ERIC Number: ED531606
Record Type: Non-Journal
Publication Date: 2009
Pages: 272
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: ISBN-978-1-1095-8106-5
ISSN: N/A
EISSN: N/A
Representing Divorce, Reforming Interiority: Narratives of Gender, Class and Family in Post-Reform Chinese Literature and Culture
Xiao, Hui
ProQuest LLC, Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
This project stands at the juncture of modern Chinese literature, post-socialist studies, cultural history of divorce, and critical studies about global middle-class cultures. Employing analytical tools mainly from literary studies, cultural studies and feminist theories, I examine stories, novels, films and TV dramas about divorce produced between 1980 and 2004, in the wake of China's "economic reform and opening up" as well as the post-Reform China's changing divorce scene. Investigating the transforming intersections of gender, family, and class, I argue that divorce is not simply represented as the disintegration of a conjugal family. Rather, divorce is represented more of a projection of the ongoing reconfiguration of Chinese family structure in alignment with the localization of a global middle-class culture, a intimate imagination of which has been circulated through imported films, TV dramas, domestic fiction, interior design magazines and so on. In other words, divorce representations play a key role in projecting and channeling the desire and fantasy of a middle-class domestic culture and in remapping a harmonious and self-contained domestic and psychic interior cut off from both the revolutionary past and the marketplace. Tackling rampant gender-related social problems in contemporary Chinese society, my research also seeks to address the predicaments that divorced women are confronted with in the process of actively negotiating their self-value and gender identity. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://bibliotheek.ehb.be:2222/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]
Descriptors: Divorce, Foreign Countries, Television, Films, Novels, Social Class, Gender Issues, Social Attitudes, Family (Sociological Unit), Literature, Cultural Influences, Social Studies, Feminism, Social Theories, Economic Development, Middle Class, World History, Social Change, Gender Bias, Social Bias
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Publication Type: Dissertations/Theses - Doctoral Dissertations
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers - Location: China
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A