Masculinity in Imperial China

3 Credits · Level: Graduate, Undergraduate

Do every time you think about gender, you think about women or sexual minorities? This seminar guides you through the history of gender from the perspective of “heterosexual” men in imperial China. Asking what it meant to be a man, it delves into the dynamics within which men articulated their manhood, asserting the gendered characteristics, and negotiating their masculinities with their fellow men and others. The course comprises two distinct but interacted themes, “Hegemonic Masculinity and its Crisis” and “Sex(es),” through which we explore the influence (or the lack thereof) of Confucianism, social class and biological sexes, penetration in sexual intercourse, non-heterosexuality, as well as the masculinity crisis posed by colonialism that still haunts.