Untamed Shrews: Negotiating New Womanhood in Modern China

Shu Yang, Associate Professor, Department of World Languages and Literatures, Western Michigan University

Recorded on April 16, 2024.

This lecture traces the evolution of unruly women in Chinese literature and culture, from the reviled “shrew” to the celebrated “new woman.” Rather than meeting her demise, the shrew persisted, and her negative qualities became the basis for many forms of the new woman, ranging from the early Republican suffragettes and Chinese Noras, to the Communist and socialist radicals. This lecture focuses on the yinfu (wanton woman) and revolution from the women’s suffrage movement to Jiang Qing and the Yan’an campaign.

Shu Yang is an Associate Professor in the Department of World Languages and Literatures at Western Michigan University, specializing in literary, cultural and gender studies on modern China. She has published in leading journals including Gender & History, Nan Nü, CLEAR, and Modern Chinese Literature and Culture. Her recent book Untamed Shrews came out under the Cornell East Asia Series by Cornell University Press (July 2023). Now Shu Yang is continuing her exploration of gender and modernity by writing on the discourse of hysteria in Republican China.