“To Save the Women of China from Fear, Opium and Bound Feet”: Australian Women Missionaries in Early Twentieth-Century China

Itinerario ◽  
2010 ◽  
Vol 34 (3) ◽  
pp. 67-82
Author(s):  
Sarah Paddle

This article explores the experiences of Western women missionaries in a faith mission and their relationships with the women and children of China in the early years of the twentieth century. In a period of twenty years of unprecedented social and political revolution missionaries were forced to reconceptualise their work against a changing discourse of Chinese womanhood. In this context, emerging models of the Chinese New Woman and the New Girl challenged older mission constructions of gender. The Chinese reformation also provided missionaries with troubling reflections on their own roles as independent young women, against debates about modern women at home, and the emerging rights of white women as newly enfranchised citizens in the new nation of Australia.

2015 ◽  
Vol 42 (1) ◽  
pp. 165-170
Author(s):  
P. G. Moore

Three letters from the Sheina Marshall archive at the former University Marine Biological Station Millport (UMBSM) reveal the pivotal significance of Sheina Marshall's father, Dr John Nairn Marshall, behind the scheme planned by Glasgow University's Regius Professor of Zoology, John Graham Kerr. He proposed to build an alternative marine station facility on Cumbrae's adjacent island of Bute in the Firth of Clyde in the early years of the twentieth century to cater predominantly for marine researchers.


Author(s):  
Motoe Sasaki

This chapter shows how the notion of modern science brought to China by American New Women missionaries in the form of medicine and nursing generated concrete responses from their Chinese counterparts. The notion of science as a universally applicable and fundamentally egalitarian element for the development of a modern society and its constituents was increasingly influential in both the United States and China during the early twentieth century. Consequently, American New Women missionaries were able to establish their status as scientific professionals whose expertise could contribute to China's modernization process. At the same time, however, their faith in the new notion of science brought with it the idea of “separate but equal” gender roles, which brought them into conflict with many of their male counterparts from the United States who wanted to compete with other imperial powers to gain influence in China.


Author(s):  
Jenny Tone-Pah-Hote

During the early twentieth century, Kiowa people expertly deployed material culture as symbols of themselves as a people. Beadwork specifically illustrated the significance of kinship and is use and exchange among people, which constructed family relationships and a sense of belongingness. Beadwork and other expressive forms were highlighted in the American Indian Exposition, a fair, and an event, which provided a venue of public display that encouraged intertribal competition. The chapter also examines the representation of young women as American Indian Exposition princesses.


Religions ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (10) ◽  
pp. 558
Author(s):  
Peng Liu

This article focuses on the Chinese woman writer Lü Bicheng 呂碧城 (1883–1943) and her relationship with the worldwide movement for the revival of Buddhism in the early twentieth century. Lü rose up in the context of the “new woman” ideal and transcended that ideal as she rejected the dualistic thinking that was prevalent in her time. She embraced both reason and religion, as well as both modern and traditional ideas. Her story demonstrates that religion and the creation of the “new woman” were not mutually exclusive in her life. In the 1920s and 1930s, Lü traveled extensively in the United States and Europe and eventually converted to Buddhism after she witnessed its popularity in the West. During this period, she successfully created a social space for herself by utilizing Buddhist sources to engage in intellectual dialogues on paranormal phenomena and animal protection. At the same time, she carved out a place for Buddhism in the discourse on the convergence and divergence of science and religion after the First World War (1914–1918).


2004 ◽  
Vol 38 (1) ◽  
pp. 67-88 ◽  
Author(s):  
ARTEMIS MICHAILIDOU

Popular perceptions of Edna St. Vincent Millay do not generally see her as a poet interested in so-called “domestic poetry.” On the contrary, Millay is most commonly described as the female embodiment of the rebellious spirit that marked the 1920s, the “New Woman” of early twentieth-century feminism. Until the late 1970s, the subject of domesticity seemed incompatible with the celebrated images of Millay's “progressiveness,” “rebelliousness,” or “originality.” But then again, by the 1970s Millay was no longer seen as particularly rebellious or original, and the fact that she had also contributed to the tradition of domestic poetry was not to her advantage. Domesticity may have been an important issue for second-wave feminists, but it was discussed rather selectively and, outside feminist circles, Millay was hardly ever mentioned by literary critics. The taint of “traditionalism” did not help Millay's cause, and the poet's lifelong exploration of sexuality, femininity and gender stereotypes was somehow not enough to generate sophisticated critical analyses. Since Millay seemed to be a largely traditional poet and a “politically incorrect” feminist model, second-wave feminists preferred to focus on other figures, classified as more modern and more overtly subversive. Scholarly recognition of Millay's significance within the canon of modern American poetry did not really begin until the 1990s.


Author(s):  
Laleen Jayamanne

The first chapter offers a fresh approach to this canonical silent film by focusing on Louise Brooks’s kinetic performance as Lulu and the tradition of dance and abstract movements she draws on. The early twentieth-century feminist political slogan, the ‘New Woman’, is embodied, contested, and rendered ambiguous in this late Weimar silent film through Brooks’s technical skills as a modern dancer. Pabst and Brooks as co-creators draw an intimate link between the dynamism of the silent-film image and that of Lulu as dancer. I see these as a gift to the rather sedentary female scholar of cinema.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document