A. READ “Translating Homosexuality: The Discourse of Tongxing ai in Republican China,” in Sang, Deborah Tze-lan, Emerging Lesbian: Female Same-Sex Desire in Modern China, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003: 99-126.
Answer the following questions: Some scholars have suggested that China imported Western psychological ideas wholesale, for example Western attitudes about sexuality. What does Sang think? What are some examples of intellectual debate about sexuality that Sang gives? Who was Zhang Jingsheng, aka. “Dr. Sex”? What did he translate and whom did it impact? Who was Pan Guangdan? What was a “Republican Era” view of homosexuality?
B. READ “Tragic Romance: The Going-In Story,” Fran Martin, Backward Glances: Contemporary Chinese Cultures and the Female Homoerotic Imaginary, Durham: Duke University Press, 2010: 29-48.
Answer the following questions: What are some key features of the “schoolgirl romances” that Martin describes? Would you say that the schoolgirl romances are conservative or progressive in general, according to Martin’s reading? What does Martin mean when she mentions the “universalizing model of the temporary schoolgirl lover” and “the minoritizing understanding of the lifelong tomboy” (48)?
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