The Feminist Awakening in China
Friday, March 22nd, 2019
| Date | Time | Location |
|---|---|---|
| Friday, March 22, 2019 | 10:00AM - 12:00PM | Boardroom and Library, 315 Bloor Street West |
Description
On the eve of International Women’s Day in 2015, the Chinese government arrested five feminist activists and jailed them for thirty-seven days. The Feminist Five became a global cause célèbre, with Hillary Clinton speaking out on their behalf and activists inundating social media with #FreetheFive messages. But the Five are only symbols of a much larger feminist movement of university students, labor activists, civil rights lawyers, performance artists, and online warriors prompting an unprecedented awakening among young Chinese women. Through interviews with the Feminist Five and other Chinese activists, Hong Fincher illuminates both the difficulties they face and their “joy of betraying Big Brother,” as one of the Feminist Five wrote of the defiance she felt during her detention. Tracing the rise of a new feminist consciousness now finding expression through the #MeToo movement, Hong Fincher describes how the movement against patriarchy could reconfigure China and the world.
Dr. Leta Hong Fincher is a journalist, scholar and author of Betraying Big Brother: The Feminist Awakening in China (Verso 2018), which was named a best book of 2018 by Vanity Fair, Newsweek and others. She is the first American to receive a Ph.D. from Tsinghua University’s Department of Sociology in Beijing. She also has a master’s degree from Stanford University and a bachelor’s degree with high honors from Harvard University. Her first book was the critically acclaimed Leftover Women: The Resurgence of Gender Inequality in China (Zed 2014).
* Dr. Fincher’s book Betraying Big Brother: The Feminist Awakening in China will be available for purchase at the venue.*
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