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LRCCS Noon Lecture Series | Revolutionary Embodiments: Gender and Genre in Xie Bingying’s War Diary and Autobiography of a Woman Soldier

Dr. Anup Grewal, Assistant Professor, Department of Historical and Cultural Studies, University of Toronto, Scarborough
Tuesday, October 4, 2016
12:00-1:00 PM
Room 1636 School of Social Work Building Map
One of the most popular stories of the Chinese “Revolutionary Noras” of the late 1920s to 1940s is that of Hunanese social activist and writer Xie Bingying, in her series of autobiographical texts presenting herself as a “woman soldier.” From her initial series of dispatches for the Wuhan Central Daily News describing her experience on the battlefront during the last months of the Northern Expedition in 1927, which were later published as "War Diary," to her multiply revised and internationally acclaimed life story, "Autobiography of a Woman Soldier," to the War of Resistance period "New War Diary," the epithet “women soldier” became part of her public persona and her continued popular appeal as a new type of woman writer. I ask how we can understand the identification “woman soldier” in Xie’s autobiographical texts as a particular intervention into both the construction of revolutionary womanhood and the category of “women’s literature” in the late-Republican period in China.

Anup Grewal is an assistant professor in the Department of Historical and Cultural Studies at the University of Toronto Scarborough and the Tri-Campus Graduate Department of History at the University of Toronto. She is currently working on a book manuscript entitled, “A Revolutionary Women’s Culture: Rewriting Femininity and Women’s Experience in China, 1926-1949.” Dr. Grewal received her PhD in East Asian Languages and Civilizations from the University of Chicago in 2012. She has previously held positions as a postdoctoral fellow in the Asian Modernities and Traditions Profile Area at Leiden University, and as Lecturer in Chinese and Comparative Literature at King’s College London. Her research interests include modern and contemporary Chinese cultural history, literature, film, and gender studies. Dr. Grewal’s published work has appeared in "Modern Chinese Literature and Culture," "Comparative Literature and Culture," and "The Journal of Chinese Cinemas."
Building: School of Social Work Building
Event Type: Lecture / Discussion
Tags: Asia
Source: Happening @ Michigan from Lieberthal-Rogel Center for Chinese Studies, International Institute, Asian Languages and Cultures