Body, subject & power in China / edited by Angela Zito and Tani E. Barlow.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

"Contributors investigate problems of bodiliness, engendered subjectivities, and discourses of power through a variety of sources that include written texts, paintings, buildings, interviews, and observations. Taken together, the essays show that bodies in China have been classified, represented, discussed, ritualized, gendered, and eroticized in ways as rich and multiple as those described in critical histories of the West. Silk robes, rocks, winds, gestures of bowing, yin yang hierarchies, and cross-dressing have helped create experiences of the body specific to Chinese historical life. By pointing to multiple examples of reimagining subjectivity and renegotiating power, the essays encourage scholars to avoid making broad generalizations about China and to rethink traditional notions of power, subject, and bodiliness in light of actual Chinese practices. Body, Subject, and Power in China is at once an example of the changing face of China studies and a work of importance to the entire discipline of cultural studies."

Imagination of winds and the development of the Chinese conception of the body / Shigehisa Kuriyama -- Body invisible in Chinese art? / John Hay -- Multiplicity, point of view, and responsibility in traditional Chinese healing / Judith Farquhar -- Silk and skin : significant boundaries / Angela Zito -- Politicized body / Ann Anagnost -- Female body and nationalist discourse : Manchuria in Xiao Hong's Field of life and death / Lydia H. Liu -- Sovereignty and subject : constituting relations of power in Qing guest ritual / James L. Hevia -- (Re)inventing Li : koutou and subjectification in rural Shandong / Andrew Kipnis -- Classic "beauty-scholar" romance and the superiority of the talented woman / Keith McMahon -- Theorizing woman : Funü, Guojia, Jiating / Tani E. Barlow.

East Asian art and American culture : a study in international relations /  Warren I. Cohen.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 235-252) and index.

1. Art and American Understanding of East Asian Culture, 1784-1900 -- 2. The Golden Age of East Asian Art Collecting in America, 1893-1919 -- 3. Professionalism in America, Chaos in China: John Lodge and Langdon Warner -- 4. War, Depression, Opportunity -- 5. The Fortunes of War: America's East Asia -- 6. The East Asian Art Historians.

This is a beautifully illustrated book and a lively, entertaining, illuminating discussion of the contribution and effects of East Asian art on American culture. Warren Cohen portrays the assembling of the great American collections of East Asian art, public and private, and the idiosyncrasies of the collectors. Particular attention is focused on how this art became part of the cultural consciousness of the people of the United States, transforming their culture into something more complex than the Western civilization their ancestors brought from Europe. Cohen tells of art collectors, dealers, and historians, of museums and their curators, of art and imperialism, art and politics, art as an instrument of foreign policy. One of America's leading diplomatic historians, Cohen views art as an important part of international relations. He describes the use of art in "cultural diplomacy" to implement policy by China, Japan, and the United States. He argues that "virtually every act in the movement of art between cultures has political implications." The book demonstrates how art collecting interacts with the shifting rhythms of international politics and the business cycle. The recent decline in American economic power, with Japan emerging preeminent, was first obvious in the art world where American collectors found themselves unable to compete with their Japanese and Hong Kong counterparts and watched great works begin to move back across the Pacific.