Feminism in China: a closer look at Hui muslim communities

Come celebrate International Women's Day with us by learning about the life of the women of the Hui ethnic minority in China!

The Hui are a predominantly Muslim ethnic group in China. Hui people are found throughout the country, though they are concentrated mainly in the Northwestern provinces and the Zhongyuan. China is home to over10.5 million Hui people, the majority of whom are Chinese-speaking practitioners of Islam, though some practice other religions. The Hui people are one of 56 ethnic groups recognized by China. The government defines the Hui people to include all historically Muslim communities not included in China's other ethnic groups. They are unique among the ethnic minorities of China in that they are not associated with a non-Sinitic Language.

Speaker:

Professor Maria H.A. Jaschok (PhD London/SOAS): Most recently Director of the International Gender Studies Centre at Lady Margaret Hall, 2000-2018, she is now semi-retired and currently a Senior Research Associate of the Contemporary China Studies Programme in OSGA, She is also Academic Supervisor, Tutor, and Examiner for the MSt in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, University of Oxford. She has been holding a Visiting Professorship with King’s College, London, 2019-2021, responsible for a collaborative research project-based book publication (which is close to finishing). Her research interests are in the areas of gendered constructions of memory; feminist and aural ethnography; innovative research methodologies and uses of oral history in the writing of women’s history in Asian contexts. She has conducted collaborative research projects in central China since 1994, addressing issues and implications of growing female membership of religions for local citizenship and civil society. Her research interests and topics of investigation have most importantly arisen from her many years of research and life in China, derived from close observations of rapidly (and unevenly) changing moral and political economies, particularly in their gendered manifestations and performances, and from the serendipity of (sometimes fateful) chance encounters and random conversations. Early research and writing focused on kinship, concubinage and domestic servitude in the early twentieth century of a modernizing and industrializing southern China, including the British Colony of Hong Kong, and shifted in the course of time and with change of discursive/research contexts to anthropology of religion (Islam), processes of indigenization under female-led Islamic (but also other religious) institutions and the place and marginality of religious identity in the feminist historiography of China. Long years of close research partnerships and friendships in the field engendered interest in feminist theorizing and ethnographic methodology and led to writing on collaborative modes of cross-cultural research and authorship. She is a member of many international academic and professional organizations, serving on steering committees, editorial and advisory boards, making it her purpose to contribute to the future of Chinese gender studies in academe, at home and abroad. Among her roles: Life Fellow of the Global China Academy, London; Member of the Advisory Editorial Board for Gendering Asiaseries, NIAS, Copenhagen, Denmark; member of the International Advisory Board, Research Center of Translation Studies, China Women's University, Beijing; member of the Editorial Board, Berliner China-Hefte, Chinese History and Society, Berlin, Germany; founder member of the Women’s Initiative on International Affairs in Asia, Hong Kong; co-founder of Women and Gender in Chinese Studies Network (WAGNet) and Women and Gender in Chinese Studies Review, Oxford, UK.

maria.jaschok@area.ox.ac.uk

https://www.ccsp.ox.ac.uk/researchers

Moderator:

Ardita Osmani is a PhD candidate in Political Science at University of Duisburg-Essen and a research assistant at IN-EAST, Institute for East Asian Studies. She also holds a master’s in Language, Economics, and the Institutions of Asia and North Africa at the Ca’ Foscari University of Venice. Ardita lived in Beijing and Nanjing for almost two years, where she mastered her Chinese language. Her research mainly focuses on China’s domestic politics, but she is also passionate about development studies and Climate Change, Sociology, Migration and Environmental Studies.