Gender Justice and Contemporary Asian Literatures

Gender Justice and Contemporary Asian Literatures PDF

Author: Karen Laura Thornber

Publisher: Modern Language Association of America

Published: 2024-09-06

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781603296601

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Representations of the struggle for gender justice in Asian literature This casebook investigates how diverse writers from across East, South, and Southeast Asia and their diasporas have engaged with the struggle for gender justice amid pervasive gender-based inequity and violence. Each chapter analyzes works of literature originally written in Bengali, Chinese, English, Indonesian, Japanese, Khmer, Korean, Marathi, Thai, and Vietnamese. Aimed at both specialists and nonspecialists, Gender Justice and Contemporary Asian Literatures addresses such subjects as gender imparity in male-dominated professions; the lives of migrant sex workers and caregivers; the fight against reproductive, family, non-partner, and intimate partner violence; and norms of shame and silence surrounding violence against women. Informed by the author's deep knowledge of literature, history, culture, law, and social conditions, this book will be a resource for instructors and students in gender studies, women's studies, ethnic studies, Asian studies, Asian American studies, Asian diaspora studies, comparative literature, and world literature. This volume contains discussion of the following authors and works: Sarbjit Kaur Athwal, Shamed; Cho Namjoo, Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982; Dạ Ngân, An Insignificant Family; Ally Dalijo, "My Employer"; Kishwar Desai, Origins of Love and Witness the Night; Selina Hossain, "Motijan's Daughters"; Saba Imtiaz, Karachi, You're Killing Me!; Itō Shiori, Black Box; Meena Kandasamy, When I Hit You; or, A Portrait of the Writer as a Young Wife; Kawakami Mieko, Breasts and Eggs; Ratna Khaerudina, "Susi"; Kim Soom, One Left; Li Ang, The Butcher's Wife; Ma Jian, The Dark Road; Tisa Muhaddes, "Over and Over Again"; Murata Sayaka, Convenience Store Woman; Shabnam Nadiya, "Teacher Shortage"; Pak Wansŏ, "An Episode at Dusk, 2"; Patigül, Bloodline; Duanwad Pimwana, "Men's Rights"; Wena Poon, "Development"; Mey Son Sotheary, "My Sister"; Claire Tham, "The Gunpowder Trail"; Marianne Villanueva, "The Mayor of the Roses"; Wang Nanfu and Zhang Jialing, One Child Nation; Watanabe Jun'ichi, Beyond the Blossoming Fields; Zhou Daxin, Longevity Park.

Gender and Sexuality Justice in Asia

Gender and Sexuality Justice in Asia PDF

Author: Joseph N. Goh

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2020-12-15

Total Pages: 246

ISBN-13: 981158916X

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This book brings together a group of innovative scholars examining the contemporary issue of effecting gender and sexuality justice in the context of Asia, consonant with engendering a just, equitable and sustainable development for all. These grassroots initiatives are woven through three complementary sections of the book: gender justice in Asia, sexuality justice in Asia, and finding resolutions through conflict. The book foregrounds strategies that aim to call out and challenge existing gender and sexuality injustices with regard to women and the LGBTIQA+ community by: assessing the efficacy of gender mainstreaming policies through micro-credit schemes for women in East Java, Indonesia; proliferating the signifiers of the hijab (veil) by postmodern Malay-Muslim women or ‘Hijabistas’ within the consumerist culture of Malaysia; making visible the injustices of the Syariah legal system for non-Muslim women, and ground-breaking legislation that could potentially recognise same-sex marriages in Thailand; privileging the narratives of gay women diplomats within the highly masculinised field of diplomacy in the Asia-Pacific region; foregrounding the narratives of Filipino gay men, intimate partner violence among young Indonesian Christian young people, masculine-identifying lesbians in Singapore, young LGBT people in rural Vietnam, and a Chinese-Muslim Malaysian female-to-male transgender person; and proposing new ways of becoming an inclusive church through the radical act of befriending persons living with HIV and AIDS in Southeast Asia. This book celebrates diverse and inclusive voices and strategies of gender and sexual agents of change in envisioning and bringing to fruition a just and transformative society for all. It is of interest to students and scholars researching gender and sexuality in areas of development studies, international relations, socio-legal studies, and literary studies.

The Lyrical in Epic Time

The Lyrical in Epic Time PDF

Author: David Der-wei Wang

Publisher: Columbia University Press

Published: 2015-01-20

Total Pages: 537

ISBN-13: 023153857X

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In this book, David Der-wei Wang uses the lyrical to rethink the dynamics of Chinese modernity. Although the form may seem unusual for representing China's social and political crises in the mid-twentieth century, Wang contends that national cataclysm and mass movements intensified Chinese lyricism in extraordinary ways. Wang calls attention to the form's vigor and variety at an unlikely juncture in Chinese history and the precarious consequences it brought about: betrayal, self-abjuration, suicide, and silence. Despite their divergent backgrounds and commitments, the writers, artists, and intellectuals discussed in this book all took lyricism as a way to explore selfhood in relation to solidarity, the role of the artist in history, and the potential for poetry to illuminate crisis. They experimented with poetry, fiction, film, intellectual treatise, political manifesto, painting, calligraphy, and music. Western critics, Wang shows, also used lyricism to critique their perilous, epic time. He reads Martin Heidegger, Theodor Adorno, Cleanth Brooks, and Paul de Man, among others, to complete his portrait. The Chinese case only further intensifies the permeable nature of lyrical discourse, forcing us to reengage with the dominant role of revolution and enlightenment in shaping Chinese—and global—modernity. Wang's remarkable survey reestablishes Chinese lyricism's deep roots in its own native traditions, along with Western influences, and realizes the relevance of such a lyrical calling of the past century to our time.

