| This dissertation examines how the (re)construction of America's national identity during a time of empire came to influence the subjectivity of American women working for America's civilizing mission overseas. From the beginning of the twentieth century, the new generation of college-educated American women moved beyond the domestic sphere and sought to become historical agents for modern progress by taking up missionary careers in education and sailing for the less advanced countries. Many of these women went to China---America's largest mission field in the early twentieth century---and established women's colleges, medical and nursing schools, and the YWCA for the purpose of creating "New Women" like themselves. In order to provide a raison d'etre for their projects, they forged identities as preachers of American civilization through dominant discourses in America relating to social evolution, American exceptionalism, science, liberal Christianity, and internationalism. By doing so, as this dissertation shows, their educational enterprises and their subjectivity were implicated in the project and ideology of American imperialism.;Before setting sail, most of these American women thought that China was a virgin land awaiting their touch. Yet, they soon discovered that the concept and the term of the New Woman (xin nuxing) had already made its way onto Chinese soil. For non-Western countries like China, the New Woman was a significant element in the drive toward modernization and, by absorbing and vernacularizing Western knowledge and ideas, Chinese intellectuals, students, and revolutionaries sought to strengthen their country to thwart encroaching imperial powers. These attempts reflected the fact that China was trying to narrow the gap in level of civilization between the West and the non-West. As a result, discourses such as social Darwinism could be found on both sides of the Pacific Ocean so that both China and America began to change the ways they viewed and dealt with one another. Ultimately, the American women came to be criticized as imperialists and feudal masters and their projects came up against many obstacles. The dissertation shows that the American women's enterprises and subjectivity were contingent upon China's changing situation and that America's national identity was also interdependent with nations such as China. |
