click here to register.

Please feel free to drop in at any time. This is a AAS Meeting-in-conjunction and is free for everyone to join regardless of AAS conference registration status.

The China Academic Network on Gender (CHANGE), is an interdisciplinary network for scholars who are researching Gender in China: https://change.hypotheses.org/

Monday, March 22, 2021

10.00am – 11.30am EDT (Beijing: 10:00pm; London 2.00pm)

A012: Gender and Colonialism in the Japanese Empire (Roundtable)

    • Fang Yu Hu (University of Tennessee at Chattanooga)
    • Melissa Brown (Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, Harvard-Yenching Institute)
    • Sonja Kim (Binghamton University)
    • Janice Kim (York University, Canada)
12:30pm – 2:00pm EDT (Beijing: 12:30am; London 4:30pm)

B005: East Asian Feminism Today

    • Enlarging Feminisms: Against the Neoliberal Downsizing of Them (Yun-Jong Lee – Sogang University)
    • Empowering Women: Visual Liberation of Ajumma (Korean Middle-Aged Women) in Korean Contemporary Art (Suzie Kim – University of Mary Washington)
    • Mrs. Pants as Feminist Specter : Precarious and Liminal Subjects in Troublers and Small Talk (Eno Pei-Jean Chen – National Chengchi University)
    • How Does Literature Talk About Neoliberalism, Gender, and Memory (Youngran Ko – Nihon University)
3:00pm – 4:30pm EDT (Beijing: 3am; London 7pm)

C019: Transnational Asian Film Pioneers: Revolution, Gender, Race, (Re)location

    • Colonial War, Nationalist Revolution, and the Emergence of Documentary in China (Ying Qian – Columbia University)
    • Ocean-crossing Filmmaking: A Tradition for Hong Kong Women Directors (Louisa Wei – City University of Hong Kong)
    • The Films She Wanted to Make: The Queer Life and Work of Sakane Tazuko (Yuka Kanno – Doshisha University)
    • When Cosmopolitanism Meets Nationalism: “China’s Daughter” Anna May Wong and Her China Trip Film (Wang Yiman – University of California, Santa Cruz)
    • Quietly Dreaming: Zhang Lu’s Affective-Scaping in the Asian Transnational Cinematrix (Ran Ma – Nagoya University)

Tuesday, March 23, 2021

12:00pm – 1:30pm EDT (Beijing: 12am; London 4pm)

E020: Public Space through Gendered Perspectives: Part 1 Boundaries as Site of Resistance

    • To Mourn is To Protest: On Grief, Gender, and Politics in Hong Kong (Sealing Cheng – Chinese University of Hong Kong)
    • Citizenship Protests: Public Spaces and a Politics of Gendered Visibility in India (Shilpa Phadke – Tata Institute of Social Sciences)
    • Memory in Action: Elderly Women Protesting the Demolition of a Shanghai Temple (Lena Scheen – NYU Shanghai)

E007: Chinese Feminisms as Transnational Feminisms

    • Maneuvering Within and Without: Chinese Feminisms in Transnational Flows and State Domination, 1995-2020 (Jiling Duan – Indiana University Bloomington)
    • Writing With An Accent: “Xenophone” Scholarship and Feminist Knowledge (Xin Huang – University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee)
    • Sinophone Queer Feminism: The Transnational Activist Practice of Chinese Lala Alliance (Dian Dian – Emory University)
    •  China’s “Gender Equality Education” Program: Local Contestations & Transnational Interactions (Orna Naftali – The Hebrew University of Jerusalem)

E021: Queering Racialized Capital and Labor across Asian/Pacific Time and Space

    • Queer “Chimerica”: Cold War Racial Capitalism and Commodifcation of Queer Sexuality (Shana Ye – University of Toronto)
    • Asian Racialization and the Early 20th-Century Queering of Empire (Alan Williams – University of Washington)
    • “Sorry, Please, Thank You”: US-China Trade War and the Future of American Orientalism (Christopher Tzechung Fan – University of California, Irvine)
    • Racialized Criminalization: A Comparative Study of Chinese Migrant and Black Sex Workers’ Labor and Activism in the North America (Shuxuan Zhou – Seattle Office for Civil Rights)
3:00pm – 4:30pm EDT (Beijing: 3am; London 7pm)

F017: Panel: Discourses of Chastity in Early Modern Vernacular Literature and Culture

