Shifting Perspectives Of Women Studies:Chinese Women History In American Academia Since 1960s

Chinese Women Studies in American academia constitutes an important part of China Studies in America. The dissertation will make a study of the historiography of Chinese Women History in American academy. The dissertation takes a view that ever since the 1960s, Chinese Women Studies of American academia has been undergoing tremendous changes. Based on the idea that there are different major issues in different periods, my dissertation will do case studies and analyse classical monographs of each period, in order to get a relatively overall exploration of Chinese Women Studies in American academia. I will analyse the impact that have influenced the Chinese Women Studies in American academia the two influencing elements for which are social change and academic development. Also, I will try to describe the thread of thought, methodology, contribution and limitations of Chinese Women Studies in American academia.The dissertation consists of six chapters excepts the three appendixes.Chapter 1, the Introduction, is to explain the key words which appear frequently in Chinese Women Studies, the motives about why choose the specific topic for my dissertation and the method of the study.Chapter 2, Chinese Women Studies in American academia before the 1960s. This chapter will give an overall look of the American missionaries' perceptions of Chinese Women and American's Women Studies of China.Chapter 3, Chinese Women Studies in American academia in the 1960-70s, the radical period. This chapter will take the monographs such as Women and Family in Rural Taiwan, and Women in Chinese Society as the objects of study. I will point out and demonstrate the research model in the Chinese Women Studies in American academia from social and familial dimensions implied in the works. The research model of the academic field is the "oppression-opposition" model.Chapter 4, Chinese Women Studies under the influence of "China-Centered Concept" in the 1980s. This chapter will take two works Women in China: Current Directions in Historical Scholarship, and Sisters and Strangers: Women in Shanghai Cotton Mills,1919-1949 and three academic papers concerning gender in China as the objects of study, in order to expound and prove the China-Centered perspective shown in the academic fields of China's Ancient Women's History and Modern China's Women Labor History, and in their perceptions of gender in China. Also, I will point out their achievements and limitations.Chapter 5, Gender History in China ever since the 1990s. This chapter will make analysis on a few recently published works including The Inner Quarters:Marriage and Lives of Chinese Women in the Song Period, Teachers of Inner Chambers:Women and Culture in Seventeenth-Century China, Precious Records:Women in China's Long Eighteenth Century, and Dangerous Pleasures:Prostitution and Modernity in Twentieth-Century Shanghai. I will explore how feminist thought and other academic thoughts have influenced the study of gender history in China and how American scholars have used gender as an analysis to do study in Chinese history and the values of gender history.Chapter 6, Conclusion. This part will point out the feature of and the inspiration from the historiography of Chinese Women's studies in American academia.