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During the past twenty years there has been a burgeoning interest in late Qing and early Republican intellectual history and literature as part of a larger project of rethinking the nature of Chinese modernity. These periods are particularly germane to such concerns because it was during them that Chinese writers were involved in the dual projects of importing ideas from the West and re-interpreting indigenous Chinese texts in response to the various political and economic crises. The edited volume, Different Worlds of Discourse: Transformations of Gender and Genre in Late Qing and Early Republican China, makes a contribution to the field of modern Chinese cultural history by focusing on a somewhat neglected side of late Qing and early Republican studies, namely the intersection of literary imagination and constructions of gender. The essays in this volume cover a wide variety of topics. The editors have divided them into three sections, which are labeled respectively, "Transformations of Gender Roles," "Transformations of Genres," and "The Production of Gender and Genres in New Print Media." With this thoughtful structure, the editors begin with the problem of gender, move to the problem of genres and then, in the third section, showcase five essays that synthesize these two aspects. The editors also provide a helpful introductory essay, in which they highlight some common themes and concerns that pervade the volume. The volume's essays are many and diverse. In this review I will focus on the introduction and certain representative works.
In the introductory chapter, the editors contextualize the various essays in light of the transformations in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century China, mentioning intellectuals who "sought some sort of creative synthesis involving both the past and the present, a synthesis that went beyond the tiyong ... model, assumed diverse forms, and changed over time, frequently in unanticipated ways" (p. 1). Here tiyong of course refers to the Self-Strengthening Movement and the attempt to import Western technology while keeping intact Chinese culture (Confucianism). The editors contend that their volume makes an important breakthrough by focusing on authors who seek a creative synthesis, an argument that suggests an opposition between tradition and modernity and encourages us to see such categories as fluidly existing "in a...