    • Widow Chastity and Beyond: Queen Zhao’s Qin Song and Moral Exemplarity (Zeyuan Wu)
    • Gender, Syncretism, and Moral Self-Imagination: Jin Fangquan’s tanci work A Tale of Exceptional Chastity (Li Guo – Utah State University)
    • Chastity and Female Sainthood in Religious Vernacular Literature (Xiaosu Sun – Nanjing Normal University)
    • The Chaste Concubine: Women’s Conflict and Cooperation in Xiunü baojuan (Katherine Alexander – University of Colorado, Boulder)

Wednesday, March 24, 2021

8:30am – 10:00am EDT (Beijing: 8:30pm; London 12:30pm)

G007: Gender and Theatre: Portrayals of Women Characters on the Chinese Stage

    • The Left-Behind Women of Chinese Women’s Liberation: A Portrait of Lu Xun’s Invisible Wife (Shiao-ling Yu – Oregon State University)
    • The Interweaving of Dependence and Independence: The Emergence and Social Implication of Middle-Class Intellectual Women in China (Yuwen Zhu – Nanjing Normal University)
    • Embodying the Public Sphere: Critiquing the Gendered Obligations in Youth-Centered Urban Theatre in Contemporary China (Donghui He – Whitman College)
12:00pm – 1:30pm EDT (Beijing: 12am; London 4pm)

H018 Shame/Shine: Chinese Sluts across Time, Border, and Media

    • Golden Lotus (Pan Jilian) Reincarnated: A Femme Fatale and Her Theatrical Spirits (Enhua Zhang – University of Massachusetts Amherst)
    • Unruly Chinese Women: Disrupting Racial Narratives (Crystal Kwok – University of Hawaii at Manoa)
    • Poxie in Revolution: How Unlawful Femininity Fueled Early Communist Feminist Movement (Shu Yang – Western Michigan University)
    • Judging Women in China, or a Media Archaeology of (Slut-)Shaming
      (Belinda Q. He – University of California, Berkeley)

H023: Women Writing Art: Feminist Approaches in Chinese Women’s Art Writing, Cartoons, and Self-Portrayals in the Early Republican Period

    • ‘Who Would Understand the Joy of the Fish?’: Jin Taotao’s Painting Treatise and Gender Repositioning in the Elite Art World (Doris Sung – The University of Alabama)
    • Woman Has an Extraordinary Instinct for Art: Celebrity Artists, Social Reform, and Women Writing about Women in the Arts (Amanda Wangwright – University of South Carolina)
    • Art, Mass Media and the Fashioning of Female Selves, Circa 1934 (Gary Wang – University of Toronto)
    • Women’s Body and Wit in Early Republican China: Liang Baibo’s Comic strips and Personal Correspondence (Martina Caschera – University of Chieti-Pescara)
3:00pm – 4:30pm EDT (Beijing: 3am; London 7pm)

I012: Patients, Nurses, and Doctors: Medicine and Gender in Modern East Asian Literature and History

    • Women’s “Hysteria” in Early-Twentieth Century Japan (H. Yumi Kim – Johns Hopkins University)
    • Medical Bodies and Gender in Early-Twentieth-Century Korean Literature (Yoon Sun Yang – Boston University)
    • “Frightful Blood Under Beautiful Skin”: The Gendered Experience of Hansen’s Disease (Kathryn Tanaka – Otemae University)
    • Disease and Medicine in Chinese Contemporary Science Fiction (Xuying Yu – The Open University of Hong Kong)

Thursday, March 25, 2021

8:30am – 10:00am EDT (Beijing: 8:30pm; London 12:30pm)

J004: Engendering Buddhism: Non-Theravādin Buddhist Women in Southeast Asia

    • Sisters in Dharma: Parwati Soepangat and the Indonesian Buddhist Women’s Movement (Jack Meng-Tat Chia – National University of Singapore)
    • Gender, Migration, and the Translocation of Southeast Asian Buddhism: The Case of a Vietnamese Nun in Taiwan (Wei-yi Cheng – Fo Guang University)
    • When Mahāyāna Meets Theravāda: Chinese Bhiksunis in Contemporary Myanmar (Melody Tzu-Lung Chiu – Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity)
    • Neither Laywoman nor Nun: The Vegetarian Women of Miao Ing Temple (Ai Boay Tan – Universiti Tunku Abdul Rahman)

