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Jinhua Jia draws on a wealth of previously untapped sources to explain how Daoist priestesses marked themselves as a distinct gendered religious and social group. The first comprehensive study of the lives and roles of Daoist priestesses in Tang China, Gender, Power, and Talent restores women to the landscape of Chinese religion and literature.
Jinhua Jia (PhD, Comparative Literature, Colorado) is Professor of Chinese Culture at Hong Kong Polytechnic University. She is the author of Studies of Classical Chan Buddhism (Oxford, 2010) and The Hongzhou School of Chan Buddhism in Eighth- Through Tenth-Century China (SUNY, 2006), and the coeditor (with Xiaofei Kang and Ping Yao) of Gendering Chinese Religion: Subject, Identity, and Body (SUNY, 2014), as well as a number of titles in Chinese, and has published articles in English-language journals such as Dao: A Journal of Comparative Philosophy; Philosophy East and West;Journal of Oriental Studies; Men, Women, and Gender in Early and Imperial China; Taiwan Journal of Religious Studies; Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society; Journal of Chinese Religions; International Journal of Chinese Studies; Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies; and Tang Studies.Jinhua Jia is a professor in the Department of Chinese Culture at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University. She is the author of The Hongzhou School of Chan Buddhism in Eighth- Through Tenth-Century China (2006) and coeditor of Gendering Chinese Religion: Subject, Identity, and Body (2014).
Paul W. Kroll, University of Colorado, Boulder:Using previously unknown mortuary inscriptions, rare Dunhuang manuscripts, and a broad range of received texts, Jia offers a revealing panorama of women's religious practices from medieval China. This study of Tang Daoist priestesses from various backgrounds brings the lives of these many remarkable women out of the shadows. Cultural and social history at its best.
Vincent Goossaert, Université PSL, École Pratique des Hautes Études:Elite Daoist nuns of the Tang dynasty used to have a scandalous reputation. Jinhua Jia does them justice; the gossip is accounted for, but more important elements are added to the picture: the uneasy invention of Daoist monasticism, the debates around female religiosity and poetic expression, and the rise of early modern self-cultivation practices. This gendered history of medieval Daoism is a major addition to our understanding of Chinese religious cultures.
Livia Kohn, Boston University:Gender, Power, and Talent argues that Daoist women of medieval China played an important role in the religion and in the society of the time; that their emergence as a major social force is unprecedented in Chinese history; and that they developed a new form of identity both as women and as Daoists. The gender-critical perspective of the book together with its meticulous historical research makes it a unique contribution to the field.
Nanxiu Qian, Rice University:Written by a rising leader in Chinese religious studies applying an interdisciplinary approach that combines religious, literary, and gender studies, and searching through all available sources and recovering many new texts, Gender, Power, and Talent examines both the conventional and ‘unconventional’ roles played by Tang Daoist priestesses in the historical context of the Tang dynasty.
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