Queer/Tongzhi China: New Perspectives on Research, Activism and Media Cultures

Edited by Elisabeth L. Engebretsen, William F. Schroeder, with Hongwei Bao

320 pp., Illustrated, 2015

This book brings together some of the most exciting, original and cutting-edge work being conducted on contemporary queer China. The volume includes original essays by some of the most prolific and central queer activists and artists in the PRC, placing their writing alongside work by emergent and established scholars from a variety of disciplines and backgrounds. The book offers unique perspectives by presenting primary accounts of the creative and multi-faceted strategies that activists and community organizers have developed in their various activities.

The volume also presents rich, empirical evidence of everyday queer lives across China, offering a unique record not only of cosmopolitan community and activist perspectives but also of voices and experiences from a broad range of locations and identifications. As a whole it offers invaluable insights into sexual and gender diversity in China today. Queer/Tongzhi China thus breathes as it speaks, providing through its diverse approaches a different understanding of queer China than standard mono-ethnographies or social-scientific documentaries.

Highlights

• First book to address sexual and gender diversity in China from both activist and academic perspectives, and in transnational contexts.
• Creates a broad, rich archive of contemporary writing on queer China by a largely new generation of scholars, activists and artists.
• Offers unique insight into the politics of social activism and community organization among minorities in contemporary mainland China.

About the Editors

Elisabeth L. Engebretsen is Senior Lecturer at the Centre for Gender Research, University of Oslo. Author of Queer Women in Urban China, she has written widely on queer issues in China.

William F. Schroeder is Lecturer in Chinese Studies at the University of Manchester. A sociocultural anthropologist, he researches the relationship between play, affect and belonging in queer Beijing.