Table of Contents

Acknowledgments  ix
Introduction to the Event  1
1. Conditions of Thinking  19
2. Foundational Chinese Sociology  71
3. Vernacular Sociology  100
4. The Social Life of Commercial Ephemera  123
5. Nakedness and Interiority  162
6. Wang Guangmei's Qipao  191
Conclusion  220
Notes  231
Bibliography  259
Index  283

About the Author

Tani Barlow is George and Nancy Rupp Professor of Humanities and Professor of History at Rice University and the founding senior editor of positions: asia critique. She is the author and editor of many books and journal issues, including The Question of Women in Chinese Feminism, The Modern Girl around the World, and New Asian Marxisms, all also published by Duke University Press.

Reviews

“This book presents a glorious rethinking of the historical and theoretical relation established between ‘women’ and social ‘truth’ as a universal but also specifically Chinese ‘event’ of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Tani Barlow dissects complexity with forensic precision. In exceptionally clear exposition, she invites us to account for our present through a rigorous analysis of concepts, histories, and the theories of human and female life spun therefrom. Illuminating and essential.” - Rebecca E. Karl, Professor of History, New York University “Shifting critical focus from area studies and nation, this alluringly erudite book theorizes capital and intellectual history to recenter modern China on the event of women. Tani Barlow positions her delightful reading of hundreds of gendered advertising images as harbingers of Chinese twentieth-century cultural life while reviving exciting Chinese traditions of feminist sociology and political thought. A provocative and creative study, In the Event of Women brings previous approaches to sinology into destabilizing dialogue with broader debates in intellectual history, visual studies, and feminism.” - Timothy Murray, Professor of Comparative Literature and Literatures in English, Cornell University “Barlow’s most recent masterpiece once again shakes our historical assumptions and forces us as researchers, scholarly teachers, and feminist activists to rethink how we define ‘woman’ beyond bounded categories such as nation, state, or even gender.”
  - Valerie Barske (Resources for Gender and Women's Studies) “I encourage scholars in gender and historical studies to step out of their comfort zone and explore this fascinating book.” - Ying Zhang (Pacific Affairs)