On May 16-17 FSI will be co-sponsoring a conference with the Department of History and the Center for East Asian Studies on Same-Sex Desire and Union in China: Interdisciplinary and Historical Perspectives.

OVERVIEW

Same-sex desire and union are themes of basic importance to multiple fields of Chinese studies, notably Ming-Qing literature, but also history, anthropology, and contemporary cultural and political studies. After long occlusion by mainstream scholarship, these themes have recently become a central focus for a growing number of international scholars. In a complementary development, queer activism and cultural production are highly visible features of the increasingly robust civil societies that have emerged in the People’s Republic of China (PRC), Taiwan, and Hong Kong over the past decade or two. The following is a brief overview of just a few of the questions and challenges that scholars face today.

A rich body of homoerotic literature survives from Late Imperial China (especially the 17th-19th centuries), but much of this material has been neglected until very recently (in part because censorship by successive political regimes made once famous works obscure and hard to find). Indeed, a prominent part of elite male discourse and lifestyle was a homoerotic sensibility that focused in part on cross-dressing boy actors as objects of aesthetic idealization and sexual desire. By the eighteenth century, as commercial opera in Beijing achieved its mature form, to consort with boy actors had become a fashionable (if controversial) status symbol for elite men, and a high-class homosexual brothel/escort scene flourished in close connection with the theater. This world is richly documented in the drama, vernacular fiction, and literati jottings of the era, and it is now a rising priority for literary scholars and historians. But we have barely scratched the surface of this material, and mainstream scholarship has hardly begun to take account of its implications. A handful of scholars have also begun to explore drama and verse written by women, which contain many homoerotic themes; but this exciting body of texts remains largely unknown to the wider field of Chinese literature.

During the same era, a skewed sex ratio and shortage of wives among the poor meant that increasing numbers of marginalized males lived outside the normative family system. In that context, same-sex union (often framed by chosen kinship forms such as ganqin adoption or sworn brotherhood) was the dominant mode of alliance, although there is also evidence of widespread wife-sharing and other non-normative family forms. Although organized according to age hierarchy, such same-sex unions appear to have been far more symmetrical and consensual than anything found in the elite homoerotic scene. Judicial anxiety focused on the security threat supposedly posed by this growing underclass of marginal males, who were stereotyped as sexual predators threatening the women and adolescent boys of established families; legal prohibitions of male-male sodomy (fully developed in the eighteenth century) focused on suppressing this threat. As a result of these prohibitions, China’s vast legal archives from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries contain masses of evidence about male same-sex relations that scholars have only just begun to investigate.

At the same time, there is considerable evidence in legal sources that male same-sex relations were also widespread within settled peasant communities. A common – if seldom openly acknowledged – pattern was for a young male, in the years leading up to marriage, to play the penetrated role in a sexual relationship with an older man. The penetrated role was stigmatized, but it was also understandable and largely tolerated as a stage of the maturation process on the path to full social adulthood, which came with marriage. This way of understanding and experiencing same-sex relations has much in common with practice in other premodern societies, but it seems radically different from the modern egalitarian template of sexual orientation.

The fall of the empire in 1912 ushered in a new era in which anxious elites promoted a Westernized vision of modernity in order to resist and catch up with the developed imperialist powers. A notable feature of this vision was a re-imagination of same-sex desire in terms of the newly imported concept of “homosexuality,” which implied pathology. This modernity involved the active suppression of longstanding forms of elite self-expression (for example, patronage of cross-dressing actors), but also the emergence of new images and self-conscious identities (for example, the concept of the lesbian as a social figure). Something similar happened in Japan and many other parts of the world during roughly the same era. This transformational process continues in China to this day; questions of identity and social role, in particular, remain open and fluid. A key issue now, in our era of accelerated globalization, is the ways in which imported concepts and vocabulary will articulate with locally emerging forms of identity, politics, and cultural expression.

The contemporary queer scene in “Greater China” (including the PRC, Hong Kong, and Taiwan) serves as a revealing barometer of wider political and social change. In Taiwan since the end of martial law (1987), queer politics and culture have become among the most striking and visible dimensions of a new democratic society. In a less open but no less dramatic way, the PRC in the post-Mao era (since 1978) has also witnessed an efflorescence of queer associations, social life, and cultural production. In cities like Beijing, such activity takes place within a broad, ambiguous grey area that enjoys no legal protection, but in practice is often tolerated by authorities. The underground film scene is especially lively. In both Taiwan and the PRC, queer life is a prominent feature of the fledgling civil societies that have emerged with the demise of more repressive political regimes.

The contemporary Chinese queer scene is characterized by a vital transnational cross-fertilization that takes in Western countries and overseas Chinese as well – for example, some of the key activists in Taiwan, Hong Kong and the PRC have spent long stints in North America, Australia, or Europe for education or work, and in that setting have been able to network with Western activists and scholars, and with other Chinese living abroad. By the same token, the study of homosexuality in Chinese history and culture (like the broader field of Chinese studies) has become an increasingly transnational enterprise, involving scholars in all parts of Greater China, together with North Americans, Australians, and Europeans, as well as Chinese expatriates who teach on foreign campuses.

The purpose of this two-day conference is to bring people together for a conversation across boundaries of discipline, period, and geography. Scholars in separate fields (and locations) have conducted enough work by now that we are reaching something like a critical mass. But so far, most of us have focused on our own narrow disciplines and topics of research – and at this point, we would all benefit from cross-fertilization and synthesis. What bigger picture emerges when we cast our separate findings in historical and interdisciplinary light? How do historical and comparative perspectives help to illuminate contemporary developments?