Being Human in a Buddhist World

Being Human in a Buddhist World PDF

Author: Janet Gyatso

Publisher: Columbia University Press

Published: 2015-01-20

Total Pages: 539

ISBN-13: 0231538324

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Critically exploring medical thought in a cultural milieu with no discernible influence from the European Enlightenment, Being Human in a Buddhist World reveals an otherwise unnoticed intersection of early modern sensibilities and religious values in traditional Tibetan medicine. It further studies the adaptation of Buddhist concepts and values to medical concerns and suggests important dimensions of Buddhism's role in the development of Asian and global civilization. Through its unique focus and sophisticated reading of source materials, Being Human adds a crucial chapter in the larger historiography of science and religion. The book opens with the bold achievements in Tibetan medical illustration, commentary, and institution building during the period of the Fifth Dalai Lama and his regent, Desi Sangye Gyatso, then looks back to the work of earlier thinkers, tracing a strategically astute dialectic between scriptural and empirical authority on questions of history and the nature of human anatomy. It follows key differences between medicine and Buddhism in attitudes toward gender and sex and the moral character of the physician, who had to serve both the patient's and the practitioner's well-being. Being Human in a Buddhist World ultimately finds that Tibetan medical scholars absorbed ethical and epistemological categories from Buddhism yet shied away from ideal systems and absolutes, instead embracing the imperfectability of the human condition.

Women and Gender in Contemporary Chinese Societies

Women and Gender in Contemporary Chinese Societies PDF

Author: Shanshan Du

Publisher: Lexington Books

Published: 2013-03-04

Total Pages: 252

ISBN-13: 0739145827

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Recent attention to historical, geographic, and class differences in the studies of women and gender in China has expanded our understanding of the diversity and complexity of gendered China. Nevertheless, the ethnic dimension of this subject matter remains largely overlooked, particularly concerning women’s conditions and gender status. Consequently, the patriarchy and its oppression of women among the Han, the ethnic majority in China, are often inaccurately or erroneously associated with the whole gendered heritage of China, epitomized by the infamous traditions of footbinding and female-infanticide. Such academic and popular predisposition belies the fact that gender systems in China span a wide spectrum, ranging from extreme Han patriarchy to Lahu gender-egalitarianism. The authors contributing to this book have collectively initiated a systematic effort to bridge the gap between understanding the majority Han and ethnic minorities in regard to women and gender in contemporary Chinese societies. By achieving a quantitative balance between articles on the Han majority and those on ethnic minorities, this book transcends the ghettoization of ethnic minorities in the studies of Chinese women and gender. The eleven chapters of this volume are divided into three sections which jointly challenge the traditions and norms of Han patriarchy from various perspectives. The first section focuses on gender traditions among ethnic minorities which compete with the norms of Han patriarchy. The second section emphasizes the impact of radical social transformation on gender systems and practices among both Han and ethnic minorities. The third section underscores socio-cultural diversity and complexity in resistance to Han patriarchal norms from a broad perspective. This book complements previous scholarship on Chinese women and gender by expanding our investigative lens beyond Han patriarchy and providing images of the multi-ethnic landscape of China. By identifying the Han as an ethnically marked category and by bringing to the forefront the diverse gender systems of ethnic minorities, this book encourages an increasing awareness of, and sensitivity to the cross-cultural diversity of gendered China both in academia and beyond.

Contagion Narratives

Contagion Narratives PDF

Author: R. Sreejith Varma

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2022-12-30

Total Pages: 171

ISBN-13: 1000811042

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This volume is a collection of ten essays that direct their gaze to the unfolding of contagions in the non-classical contexts of Asia and Africa. Or, to borrow from the title of one of Partha Chatterjee’s books, they are reflections on the pandemic in most of the world. Featuring many scholars (of the humanities and social sciences) in the Global South, these chapters take as their intellectual focus the political-social as well as the ethical challenges posed by the contagions in the "East." Through analyses of literary narratives/films/video games, this Contagion Narratives traces the manufactured narratives of victimization by majority-communities and the lethal divides consequently being drawn between a reconstituted "authentic majority" and the more vulnerable minority ‘other’ in these societies. The essays in this collection are animated by imaginations of liveable alternatives on a planet on the brink. This volume traces lineages to Buchi Emecheta and Rabindranath Tagore rather than Albert Camus, to Satyajit Ray and the indie traditions rather than Hollywood, and to Buddhism rather than Christianity, to track the historic journeys of "modernity." Using an eclectic set of analytical tools and strategies of textual criticism, this volume argues that ideas of "democracy," even while they carry echoes of other societies, are markedly different as they travel from Gaddafi’s Libya to Wuhan under lockdown to colonial Bengal.

