Synopses & Reviews
This book develops a new approach to historical change at the turn of the twentieth century, a crucial stage in the unfolding of Chinese modernity. Its focus is on the fraught and momentous woman question, which foregrounded the cultural paradoxes and political aspirations that define the era. Judge probes Chinese approaches to their own past and the modern West (mediated via Japan) through a close examination of the varied cultural and political uses of female biographya genre with a 2,000-year history in China and a new political salience in the early twentieth century. She analyzes the ways a range of male and female actors appropriated historical Chinese and modern Western women's biographies to promote competing visions of female virtue, talent, and heroismand by extension, to advance competing evaluations of China's ritual teachings, cultural heritage, and national future. Judge cogently maps these various approaches and establishes a new hermeneutics of historical change. At the same time, she highlights disjunctions among representations of exemplary heroines and between such representations and women's actual lives by ending each chapter with a methodologically innovative counterpoint. Excavating traces of the often highly mediated experience of China's first generation of female political activists, overseas students, schoolteachers, and public writers, she questions the ways long-standing and newly defined gender categories took on--or failed to take onefficacy in women's everyday lives. Judge concludes by evaluating how women's issues continue to illuminate Chinese understandings of the past, the West, and the nation at the turn of the twenty-first century.
Review
"In this broadly researched, ambitiously structured book, Judge presents a cross-section of the writings appearing at the turn of the 20th century that addressed the so-called 'women's question' in China. Rather than using such jaded terms as "tradition" and "modern," she ingeniously divides these writings into what she calls 'four chronotypes'...These chronotypes, which bridge history with literary theory, have enable Judge to demonstrate a complex and multifarious scene of sociocultural change at a critical juncture in Chinese history." CHOICE
Review
"Judge's study of the 'woman question' does justice to its dynamism, complexity and transitional character. She has established a new benchmark in historical studies of the very late Qing."Antonia Finnane, China Quarterly
Review
"Joan Judge's The Precious Raft of History does exactly what a raft is supposed to do. It rescues history, in this case the history of Chinese women in the late Qing dynasty, from the dismissive condescension of revolutionaries and scholars alike. With impressive erudition, Judge gives us genuinely new material and themes to think about. This is original, careful, exciting work."Gail Hershatter, University of California, Santa Cruz
Review
"This fascinating new book strips away scholarly illusions about ruptures in China's nineteenth and early-twentieth century history, and reveals how new roles for women have deep roots in a dense textual and cultural past. The illustrations are nothing short of fabulous." Susan Mann, University of California, Davis
Synopsis
This book reveals and interprets the rich diversity of turn-of-the-twentieth-century Chinese approaches to their own past and the modern West through the lens of the woman question. Writers and activists who engaged in debates over this question variously appropriated biographies of womena genre with a 2,000-year history in China and a new political salience in the early twentieth century. Judge maps the ways these individuals used historical Chinese and modern Western women's biographies to promote competing visions of female virtue, talent, and heroism, and, ultimately, to advance competing evaluations of China's ritual teachings, cultural heritage, and national future. She concludes by applying the hermeneutics of historical change she develops for the turn of the twentieth century to the turn of the twenty-first century, as women's issues continue to foreground Chinese conceptions of the past, the West, and the nation.
Synopsis
This book reveals and interprets the rich diversity of turn-of-the-twentieth-century Chinese approaches to their own past and the modern West through the lens of the woman question. Writers and activists who engaged in debates over this question variously appropriated biographies of womena genre with a 2,000-year history in China and a new political salience in the early twentieth century. Judge maps the ways these individuals used historical Chinese and modern Western women's biographies to promote competing visions of female virtue, talent, and heroism, and, ultimately, to advance competing evaluations of China's ritual teachings, cultural heritage, and national future. She concludes by applying the hermeneutics of historical change she develops for the turn of the twentieth century to the turn of the twenty-first century, as women's issues continue to foreground Chinese conceptions of the past, the West, and the nation.
Synopsis
This book develops a new approach to historical change at the turn of the twentieth century, a crucial stage in the unfolding of Chinese modernity. Its focus is on the fraught and momentous woman question, which foregrounded the cultural paradoxes and political aspirations that define the era. Judge probes Chinese approaches to their own past and the modern West (mediated via Japan) through a close examination of the varied cultural and political uses of female biographya genre with a 2,000-year history in China and a new political salience in the early twentieth century.
About the Author
"Judge's study of the 'woman question' does justice to its dynamism, complexity and transitional character. She has established a new benchmark in historical studies of the very late Qing."Antonia Finnane, China Quarterly "Joan Judge's The Precious Raft of History does exactly what a raft is supposed to do. It rescues history, in this case the history of Chinese women in the late Qing dynasty, from the dismissive condescension of revolutionaries and scholars alike. With impressive erudition, Judge gives us genuinely new material and themes to think about. This is original, careful, exciting work."Gail Hershatter, University of California, Santa Cruz"This fascinating new book strips away scholarly illusions about ruptures in China's nineteenth and early-twentieth century history, and reveals how new roles for women have deep roots in a dense textual and cultural past. The illustrations are nothing short of fabulous." Susan Mann, University of California, Davis"In this broadly researched, ambitiously structured book, Judge presents a cross-section of the writings appearing at the turn of the 20th century that addressed the so-called 'women's question' in China. Rather than using such jaded terms as "tradition" and "modern," she ingeniously divides these writings into what she calls 'four chronotypes'...These chronotypes, which bridge history with literary theory, have enable Judge to demonstrate a complex and multifarious scene of sociocultural change at a critical juncture in Chinese history." CHOICE