Voicing Gender in China : 4th Conference of the China Academic Network on Gender Colloque

Titled ‘Voicing Gender in China,’ the conference seeks to explore the multiple sites of intersection between voice and gender in Chinese society, past and present.
Within Chinese studies, fruitful articulations between voice and gender studies have drawn from studies of women’s political activism in history and sociology, exploring the ways in which activists and organisers have articulated new political identities in rallying cries and everyday protest. Literary scholars have looked at the shaping of gendered subjectivities through self-narratives and autobiographies, paying close attention to dialogue, orality and the mechanisms of silencing within literary establishments. In recent years, an explosion of sensory histories have explored how gender is enacted and defined through music, opera, dance and song. In parallel, sound studies scholars have brought to life the gendered soundscapes of modern and contemporary China in considering, for instance, the production of socialist state-sponsored music as well as the aural experiences of everyday life. Drawing from these multivocal approaches, this conference seeks to explore ways of rewriting into academic scholarship previously silenced minority voices, paying attention to the affective and political resonances of voicing out gender issues in different spaces, academic and public-facing.
Interdisciplinary at heart, the conference aims to bring together scholars (including doctoral, postdoctoral, early, mid and advanced career researchers) from the humanities and social sciences working on gender and China. We seek proposals that articulate issues of gender in relation to voice broadly construed, in a range of disciplines including but not limited to : gender studies, media studies, cultural studies, film studies, literature, history, sociology, anthropology, queer studies.
During the workshop participants will be encouraged to frame their own work in discussion with other researchers’ papers. They will also have the chance to gain feedback on their research from leading scholars in the field who will act as discussants in each panel session. Outstanding papers will be considered for publication in an edited volume.