Taiwanese Literature as World Literature

Taiwanese Literature as World Literature PDF

Author: Pei-yin Lin

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published: 2022-12-15

Total Pages: 233

ISBN-13: 1501381350

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Owing to Taiwan's multi-ethnic nature and palimpsestic colonial past, Taiwanese literature is naturally multilingual. Although it can be analyzed through frameworks of Japanophone literature and Chinese literature, and the more provocative Sinophone literature, only through viewing Taiwanese literature as world literature can we redress the limits of national identity and fully examine writers' transculturation practice, globally minded vision, and the politics of its circulation. Throughout the colonial era, Taiwanese writers gained inspiration from global literary trends mainly but not exclusively through the medium of Japanese and Chinese. Modernism was the mainstream literary style in 1960s Taiwan, and since the 1980s Taiwanese literature has demonstrated a unique trajectory shaped jointly by postmodernism and postcolonialism. These movements exhibit Taiwanese writers' creative adaptations of world literary thought as a response to their local and trans-national reality. During the postwar years Taiwanese literature began to be more systematically introduced to world readers through translation. Over the past few decades, Taiwanese authors and their translated works have participated in global conversations, such as those on climate change, the "post-truth" era, and ethnic and gender equality. Bringing together scholars and translators from Europe, North America, and East Asia, the volume focuses on three interrelated themes – the framing and worlding ploys of Taiwanese literature, Taiwanese writers' experience of transculturation, and politics behind translating Taiwanese literature. The volume stimulates new ways of conceptualizing Taiwanese literature, demonstrates remarkable cases of Taiwanese authors' co-option of world trends in their Taiwan-concerned writing, and explores its readership and dissemination.

Feminism as World Literature

Feminism as World Literature PDF

Author: Robin Truth Goodman

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published: 2022-11-03

Total Pages: 321

ISBN-13: 1501371207

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The conventional lineage of World Literature starts with Goethe and moves through Marx, Said, Moretti, and Damrosch, among others. What if there is another way to trace the lineage, starting with Simone de Beauvoir and moving through Hannah Arendt, Assia Djebar, Octavia Butler, Donna Haraway, Karen Barad, and Gayatri Spivak? What ideas and issues get left out of the current foundations that have institutionalized World Literature, and what can be added, challenged, or changed with this tweaking of the referential terminology? Feminism as World Literature redefines the thematic and theoretical contents of World Literature in feminist terms as well as rethinking feminist terms, analyses, frameworks, and concepts in a World Literature context. Other ideas built into World Literature and its criticism are viewed here by feminist framings, including the environment, technology, immigration, translation, work, race, governance, image, sound, religion, affect, violence, media, future, and history. The authors recognize genres, strategies, and themes of World Literature that demonstrate feminism as integral to the world-making gestures of literary form and production. In other words, this volume looks to readings and modes of reading that expose how the historical worldliness of texts allows for feminist interventions that might not sit clearly or comfortably on the surfaces.

The Gender of Memory

The Gender of Memory PDF

Author: Gail Hershatter

Publisher: Univ of California Press

Published: 2011-08-05

Total Pages: 481

ISBN-13: 0520950348

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What can we learn about the Chinese revolution by placing a doubly marginalized group—rural women—at the center of the inquiry? In this book, Gail Hershatter explores changes in the lives of seventy-two elderly women in rural Shaanxi province during the revolutionary decades of the 1950s and 1960s. Interweaving these women’s life histories with insightful analysis, Hershatter shows how Party-state policy became local and personal, and how it affected women’s agricultural work, domestic routines, activism, marriage, childbirth, and parenting—even their notions of virtue and respectability. The women narrate their pasts from the vantage point of the present and highlight their enduring virtues, important achievements, and most deeply harbored grievances. In showing what memories can tell us about gender as an axis of power, difference, and collectivity in 1950s rural China and the present, Hershatter powerfully examines the nature of socialism and how gender figured in its creation.

Gender, Place, and Identity of South Asian Women

Gender, Place, and Identity of South Asian Women PDF

Author: Pourya Asl, Moussa

Publisher: IGI Global

Published: 2022-04-08

Total Pages: 302

ISBN-13: 1668436280

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In the past century, South Asia underwent fundamental cultural, social, and political changes as many countries progressed from colonial dominations through nationalist movements to independence. These transformations have been intricately bound up with the spatiality of social life in the region, drawing further attention to the significance of social spaces within transformative politics and identity formations. Gender, Place, and Identity of South Asian Women studies contemporary literature of South Asian women with a focus on gender, place, and identity. It contributes to the debate on gender identity and equality, spatial and social justice, women empowerment, marginalization, and anti-discrimination measures. Covering topics such as partition memory narrative, spatial mobility, and diasporic women’s lives, this book is an essential resource for students and educators of higher education, researchers, activists, government officials, business leaders, academicians, feminist organizations, sociologists, and researchers.