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OverviewThe history of footbinding is full of contradictions and unexpected turns. The practice originated in the dance culture of China's medieval court and spread to gentry families, brothels, maid's quarters, and peasant households. Conventional views of footbinding as patriarchal oppression often neglect its complex history and the incentives of the women involved. This revisionist history, elegantly written and meticulously researched, presents a fascinating new picture of the practice from its beginnings in the tenth century to its demise in the twentieth century. Neither condemning nor defending foot-binding, Dorothy Ko debunks many myths and misconceptions about its origins, development, and eventual end, exploring in the process the entanglements of male power and female desires during the practice's thousand-year history. Cinderella's Sisters argues that rather than stemming from sexual perversion, men's desire for bound feet was connected to larger concerns such as cultural nostalgia, regional rivalries, and claims of male privilege. Nor were women hapless victims, the author contends. Ko describes how women-those who could afford it-bound their own and their daughters' feet to signal their high status and self-respect. Femininity, like the binding of feet, was associated with bodily labor and domestic work, and properly bound feet and beautifully made shoes both required exquisite skills and technical knowledge passed from generation to generation. Throughout her narrative, Ko deftly wields methods of social history, literary criticism, material culture studies, and the history of the body and fashion to illustrate how a practice that began as embodied lyricism-as a way to live as the poets imagined-ended up being an exercise in excess and folly. Full Product DetailsAuthor: Dorothy KoPublisher: University of California Press Imprint: University of California Press Dimensions: Width: 15.20cm , Height: 2.50cm , Length: 22.90cm Weight: 0.544kg ISBN: 9780520253902ISBN 10: 0520253906 Pages: 360 Publication Date: 17 December 2007 Audience: Professional and scholarly , Professional & Vocational Format: Paperback Publisher's Status: Active Availability: In stock  We have confirmation that this item is in stock with the supplier. It will be ordered in for you and dispatched immediately. Table of ContentsList of Illustrations Acknowledgments Notes on Conventions List of Abbreviations Introduction PART I: THE BODY EXPOSED 1. Gigantic Histories of the Nation in the Globe: The Rhetoric of Tianzu, 1880s--1910s 2. The Body Inside Out: The Practice of Fangzu, 1900s--1930s 3. The Bound Foot as Antique: Connoisseurship in an Age of Disavowal, 1930s--1941 PART II: THE BODY CONCEALED 4. From Ancient Texts to Current Customs: In Search of Footbinding's Origins 5. The Erotics of Place: Male Desires and the Imaginary Geography of the Northwest 6. Cinderella's Dreams: The Burden and Uses of the Female Body Epilogue Notes Glossary Works Cited IndexReviewsAuthor InformationDorothy Ko is Professor of History at Barnard College, Columbia University. She is the author of Every Step a Lotus: Shoes for Bound Feet (California, 2001) and Teachers of the Inner Chambers: Women and Culture in Seventeenth-Century China (1994). She is coeditor of Women and Confucian Cultures in Premodern China, Korea, and Japan (California, 2003). Tab Content 6Author Website:Countries AvailableAll regions |
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