The conference will consist of five panels of speakers (three per panel), followed by a round table discussion among four prominent scholars (two historians and two literature specialists) from outside the field of Chinese studies, to highlight comparative and theoretical issues that have emerged from the conference papers. If, as I expect, the event is a success, I hope to edit a conference volume for publication.

The conference is free and open to the public.

"These projects have great potential to advance academic knowledge, social capital and human development around the world, and to create a healthier, more promising future for hundreds of millions of people," President John Hennessy said. "When we launched The Stanford Challenge, we committed to marshal university resources to address the great challenges of the 21st century in human health, the environment and international affairs, and it is gratifying to see the response from our remarkable faculty."

The 2008 projects and their principal investigators follow:

Enhancing Health Security Through Infrastructure and Behavioral Intervention: Water, Sanitation and Child Survival in Africa. Alexandria Boehm and Jenna Davis, Civil and Environmental Engineering; Abby King, Health Research and Policy and Medicine; Gary Schoolnik, Medicine and Microbiology and Immunology. The project seeks to improve the health and well-being of the 1.2 billion people in low-income countries who lack access to clean water and the 2.6 billion who lack access to sanitation services, with a focus on mortality reduction in children. It will be carried out in sub-Saharan Africa, where the toll of water- and sanitation-related illness on health is severe, and will investigate the extent to which information and education about water and sanitation at the household level motivates behavior changes that result in reduced morbidity. Results will inform international efforts to design and implement effective water supply and sanitation interventions for more than 400 million Africans currently lacking access.

Why Are Indian Firms Poorly Managed? A Survey and Randomized Field Intervention. Nicholas Bloom and Aprajit Mahajan, Economics; Thomas C. Heller and Erik Jensen, Law School; John Roberts, Graduate School of Business. The biggest single reduction in poverty in the history of mankind was achieved by the industrialization of China since 1978, which lifted almost 500 million people out of poverty. India has not experienced this level of poverty reduction because its manufacturing firms have not achieved the productivity gains seen in China. Recent evidence suggests one key factor is the poor management practices adopted by Indian firms. This project examines why poor management practices persist in India and are much more common there. It focuses in particular on evaluating the relative importance of informational, legal and development barriers. The project will undertake a field survey of Indian firms to evaluate their knowledge of modern management techniques and a field intervention aimed at upgrading management practices in a randomized sample of Indian firms, comparing their progress to a control group of untouched firms.

Courts, Politics and Human Rights. Joshua Cohen, Philosophy, Political Science, and Law School; Terry L. Karl, Political Science; Jenny S. Martinez, Law School; Helen Stacy, Law School. This project examines the role of courts as the centerpiece of strategies for promoting human rights by asking if courts should be a preferred human rights venue or if there are other more accessible and effective ways to secure human rights. It addresses three broad themes: the interplay between national, regional and international courts in the protection of human rights; the role of governments and nongovernmental organizations in influencing legal proceedings; and how courts construct historical truth and shape public opinion, memory, attitudes and discourse about human-rights abuses. The multidisciplinary project will span countries, regions, issue areas and historical timeframes to ask what reasonably can be expected from international, regional and domestic courts in safeguarding human rights.

The Middle East and the World Economy. Matthew Harding, Economics; Lisa Blaydes, Political Science. This project examines why the Middle East has lagged in economic progress compared to much of the developing world and the implications of this underdevelopment for two overarching trends in Middle Eastern politics today: authoritarian government and Islamic fundamentalism. The researchers also will examine how political instability originating in the Middle East has affected world oil prices and world markets by constructing economic models of the world economy. The project seeks broadly to understand the macro- and microeconomic determinants of Islamic fundamentalism and authoritarian rule, and the extent to which these two outcomes have affected the stability and prosperity of the world economy. It measures global factors resulting from increased globalization and quantifies their impact on the development of economies in the Middle East.

The $3 million Presidential Fund for Innovation in International Studies was first established in 2005 by the Office of the President and the Stanford International Initiative to support new cross-campus, interdisciplinary research and teaching among Stanford's seven schools on three overarching global challenges: pursuing peace and security, reforming and improving governance at all levels of society, and advancing human well-being.

The first $1 million in interdisciplinary grants was awarded in February 2006; the second round of grants was awarded in February 2007.

"In all three rounds of funding, it has been heartening to see the imaginative and innovative ways that Stanford faculty are combining intellectual forces across disciplines to tackle some of the most pressing and persistent problems of our day," said Coit D. Blacker, chair of the International Initiative Executive Committee and director of Stanford's Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. "It is especially gratifying to see the younger faculty competing for these grants, eager to generate new knowledge and new solutions and help train a new generation of leaders."

Priority in funding has been given to teams of faculty who do not typically work together, who represent multiple disciplines and who address issues falling broadly within the three central research areas of the Stanford International Initiative. Projects are to be based on collaborative research and teaching involving faculty from two or more disciplines and, where possible, from two or more of the university's seven schools.

Full video of the Google.org course on poverty and development that Program on Global Justice Director Joshua Cohen moderated from September to November 2007 is now available online at YouTube.com.

The 10-week course, which focused on understanding poverty and development at the global, national, local, and personal levels, was the first of three courses on Google.org's main areas of philanthropic activity--Global Development, Global Health, and Climate Change.

The course on global poverty and development met once a week from Sep. 12 to Nov. 14, 2007 at Google headquarters. Each two-hour session featured guest speakers on development-related issues such as education and health, equitable financial markets, globalization, and population mobility. On Oct. 3, Rosamond L. Naylor, director of the Center on Food Security and the Environment (FSE) at FSI Stanford, co-taught a session on productive agriculture for the 21st century with Frank Rijsberman, Google.org director of water and climate adaptation issues.

Google.org is the philanthropic arm of Google and the umbrella for its commitment to devote employee time and one percent of Google's profits and equity toward philanthropy.

Course videos