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Department of History

Department of History
The University of Houston
524 Agnes Arnold Hall
Houston, TX 77204-3003
(713) 743-3083

Faculty and Staff

Xiaoping Cong
Associate Professor

Xiaoping Cong

Dr. Cong is a scholar of late imperial and 20th century China, focusing on women's history, intellectual history, history of modern education in China. She received her Ph.D. from UCLA in 2001 and joined the University of Houston community in the same year.

 

 

 

 

Teaching

Dr. Cong teaches survey courses on the histories of China, from early civilization up to the present, and Japan since 1600. She also teaches upper division courses on "Women in Late Imperial and Twentieth Century China"; "East Asian Women in Historical and Cross-Cultural Perspectives"; "Perceptions of China in the West"; "Confucianism and Chinese Modernity"; "Chinese women in Twentieth-Century Revolutions and Reforms," as well as a graduate seminar, "Education and Society in Late Imperial and Twentieth-Century China".In Spring 2011, Dr. Cong will teach a new survey course, entitled "History of Material Culture in China."

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Research Interests

Dr. Cong's previous research focused on the special role of teacher's schools in the social and political transformation during the first four decades of twentieth-century China. Her book, Teacher's Schools and the Making of Chinese Modern Nation-State, 1897-1937, was published by British Columbia University Press (2007). This book has received the Academic Excellence Award from the Chinese Historian in the US (CHUS) association in 2008.

Dr. Cong recently is working on her new book project in which, she examines how a 1943 legal case of marriage dispute in a small village in the Communist controlled region developed into a series of national cultural products which helped the construction of communist gender ideology. This project has received a number of research grants from various sources, including Fulbright Research Scholar Grant to China (2008-09) and a grant of ACLS-American Research of Humanities in China (2008-09) sponsored by NEH.

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Selected Publications

Books

Article/Chapter in edited volume (in English):

  • "From ‘Cainü’ (Talented Women) to ‘Nü jiaoxi’(Female Teachers): Female Normal Schools and the Transformation of Women’s Education in Late Qing China, 1895-1911," in Richard J. Smith, Grace Fong, and Nanxiu Qian (eds.), Different Worlds of Discourse: Different Worlds of Discourse: Transformations of Gender and Genre in Late Qing and Early Republican China (Leiden/Boston: Brill Academic Publishers, 2008): 115-44.

  • "Planted the Seeds for the Rural Revolution - Local Teachers' Schools and the Reemergence of Chinese Communism in the 1930's." Twentieth Century China, 32: 2 (April 2007): 135-65.

Articles (in Chinese)

  • "A New Trend in Constructing the Theory of Legitimacy for the Communist Party: the Political Connotations of Three Musical Epics for the Chinese National Days, 1964-2009" Si-hsiang Reflexion (Taiwan), January 2010, no. 14: 233-254.

  • "Teachers’ Schools and the Making of Chinese Modernization, 1897-1937" Open Times (China), January 2010, no. 1.

  • "Zuo Ren Vs. Wang Yinsuo: Women, Marriage and State-Making in the Shaan-Gan-Ning Border Region of the 1940s" Open Times (China), October 2009, no. 10: 62-79.

  • "The Bridge to the Rural Revolution - Local Teachers' Schools and the Transformation of the Chinese Communist Revolution in the 1930's," Twenty-First Century (Hong Kong), 2006, no. 8: 38-51. (Long version see the ePublication)

  • "From Motherhood to Teachers of Nation - Nation-State Building and Normal Schools for Women during the Waning Years of the Qing Dynasty," Studies in Qing History (Beijing), 2003, no. 1: 87-97.

  • "Rethinking China's Modernization of Education," Dushu (Reading) (Beijing), 1998, No. 11:16-21.

ePublications

  • "The Bridge to the Rural Revolution - Local Teachers' Schools and the Transformation of the Chinese Communist Revolution in the 1930s" (Long version), Twenty-First Century (electronic version: http://www.cuhk.edu.hk/ics/21c/index.html), 2007, no. 3, Hong Kong

  • "Village Schools in the Reconstruction of Community Organization - the Rural Education Movement and Village Teachers' Schools in the 1920s and 1930s," Twenty-First Century (electronic version: http://www.cuhk.edu.hk/ics/21c/index.html), 2002, no. 11, Hong Kong

  • "Doing Research in China's Libraries and Archives" (electronic publication), at Chinese History Research Site at UCSD, University of California, San Diego, 1999. (http://orpheus.ucsd.edu/chinesehistory/archive_users.htm)