Women in Ancient China

Women in Ancient China PDF Author: Bret Hinsch
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1538115417
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 227

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Book Description
This pioneering book provides a comprehensive survey of ancient Chinese women’s history, covering thousands of years from the Neolithic era to China’s unification in 221 BCE. For each period—Neolithic, Shang, Western Zhou, and Eastern Zhou—Hinsch explores central aspects of female life such as marriage, family life, politics, ritual, and religious roles.

Women in Ancient China

Women in Ancient China PDF Author: Bret Hinsch
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1538115417
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 227

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Book Description
This pioneering book provides a comprehensive survey of ancient Chinese women’s history, covering thousands of years from the Neolithic era to China’s unification in 221 BCE. For each period—Neolithic, Shang, Western Zhou, and Eastern Zhou—Hinsch explores central aspects of female life such as marriage, family life, politics, ritual, and religious roles.

Women in Early Imperial China

Women in Early Imperial China PDF Author: Bret Hinsch
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
ISBN: 9780742568242
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
After a long spell of chaos, the Qin and Han dynasties (221 BCE–220 CE) saw the unification of the Chinese Empire under a single ruler, government, and code of law. During this era, changing social and political institutions affected the ways people conceived of womanhood. New ideals were promulgated, and women's lives gradually altered to conform to them. And under the new political system, the rulers' consorts and their families obtained powerful roles that allowed women unprecedented influence in the highest level of government. Recognized as the leading work in the field, this introductory survey offers the first sustained history of women in the early imperial era. Now in a revised edition that incorporates the latest scholarship and theoretical approaches, the book draws on extensive primary and secondary sources in Chinese and Japanese to paint a remarkably detailed picture of the distant past. Bret Hinsch's introductory chapters orient the nonspecialist to early imperial Chinese society; subsequent chapters discuss women's roles from the multiple perspectives of kinship, wealth and work, law, government, learning, ritual, and cosmology. An enhanced array of line drawings, a Chinese-character glossary, and extensive notes and bibliography enhance the author's discussion. Historians and students of gender and early China alike will find this book an invaluable overview.

Women in Imperial China

Women in Imperial China PDF Author: Bret Hinsch
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1442271663
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 273

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Book Description
This accessible text offers a comprehensive survey of women’s history in China from the Neolithic period through the end of the Qing dynasty in the early twentieth century. Rather than providing an exhaustive chronicle of this vast subject, Bret Hinsch pinpoints the themes that characterized distinct periods in Chinese women’s history and delves into the perception of female identity in each era. Moving beyond the traditional focus on the late imperial era, Hinsch explores how gender relations have developed and changed since ancient times. His chronological look at the most important female roles in every major dynasty showcases not only the constraints women faced but also their vast accomplishments throughout the millennia. Hinsch’s extensive use of Chinese-language scholarship lends his book a fresh perspective rare among Western scholars. Professors and students will find this an invaluable textbook for Chinese women’s studies and an excellent supplement for courses in gender studies and Chinese history.

Four Legendary Women from Ancient China

Four Legendary Women from Ancient China PDF Author: Ping Feng
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780648921530
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 274

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Book Description
Each of the four ladies are only known in China through dry historic text. The author writes history, as a novel, and gives well-researched personality to the characters. There are images of the four ladies.

Exemplary Women of Early China

Exemplary Women of Early China PDF Author: Anne Behnke Kinney
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231163088
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 386

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Book Description
When should a woman disobey her father, contradict her husband, or shape the policy of a ruler? According to the Lienü zhuan, or Categorized Biographies of Women, it is not only appropriate but necessary for women to offer counsel when fathers, husbands, sons, and rulers stray from virtue. The earliest Chinese text devoted to the moral education of women, the Lienü zhuan was compiled by Liu Xiang (79–8 B.C.E.) at the end of the Han dynasty (202 B.C.E.–9 C.E.) and recounts the deeds of both virtuous and wicked women. Informed by early legends, fictionalized historical accounts, and formal speeches on statecraft, the text taught generations of Chinese women to cultivate filial piety and maternal kindness and undertake such practices as suicide and self-mutilation to preserve chastity and reform wayward men. The Lienü zhuan’s stories inspired artists for a millennium and found their way into local and dynastic histories. An innovative work for its time, the text remains a critical tool for mapping women’s social, political, and domestic roles at a formative time in China’s development.

