Brill Beyond Tradition and Modernity: Gender, Genre, and Cosmopolitanism in Late Qing China

Beyond Tradition and Modernity is a collection of original essays which considers the complexities behind the dramatic changes generated in China during the last decades of the nineteenth and the first decades of the twentieth century. As men and women literally-or metaphorically- crossed into new geographical worlds, they came to express their understanding of the expanding universe in a variety of ways which cannot be neatly labeled either traditional or modern. The contributors to this volume demonstrate how the creativity of these writers marked a new moment in historical and literary practices transcending this usual binary and simple teleology. Their essays expose how the ethnographic, literary, and educational projects of these men and women gave voice to new ideals and ideas that reflect the changing boundaries of gender at this time. Synopsis Beyond Tradition and Modernity is a collection of original essays which considers the complexities behind the dramatic changes generated in China during the last decades of the nineteenth and the first decades of the twentieth century. As men and women literally-or metaphorically- crossed into new geographical worlds, they came to express their understanding of the expanding universe in a variety of ways which cannot be neatly labeled either traditional or modern. The contributors to this volume demonstrate how the creativity of these writers marked a new moment in historical and literary practices transcending this usual binary and simple teleology. Their essays expose how the ethnographic, literary, and educational projects of these men and women gave voice to new ideals and ideas that reflect the changing boundaries of gender at this time. About the Author Grace S. Fong, Ph.D. (1984) University of British Columbia, teaches at McGill University, and is the author of Wu Wenying and the Art of Southern Sung Ci Poetry (1987). Nanxiu Qian, Ph.D. (1994) Yale University, teaches at Rice University, and is author of Spirit and Self in Medieval China: The 'Shih-shuo hsin-yu' and Its Legacy (University of Hawaii Press, 2001). Harriet T. Zurndorfer, Ph.D. (1977) University of California at Berkeley is the editor of Chinese Women in the Imperial Past: New Perspectives (Brill, 1999) and the founder and managing editor of the journal NAN NU: Men, Women and Gender in China, (Brill, 1999).