"After Nora Walks Out": The Struggles and the Future of Chinese Feminism

In 1923, in his famous feminist speech “What Happens After Nora Walks Out”, influential Chinese writer Lu Xun, raises his concerns about the future and the impasses of women who have awakened with a gender consciousness in a society that is not ready for their emancipation. After almost one hundred years, the theme of his speech seems still relevant to the gender issues and feminism in China today. Although China’s female labor force participation rate is among the highest in the world, the systematic discrimination against women in households and workplaces is still prevalent. In the meantime, since 2020, various feminist debates and online movements have emerged and spread fast on Chinese social media. In this process, Chinese feminists have developed a new frame of indigenous feminist discourse “with Chinese characteristics” and proposed new goals and agendas different from the mainstream Western ones, such as the movement to pass mothers’ last names to their children, as well as rejecting women’s “beauty duty”.

In this context, this interdisciplinary conference intends to invite both scholars of Chinese feminism and Chinese feminist activists to consider the challenges and struggles of Chinese feminism today, as well as to envision the future of Chinese feminism, amid the heightened political and economic uncertainty in China and the world. We welcome papers that reflect and discuss Chinese feminism and/or any women and gender topics in China, from various perspectives and disciplines. In addition, the conference welcomes feminist activists to participate in a special panel on Chinese feminist activism.

Conference Schedule

March 4, 2023

Wolff Conference Room (D1103, 11th floor)

6 E. 16th St. New York City, NY 10003

10:30-10:40 Welcoming Remarks

10:45-12:00 “Feminist Activism” Panel

Tianyuan Deng, PhD candidate, Institute of Fine Arts, NYU

“A Political Awakening is Feminist, and a Feminist Awakening is Political”

Lava, NC-based Student Organizer, Co-founder of Chinese Artists and Organizers Collective        

“Reimagining Intimacy and Proximity in Chinese Queer Feminist Relational Organizing”

Feifei, Co-founder of NZZY

               “Creativity and Narratives as Tools of Resistance for Chinese Feminist Community”

Xiaowen Liang, Chinese feminist organizer, lawyer

"Feminist Organizing in Diaspora"

12:00-1:00 Lunch Break

1:00-2:00 “Media, Digital Discourse, and Cyber-Feminism” Panel

Discussant: Ying Qian, Associate Professor, East Asian Languages and Cultures, Columbia University

Zoe Meng Jiang, PhD candidate, Cinema Studies, NYU

               “The DV Gaze before the Selfie Age:  On Yang Mingming’s Female Directors (2012)”

Eva Liu, PhD student in Mass Communication, School of Media Arts and Studies, Ohio University

               “Women Can(not) Have it All in Academia”: Neoliberal Feminism and Female PhD Digital Influencers in China

Thelma Wang, PhD student in History, Anthropology, and STS, MIT

               “Bad Sperm and Womb Ethics: The Politics of Biological Nature and The Framing of Maternal Rights in Chinese Cyber-Feminism”

2:00-2:20 Coffee Break

2:20-3:40 “Motherhood, Social Reproduction, and Socialist Feminism” Panel

 Discussant: Jack Jin Gary Lee, Assistant Professor of Sociology, The New School for Social Research

Jieming Zhu, MA student in East Asian Languages and Cultures, Columbia University

               “Walk Out of the Family: Translating Family Abolition in China’s Marxist-Feminist Encounters”

Jingyi Guo, PhD Student in Mass Communications, Donald P. Bellisario College of Communications, The Pennsylvania State University

               “Dataveillance through Caring for Children: Motherhood, Kids’ Smartwatches, and Everyday Surveillance in China”

Xiang He, Ph.D.& Adjunct Assistant Professor, East Asian Studies, New York University

               “Becoming Animal, Becoming Human, Becoming the Collective: Representation of Childbirth in Modern Chinese Literature and Film”

Zhaorui Lu, PhD student in History, University of California, Irvine

               “Choosing Motherhood: The National Congress of Women in 1978 as a Historical Inflection Point”

3:40-4:00 Coffee Break

4:00-5:00 Keynote

                   Tani Barlow, George & Nancy Rupp Professor of Humanities, Rice University

5:00-5:30 Concluding Conversation