This talk investigates the rhetoric of sisterhood in “Ling Long,” a Shanghai-based women’s magazine run during the socio-culturally transformative period between 1931 and 1937. Treating the discursive politics and practices around sisterhood as an anchor point at the conjuncture of feminism, nationalism, and semi-colonial cosmopolitanism, Zhu argues that the feminized status of this popular journal, ironically, facilitated its role as a production site of contested knowledge and multi-layered identities in the construction of a female-centered public sphere, which sufficiently complicated, if not challenged, the dominant male-centered rhetoric of revolution, nation-building, and modernization.

Yun Zhu is a specialist in Chinese and Asian Studies and teaches Chinese language, literature, film, and culture.