This book traces changing gender relations in China from the tenth to fourteenth centuries by examining three critical categories of women: courtesans, concubines, and faithful wives. It shows how the intersection and mutual influence of these groups—and of male discourses about them—transformed ideas about family relations and the proper roles of men and women. Courtesan culture had a profound effect on Song social and family life, as entertainment skills became a defining feature of a new model of concubinage, and as entertainer-concubines increasingly became mothers of literati sons. Neo-Confucianism, the new moral learning of the Song, was significantly shaped by this entertainment culture and by the new markets—in women—that it created. Responding to a broad social consensus, Neo-Confucians called for enhanced recognition of concubine mothers in ritual and expressed increasing concern about wifely jealousy. The book also details the surprising origins of the Late Imperial cult of fidelity, showing that from inception, the drive to celebrate female loyalty was rooted in a complex amalgam of political, social, and moral agendas. By taking women—and men’s relationships with women—seriously, this book makes a case for the centrality of gender relations in the social, political, and intellectual life of the Song and Yuan dynasties.

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.

In Woman Rules Within: Domestic Space and Genre in Qing Vernacular Literature, Jessica Dvorak Moyer compares depictions of women and the household in texts across a range of late imperial genres, offering a new understanding of vernacularization in Qing literature.

Volume II focuses on systems of thought and belief in the history of world sexualities, ranging from early humans to contemporary approaches. Comprising eighteen chapters, this volume opens with a chapter on the evolutionary legacy and then delves into the sexualities of ancient Egypt, the Near East, Greece, and Rome, continuing with pre-modern South Asia, China, and Japan, Africa, the Americas, and Oceania. Chapters include an examination of sexuality in the religious traditions of Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, and also look at more recent approaches, including scientific sex, sexuality in socialism and Marxism, and the intersections between sexuality, feminism, and post-colonialism.

Medieval slavery has received little attention relative to slavery in ancient Greece and Rome and in the early modern Atlantic world. This imbalance in the scholarship has led many to assume that slavery was of minor importance in the Middle Ages. In fact, the practice of slavery continued unabated across the globe throughout the medieval millennium. This volume – the final volume in The Cambridge World History of Slavery – covers the period between the fall of Rome and the rise of the transatlantic plantation complexes by assembling twenty-three original essays, written by scholars acknowledged as leaders in their respective fields. The volume demonstrates the continual and central presence of slavery in societies worldwide between 500 CE and 1420 CE. The essays analyze key concepts in the history of slavery, including gender, trade, empire, state formation and diplomacy, labor, childhood, social status and mobility, cultural attitudes, spectrums of dependency and coercion, and life histories of enslaved people.

It is now almost a cliché to claim that China and the Chinese people have changed. Yet inside the new clothing that is worn by the Chinese man today, Kam Louie contends, we still see much of the historical Chinese man. With contributions from a team of outstanding scholars, Changing Chinese Masculinitiesstudies a range of Chinese men in diverse and, most importantly, Chinese contexts. It explores the fundamental meaning of manhood in the Chinese setting and the very notion of an indigenous Chinese masculinity. In twelve chapters spanning the late imperial period to the present day, Changing Chinese Masculinitiesbrings a much needed historical dimension to the discussion. Key aspects defining the male identity such as family relationships and attitudes toward sex, class, and career are explored in depth. Familiar notions of Chinese manhood come in all shapes and sizes. Concubinage reemerges as the taking of “second wives” in recent decades. Male homoerotic love and male prostitution are shown to have long historical roots. The self-images of the literati and officials form an interesting contrast with those of the contemporary white-collar men. Masculinity and nationalism complement each other in troubling ways. China has indeed changed and is still changing, but most of these social transformations do not indicate a complete break with past beliefs or practices in gender relations. Changing Chinese Masculinities inaugurates the Hong Kong University Press book series “Transnational Asian Masculinities.” “Produced by a group of outstanding scholars, this volume offers important insights into little-known aspects of Chinese masculinity. An indispensable reference for those with an interest in Chinese sexuality, social history, and contemporary Chinese culture.” —Anne McLaren, professor of Chinese studies, University of Melbourne “In this book, scholars of late imperial and contemporary China gather to define and critique masculinity in both periods, explore its complexities, and map continuities and discontinuities. What are the traditional models and to what degree do they still maintain a grip today? Is there a ‘masculinity crisis’ in China, and what does it mean to be a Chinese man today? These are some of the daring topics the authors explore.” —Keith McMahon, professor of Chinese language and literature, University of Kansas

This book is the winner of the 2020 Joseph Levenson Pre-1900 Book Prize, awarded by the Association for Asian Studies. In Song Dynasty Figures of Longing and Desire, Lara Blanchard analyzes images of women in painting and poetry of China’s middle imperial period, focusing on works that represent female figures as preoccupied with romance. She discusses examples of visual and literary culture in regard to their authorship and audience, examining the role of interiority in constructions of gender, exploring the rhetorical functions of romantic images, and considering connections between subjectivity and representation. The paintings in particular have sometimes been interpreted as simple representations of the daily lives of women, or as straightforward artifacts of heteroerotic desire; Blanchard proposes that such works could additionally be interpreted as political allegories, representations of the artist’s or patron’s interiorities, or models of idealized femininity.