You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
Gendered Bodies introduces readers to women's visual art in contemporary China by examining how the visual process of gendering reshapes understandings of historiography, sexuality, pain, and space. When artists take the body as the subject of female experience and the medium of aesthetic experiment, they reveal a wealth of noncanonical approaches to art. The insertion of women's narratives into Chinese art history rewrites a historiography that has denied legitimacy to the woman artist. The gendering of sexuality reveals that the female body incites pleasure in women themselves, reversing the dynamic from woman as desired object to woman as desiring subject. The gendering of pain demonstrat...
"Women Through the Lens will appeal to scholars and students in the fields of film, gender, and Asian studies, and to general readers interested in Chinese cinema."--Jacket.
Here is a convincing reflection that changes our understanding of gender in Maoist culture, esp. for what critics from the 1990s onwards have termed its erasure of gender and sexuality. In particular the strong heroines of the yangbanxi, or model works which dominated the Cultural Revolution period, have been seen as genderless revolutionaries whose images were damaging to women. Drawing on contemporary theories ranging from literary and cultural studies to sociology, this book challenges that established view through detailed semiotic analysis of theatrical systems of the yangbanxi including costume, props, kinesics, and various audio and linguistic systems. Acknowledging the complex interplay of traditional, modern, Chinese and foreign gender ideologies as manifest in the 'model works', it fundamentally changes our insights into gender in Maoist culture.
This groundbreaking book presents a critical introduction to the cultural and political dimensions of contemporary Chinese cinema. Leading Western and Chinese scholars trace the changing dynamics of Chinese film culture since the early 1990s as it moves away from underground and toward independence in the new century. Yet as the rich case studies illustrate, the sheer variety of alternative film culture itself provides sufficient opportunities for different--at times contradictory--configurations of cinematic products. Drawing on vigorous interdisciplinary scholarship, the book investigates the objects of its study from various methodological perspectives, ranging from historical and literar...
Serialized television drama (dianshiju), perhaps the most popular and influential cultural form in China over the past three decades, offers a wide and penetrating look at the tensions and contradictions of the post-revolutionary and pro-market period. Zhong Xueping’s timely new work draws attention to the multiple cultural and historical legacies that coexist and challenge each other within this dominant form of story telling. Although scholars tend to focus their attention on elite cultural trends and avant garde movements in literature and film, Zhong argues for recognizing the complexity of dianshiju’s melodramatic mode and its various subgenres, in effect "refocusing" mainstream Chi...
This book explores the work and careers of women, trans, and third-gender artists engaged in political activism. While some artists negotiated their own political status in their indigenous communities, others responded to global issues of military dictatorship, racial discrimination, or masculine privilege in regions other than their own. Women, trans, and third-gender artists continue to highlight and challenge the disturbing legacies of colonialism, imperialism, capitalism, communism, and other political ideologies that are correlated with patriarchy, primogeniture, sexism, or misogyny. The book argues that solidarity among such artists remains valuable and empowering for those who still seek legitimate recognition in art schools, cultural institutions, and the history curriculum.
Since the early 1990s, while mainland China’s state-owned movie studios have struggled with financial and ideological constraints, an exciting alternative cinema has developed. Dubbed the “Urban Generation,” this new cinema is driven by young filmmakers who emerged in the shadow of the events at Tiananmen Square in 1989. What unites diverse directors under the “Urban Generation” rubric is their creative engagement with the wrenching economic and social transformations underway in China. Urban Generation filmmakers are vanguard interpreters of the confusion and anxiety triggered by the massive urbanization of contemporary China. This collection brings together some of the most recen...
Beginning first as a case study of Feng Xiaogang, this book explores Chinese film history since the early 1990s in terms of changes of the Communist Party's film policy, industry reforms, the official promotion of Main Melody films and the emergence and growth of popular cinema. The image of Feng that will emerge in this book is of a filmmaker working under political and economic pressures in a post-socialist state while still striving to create works with a personal socio-political agenda. In keeping with this reality, this book approaches Feng as a special kind of film auteur whose works must be interpreted with attention to the specific social and political context of contemporary China. The book will be a useful reference tool for students and scholars in the fields of Chinese studies, Chinese film history and film studies. It could also be used as textbook for classes about Asian cinema, international cinema and Chinese culture/film studies. The extensive use of data about the Chinese film market, and elaborate analysis of the situation of Chinese film industry make this book a valuable volume for classroom and personal use.
Regarding revolution as a spatial practice, this book explores modes of spatial construction in modern China through a panoramic overview of major Chinese revolutionary events and nuanced analysis of cultural representations. Examining the relationship between revolution, space, and culture in modern China the author takes five spatially significant revolutionary events as case studies - the territorial dispute between Russia and the Qing dynasty in 1892, the Land Reform in the 1920s, the Long March (1934-36), the mainland-Taiwan split in 1949, and the Cultural Revolution (1966-76) - and analyses how revolution constructs, conceives, and transforms space. Using materials associated with thes...
Fifty Contemporary Film Directors examines the work of some of today’s most popular and influential cinematic figures. It provides an accessible overview of each director’s contribution to cinema, incorporating a discussion of their career, major works and impact. Revised throughout and with twelve new entries, this second edition is an up-to-date introduction to some of the most prominent film makers of the present day. The directors, from differing backgrounds and working across a range of genres, include: Martin Scorsese Steven Spielberg Sofia Coppola Julie Dash Shane Meadow Michael Moore Peter Jackson Guillermo Del Toro Tim Burton Jackie Chan Ang Lee Pedro Almodóvar. With further reading and a filmography accompanying each entry, this comprehensive guide is indispensable to all those studying contemporary film and will appeal to anyone interested in the key individuals behind modern cinema’s greatest achievements.