The PRC History Review

Volume 2 ★ Number 4 ★ October 2017

PRC History Provocations Series

Tani Barlow, “Jiang Qing, Seriously”

Tani Barlow’s essay is the first in our newest PRC History Review series, “Provocations.”  Joining our research paper and roundtable series, Provocations offers a glimpse at in-progress research that pushes us to reconsider assumptions and established views in the field.  In the inaugural contribution, Barlow challenges us to rethink Jiang Qing as a serious political thinker and actor, while also providing a teaser for her upcoming book, In the Event of Women (Duke University Press, 2018).  The book examines a remarkably varied array of sources—ranging from commercial ephemera to revolutionary socialist philosophy—to trace the emergence in the Chinese political and intellectual vernacular of a biologically marked category called “women.”