J021: The Familial Is Political

    • Disputation as a State Enterprise in Contemporary China (Ke Li – John Jay College of Criminal Justice, the City University of New York)
    • Adjudicating Filial Piety: Law, Legitimacy, and Moral Authority in the PRC (Kristin M. Sangren – University of California, Berkeley)
    • Neo-Familialism in Xi’s China: Population, Gender, and Governmentality (Yige Dong – State University of New York, Buffalo; Angela X. Wu – New York University)
    • From Familial State to Familial Society: Family Metaphors in Hong Kong’s 2019-2020 Protests (Xiaohong Xu – University of Michigan; Lake Lui – Hong Kong Polytechnic University)
12:00pm – 1:30pm EDT (Beijing: 12am; London 4pm)

K011: Negotiating Ethnicity and Gender on Imperial Frontiers: A Multidisciplinary Lens on Intersectionalities in Tang China

    • A Herstory at the Frontier: Wang Zhaojun in the Dunhuang Prosimetric Text and the Han Chinese Isomorphism of Family and State (Baoli Yang – Brown University)
    • Under the Shadow of Patriarchy: Reassessing Dunhuang Female Associations (Nürenshe) (Ping Yao – California State University, Los Angeles)
    • Man Men: Nanzhao Masculinities in the Stele of Transforming Virtue and Illustrated History (Megan Bryson – University of Tennessee, Knoxville)
    • The Animal-riding Lute Players: A Lens on Gender, Ethnicity, and “Us vs. Them” in Tang Art and Texts (Ingrid Furniss – Lafayette College)

Friday, March 26, 2021

8:30am – 10:00am EDT (Beijing: 8:30pm; London 12:30pm)

M023: The Internet and Articulations of Sexuality in East and Southeast Asia

    • Asianizing Thai Gay Subjectivity by Consuming Japanese Pornography (Dredge Byung’chu Kang-Nguyen – University of California, San Diego)
    • Amateur Pornography as Confessions in Filipino Alter Community (Ruepert Jiel D. Cao – Hong Kong Baptist University)
    • Queer Sinophone Digital Circuit between Malaysia and Taiwan (Ting-Fai Yu – Monash University Malaysia)
    • Smouldering Pornographies on the Chinese Internet (Katrien Jacobs – Chinese University of Hong Kong)
12:00pm – 1:30pm EDT (Beijing: 12am; London 4pm)

N009: Gender, Work and Social Mobility in Asia

    • “Because of Society’s Respect for Civil Servants”: Tradeoffs Between Security and Blocked Mobility in “Glass Bowl” Public Sector Employment in South Korea (Juyeon Park – University of Massachusetts, Amherst; Sangha Kang-Le – Simmons University)
    • From Socialist Rice Bowl to Private Sectors: Women in Small Businesses in Coastal China (Jing Song – The Chinese University of Hong Kong)
    • “Who Wants to Become a Law Firm Partner?” Contesting Men’s Definition of Success for Women Lawyers in Hong Kong (Karen Lee – Education University of Hong Kong)
    • The Persistence of Gendered Choices of Education and Occupation Among Chinese Young Women (Anita Koo – Hong Kong Polytechnic University)

On Demand

On demand/Individual presenters
Law, Gender, and Public Opinions of a Post-World War Ⅱ Conundrum: “Resistance-war Wives” in Court and in Newspapers (Chuning Xie, Binghamton University)
Wives at Men’s Parties: Gender Ethics and Expressions of Closeness (Chih-Yen Huang, University of Pennsylvania)
Boarding Singleness: Women’s Hostels in Shanghai (1932–1941) (Chang Liu, The Chinese Universities of Hong Kong,Shenzhen)
Constructing Wu Topolect as the Language of Female Courtesans and the Entertainment World in Shanghai (Yichun Xu, The Ohio State University)
Literature in #MeToo Movement: Literary Violence and Agency in Fang Si-chi’s First Love Paradise (Yuhan Huang, Rochester Institute of Technology)
The Queering of the Master-Disciple Relationship in Chinese Martial Arts Narratives (Yan (Belinda) Wang, University of Alberta)
“Improvised Intimacy”: Female Sex Workers (xiaojie) in Post-Socialist China (Yeon Jung Yu, Western Washington University)