Women in Early Medieval China

Women in Early Medieval China PDF Author: Bret Hinsch
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1538117975
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 234

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Book Description
This important study provides the only comprehensive survey of Chinese women during the early medieval period of disunion known as the Six Dynasties, which lasted from the fall of the Eastern Han dynasty in AD 220 to the reunification of China by the Sui dynasty in AD 581.

Birth in Ancient China

Birth in Ancient China PDF Author: Constance A. Cook
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 1438467125
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 174

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Book Description
Reveals cultural paradigms and historical prejudices regarding the role of birthing and women in the reproduction of society. Using newly discovered and excavated texts, Constance A. Cook and Xinhui Luo systematically explore material culture, inscriptions, transmitted texts, and genealogies from BCE China to reconstruct the role of women in social reproduction in the ancient Chinese world. Applying paleographical, linguistic, and historical analyses, Cook and Luo discuss fertility rituals, birthing experiences, divine conceptions, divine births, and the overall influence of gendered supernatural agencies on the experience and outcome of birth. They unpack a cultural paradigm in which birth is not only a philosophical symbol of eternal return and renewal but also an abiding religious and social focus for lineage continuity. They also suggest that some of the mythical founder heroes traditionally assumed to be male may in fact have had female identities. Students of ancient history, particularly Chinese history, will find this book an essential complement to traditional historical narratives, while the exploration of ancient religious texts, many unknown in the West, provides a unique perspective into the study of the formation of mythology and the role of birthing in early religion. Constance A. Cook is Professor of Chinese at Lehigh University and the author of Death in Ancient China: The Tale of One Man’s Journey. Xinhui Luo is Professor of Chinese Ancient History at Beijing Normal University, China.

Women in Qing China

Women in Qing China PDF Author: Bret Hinsch
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1538166410
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 223

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Book Description
This groundbreaking work provides an original and deeply knowledgeable overview of Chinese women and gender relations during the Qing Dynasty (1644–1912). Bret Hinsch explores in detail the central aspects of female life in this era, including family and marriage, motherhood, political power, work, inheritance, education, religious roles, and ethics. He considers not only women’s experiences but also their emotional lives and the ideals they pursued. Drawing on a wide range of Western, Japanese, and Chinese primary and secondary sources—including standard histories, poetry, prose literature, and epitaphs—Hinsch makes an important period of Chinese women’s history accessible to Western readers.

Women in Tang China

Women in Tang China PDF Author: Bret Hinsch
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 153813490X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 257

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Book Description
This important book provides the first comprehensive survey of women in China during the Sui and Tang dynasties from the sixth through tenth centuries CE. Bret Hinsch provides rich insight into female life in the medieval era, ranging from political power, wealth, and work to family, religious roles, and virtues. He explores women’s lived experiences but also delves into the subjective side of their emotional life and the ideals they pursued. Deeply researched, the book draws on a wide range of sources, including standard histories, poetry, prose literature, and epigraphic sources such as epitaphs, commemorative religious inscriptions, and Dunhuang documents. Building on the best Western and Japanese scholarship, Hinsch also draws heavily on Chinese scholarship, most of which is unknown outside China. As the first study in English about women in the medieval era, this groundbreaking work will open a new window into Chinese history for Western readers.

Festivals, Feasts, and Gender Relations in Ancient China and Greece

Festivals, Feasts, and Gender Relations in Ancient China and Greece PDF Author: Yiqun Zhou
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139490400
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 385

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Book Description
Ancient China and Greece are two classical civilisations that have exerted far-reaching influence in numerous areas of human experience and are often invoked as the paradigms in East-West comparison. This book examines gender relations in the two ancient societies as reflected in convivial contexts such as family banquets, public festivals, and religious feasts. Two distinct patterns of interpersonal affinity and conflict emerge from the Chinese and Greek sources that show men and women organising themselves and interacting with each other in social occasions intended for collective pursuit of pleasure. Through an analysis of the two different patterns, Yiqun Zhou illuminates the different socio-political mechanisms, value systems, and fabrics of human bonds in the two classical traditions. Her book will be important for readers who are interested in the comparative study of societies, gender studies, women's history, and the legacy of civilisations.