Girls in Society: ‘Asia’, Colonial Modernity, and the Place of Vernacular Sociology in Consumer Culture

Lecture Information:
“Girls in Society: ‘Asia,’ Colonial Modernity, and the Place of Vernacular Sociology in Consumer Culture” resituates the debates over the historical and political framework of colonial modernity. This presentation establishes a relationship between Sino-Japanese social-science logics and treaty-port consumer culture, as reflected in imperialist corporate commodity advertising campaigns. Central to vernacular or lay sociological philosophy and the visual ephemera of advertising campaigns in the era of the 1910s-1930s was the dynamic term “society.”

Lecturer Information:
Tani Barlow is Ting Tsung and Wei Fong Chao Professor of Asian Studies and Director, Chao Center for Asian Studies at Rice University where she teaches in the History Department. Her work has addressed the histories of Marxism and Maoism in China, the question of gender in modernity, and the politics of culture in ‘Asia.’ Tani Barlow is the author of THE QUESTION OF WOMEN IN CHINESE FEMINISM (2004), numerous edited volumes and dozens of articles. She is also the founder and editor of the landmark journal, positions. Her current manuscript, IN THE EVENT OF WOMEN, examines the relation of social science logics to Chinese treaty port consumer culture.