Women Through the Lens: gender and nation in a century of Chinese cinema

Women Through the Lens raises the question of how gender, especially the image of woman, acts as a visual and discursive sign in the creation of the nation-state in twentieth-century China. Tracing the history of Chinese cinema through the last hundred years from the perspective of transnational feminism, Shuqin Cui reveals how women have been granted a “privileged visibility” on screen while being denied discursive positions as subjects. In addition, her careful attention to the visual language system of cinema shows how “woman” has served as the site for the narration of nation in the context of China’s changing social and political climate.