Gender, Sexuality and Power in 20th-Century China (SEPT-OCT 2026): Sign-up Form

Course description: Why did questions of gender and sexuality become so central to the making of a modern Chinese nation-state? What did it mean to be “modern” in twentieth-century China? What changed, and what remained from China’s imperial past? Beginning in the final decades of the Qing dynasty, this course traces debates over the Woman Question, new concepts of sexual identity, and changing ideals of love, marriage, and family. It asks how these debates shaped national reform, revolution, and state-building. It also considers their impacts on people’s intimate lives. Promises of liberation created new possibilities, but they also produced new standards of gender and sexual conduct. Students will read historical scholarship alongside magazines, films, prints, memoirs, and oral histories. These materials introduce key theories and political debates about gender and sexuality. They also reveal changes and continuities in how gender and sexuality were represented and experienced.