SUNY has published Eva Kit Wah Man, Bodies in China: Philosophy, Aesthetics, Gender, and Politics. More information is here or below.
Continue reading “New Book: Bodies in China: Philosophy, Aesthetics, Gender, and Politics”
Here is Sarah Mattice’s review of Ann Pang-White’s Bloomsbury Research Handbook of Chinese Philosophy and Gender, published in Hypatia Reviews Online.
Mathew A. Foust and Sor-hoon Tan, eds., Feminist Encounters with Confucius (Brill, 2016) has been published. Congratulations! The table of contents follows, and see also here.
Continue reading “New Book: Feminist Encounters with Confucius”
The Bloomsbury Research Handbook of Chinese Philosophy Methodologies, edited by Sor-hoon Tan, is due to be published later this week. Details are here, and I’ll paste the very rich Table of Contents below. This is another in the Bloomsbury Research Handbooks in Asian Philosophy series, on which more is available here. So far, the only other title concerned with Chinese philosophy is The Bloomsbury Research Handbook of Chinese Philosophy and Gender, edited by Ann-Pang White, which appeared earlier this year; see further below for its Table of Contents, and more details here. The series also contains several books focusing on the philosophies of India.
Continue reading “New Handbook on Chinese Philosophy Methodologies”
I’d like to recommend Ian Sullivan’s recently published article, “Simone de Beauvoir and Confucian Role Ethics: Role-Relational Ambiguity and Confucian Mystification,” which has just been published in Hypatia 31:3. Abstract follows….
Journalist Qian Jianghua writes: “A leading Confucian academic’s defense of polygamy and arranged marriage continues to stoke tensions, months after he made the comments last year in an article titled ‘Only Confucianism can settle modern women.'” More here.
Erin Cline of Georgetown University has published a new book with Columbia University Press, Families of Virtue: Confucian and Western Views on Childhood Development. Congratulations, Erin! The Columbia U. P. website is here; read on for a description.
Continue reading “New Book: Erin Cline’s Families of Virtue”
CALL FOR PAPERS AND PROPOSALS
Confucius and Feminism
Co-editors: Mathew A. Foust (Central Connecticut State University) & Sor-hoon Tan (National University of Singapore)
Chenyang Li’s path-breaking The Sage and the Second Sex (2000) challenged the traditionally received notion of Confucianism abetting the oppression of women in three ways. With studies of a wide range of Confucians, including Mencius, Xunzi, and Li Zhi, and historical periods stretching from fifth century BCE to sixteenth century, contributions to the edited volume suggested that women’s situations in Chinese history were not as bad as has been supposed; that core Confucian teachings have had little to do with anything bad about their situations; and that Confucianism offers an ethical vision compatible with Feminism.
A terrific-looking new book on early-20th century Chinese feminism has been published, and will also be the subject of a roundtable at the upcoming AAS conference: Lydia H. Liu, Rebecca E. Karl, Dorothy Ko, eds, The Birth of Chinese Feminism: Essential Texts in Transnational Theory (New York: Columbia University Press, 2013).
Two more recent books, one on women and Confucianism in Choson Korea, the other on emotions in East Asia.
Continue reading “New Books on Women and Confucianism, and on Emotions”
Li Zhi, Confucianism, and the Virtue of Desire by Pauline C. Lee (Albany: SUNY Press, 2012)
A philosophical analysis of the work of one of the most iconoclastic thinkers in Chinese history, Li Zhi, whose ethics prized spontaneous expression of genuine feelings. Continue reading “Pauline Lee's Li Zhi Book Published”
My main project while on sabbatical this year has been a book on contemporary Confucian political philosophy (built on the Tang Junyi Lectures I gave a year ago). I am working on one of the final chapters right now, in which I argue that Confucianism must recognize and critique structural forms of injustice. This has led me to revisit some of the literature on Confucianism and feminism, including Lisa Li-Hsiang Rosenlee’s Confucianism and Women (SUNY, 2006). I want to ask, somewhat in the spirit of a devil’s advocate, is it really as easy to articulate a Confucian feminism (or a feminist Confucianism) as Rosenlee says? Continue reading “Is Confucian Feminism So Easy?”
Van Norden discusses sexism very briefly (pp. 330-31) in his book. I realize, and he does too, there are whole volumes dedicated to the topic. But I wanted to discuss an interesting issue that Van Norden raises–not to critique his book but because I stumbled across the issue there this morning while coffeeing up. Van Norden writes:
“There is nothing, I think, essentially sexist about Ruism. Ruism emphasizes the importance of acting in accordance with our roles. But it is not a requirement of Ruism in itself that these roles be static or attached to specific genders.”
(For those who are unfamiliar, “Ruism” is another–maybe clearer, maybe somewhat problematic–way to refer to Confucianism.)
I think Van Norden’s view here is probably like that of a lot of contemporary defenders of Confucianism. But it raises a question: Is there something essential to Confucianism that transcends, or would allow it to transcend, its actual socio-historical role in sexist practices and institutions? Or maybe that’s too broad; more pointedly, how could a role-based ethical view remain identifiably Confucian if we divorced it from its actual substantive views about role-appropriateness based on sex? Or am I assuming too much in the latter about Confucianism’s actual substantive views about sex-based role-appropriateness?
Lots of questions; any answers?
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