CSWS Newsletter

Contents:

1. CSWS's Anniversary Conference is around the cornor!
2. Reflections on Chengdu Workshop
3. Works by Members - Hot from the Press
4. CSWS and Zhejiang Xuekan (Zhejiang Academic Journal): Call for Papers
5. Letters from Members

1. CSWS's Anniversary Conference is around the cornor!
Thanks to the hard work of the Conference Committee, the CSWS anniversary conference will be held in Boston on March 10-11, 1999 as planned. Speakers at the conference include well-established scholars and recent Ph.D. graduates from various disciplines who have devoted years of study in the field of gender studies and China. The panels will cover generic topics such as women's studies in China, women and development, gender and women's agency as well as controversial topics under heated debates such as the contestation between feminism and nationalism, and women's identification and position in a transitional economy.
At the conference, there will be displays of works by CSWS and pictures that CSWS members took for various projects. Members as well as non-members are cordially invited to participate in the celebration.
Click here for the conference program.

Announcement: The members meeting at CSWS anniversary conference will be held at 8:30 pm on March 11, 1999. The location for the meeting will be notified at the conference.

2. Reflections on Chengdu Workshop
Chinese Society for Women's Studies, Inc. and Sichuan Women's Federation jointly organized a workshop on "Poverty, Gender, and Development in Rural China" in Chengdu, Sichuan, China on December 1-6, 1998. This workshop is part of a grant that the Ford Foundation awarded to CSWS. Other projects of this grant include a collection of translated works on Gender and Development (GAD) edited by MA Yuanxi, KANG Hongjin, and DU Fangqin; an upcoming research seminar on GAD, especially in rural areas, in Beijing late this year; and a dozen of small research grants made to GAD researchers and activists in China.
Click here for details.

3. Works by Members - Hot from the Press
Selected Works in Gender Research, edited by WANG Zheng and DU Fangqin, has recently been published by Sanlian Press. This book was the colaborative effort of many devoted members who worked as translators and proofreaders.

Women and Development in China at the Threshold of the New Century: Theory, Economy, Culture, and Health, edited by JIN Yihong and LIU Bohong, has recently been published by Nanjing University Press.
Click here for details.

SONG Yiching, at Department of Communication & Innovation Studies in Wageningen Agricultural University in the Netherlands, recently published a book entitled "New" Seed in "Old" China: Impact of CIMMYT Collaborative Programme on Maize Breeding in South-western China. This publication is based on the dissertation she completed in 1998 as part of the requirements for her Ph.D. degree in sociology. In her acknowledgments, Yiching gave her "thanks to the friends in the Chinese Society of Women's Studies (CSWS) in the United States."

4. CSWS and Zhejiang Xuekan (Zhejiang Academic Journal): Call for Papers
Zhejiang Academic Journal (ZAJ) is published by the Zhejiang Academy of Social Sciences. This journal is ranked as one of the first class academic journals (Yiji Xueshu Kanwu). The articles published by this journal demonstrate high research quality. Therefore university faculty and researchers in China can use publications in ZAJ to apply for promotion in academic career. Currently, ZAJ is the only research journal in China that has a special column on women's studies. It has created a publishing space for Chinese women scholars to address gender and women's issues in China.

Several CSWS members met with Ms. WANG Jinling, Associate Chief Editor of ZAJ and a long-time partner/supporter/friend of CSWS, at the regional workshop on gender, poverty, rural development in China, Chengdu, China, December 1-5, 1998. Wang is responsible for this journal column. She expressed her concerns on the needs of keeping this column survival academically and financially. She proposed to CSWS to support this column both financially and scholarly.

The CSWS members at the workshop agreed that this would be a valuable opportunity for CSWS to make impact on the fields of Women's Studies and Gender and Development in China. Therefore, XU Wu and MA Yuanxi, Co-chairs of CSWS, have made a formal agreement with WANG Jinling. On December 10, 1998, a formal contract was signed between CSWS and Zhejiang Academic Journal with the following agreements:

1. The Chinese Society for Women's Studies, Inc. (CSWS) provides RMB 5,000 to support the column of Women's Studies in Zhengjiang Xuekan (Zhengjiang Academic Journal).
2. The CSWS support period starts at the first issue in 1999 and ends at the 6th issue of 1999.
3. A new subtitle of the column of Women's Studies will be added as "Supported by the Chinese Society for Women's Studies, Inc."
4. Based on equal quality of research papers, a paper submitted by a CSWS member will be awarded priority of publication in the column of Women's Studies [when space conflict occurs].

The CSWS financial support has assured the column space for 1999. However, this column urgently needs scholarly support as well. Jinling has appealed to CSWS members to submit research papers to her column as soon as possible. Her address is:

For more information, please contact XU Wu at (801) 942-8209 or wuxuutah@aol.com.

5. Letters from Members
From Sharon Hom, former CSWS Chair, Professor of Law at CUNY.

Dear Friends,

I wanted to publicly acknowledge the board for the fine job of contructing our website. I finally got to visit and found it a good space for catching up on our activities. I also then remembered I need to send my membership check out--so the check is REALLY in the mail.

For the website, can we also add short intros to/summaries of newly published books and articles (Chinese and English) on Chinese women and related issues and themes that are addressed by our collective research and work under the resources section? I'd find this helpful and interesting and perhaps others might too? We did some of this in our past newsletters but I think a clearly identified space on our website would be good.

Wishing everyone a productive, healthy and peaceful year,
Sharon Hom