Updating Basket....

Sign In
0 Items

BASKET SUMMARY

There are currently no items added to the basket
Sign In
0 Items

BASKET SUMMARY

There are currently no items added to the basket

Beijing Young Women’s Christian Association, 1927–1937

Materializing a Gendered Modernity

Beijing Young Women’s Christian Association, 1927–1937

Materializing a Gendered Modernity

This item is available to order.
Please allow 2-3 weeks for delivery.

Hardback

£81.00

Publisher: Lexington Books
ISBN: 9781793608147
Number of Pages: 202
Published: 15/10/2021
Width: 14.9 cm
Height: 19.4 cm

By exploring the interplay among gender, religion, and modernity, this book exposes the part Chinese Christian women played in China’s quest for a strong nation in general and in Republican Beijing’s modern transformation in particular. Focusing on the Beijing Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA), the author examines how the Association, guided by the Christian tenet “to serve, not to be served,” tailored its Western models and devised new programs to meet the city’s demands. Its enterprises ranged from providing women- and child-oriented facilities to promoting constructive recreational activities and from reforming home and family to improving public health. Through an analysis of these endeavors, the author argues that the Chinese YW women's contribution to the city's modernity was a creative embodiment of the then socially targeted missionary movement known as the Social Gospel. In the process, they demonstrated their distinctive new ideals of womanhood featuring practicality, social service, and broad cooperation. These qualities set them apart from both traditional women and other brands of the New Woman. While criticized as trivial, their efforts, however, pioneered modern social service in China and complemented what municipal authorities and other progressive groups undertook to modernize the city.

List of Figures

List of Tables

Introduction

Chapter One: Revisiting the New Woman: Bringing Christian Women into Discussion

Chapter Two: Materializing the Christian Faith

Chapter Three: Sponsoring Constructive Recreation and Launching Reforms in the Domestic Sphere

Chapter Four: Allying for Diverse Modernization Experiments and Extensive Outreach

Conclusion

Epilogue

Index

Bibliography

About the Author

Aihua Zhang

Aihua Zhang is assistant professor in history at the Gardner–Webb University.

Friends Scheme

Our online book club offers discounts on hundreds of titles...