Ai Xiaoming

A Chinese Woman Intellectual

Jinyan Zeng author

Format:Hardback

Publisher:Taylor & Francis Ltd

Publishing:23rd Nov '26

£155.00

This title is due to be published on 23rd November, and will be despatched as soon as possible.

This hardback is available in another edition too:

Ai Xiaoming cover

Ai Xiaoming: A Chinese Woman Intellectual examines the construction and transformation of intellectual identity in modern China through the life and work of Ai Xiaoming, foregrounding how women intellectuals negotiate public engagement under pervasive political, institutional, technological, and gendered constraints.

Tracing shifts and overlaps among public intellectuals, academics, citizen intelligentsia, activist-intellectuals, and forbidden intellectuals, it shows how intellectual identity evolves in response to changing political ideologies and degrees of state control. Particular attention is paid to digital technologies as sites of both empowerment and surveillance, and to women’s strategic use of bodies, emotions, and domestic spaces for social action. Ai Xiaoming’s filmic, historical, and activist practices illuminate truth-seeking identities grounded in legal rhetoric, historical writing, and ethical self-making amid repression.

This book is ideal for scholars and students of China studies, gender and feminist studies, intellectual history, media and cultural studies, and social activism.

This affectionate and provocative biography of Ai Xiaoming, the pathbreaking feminist scholar and documentary filmmaker, is embedded in a broad historical landscape of truth-seeking intellectuals in modern China. Importantly, Zeng’s contribution to intellectual history is deeply informed by her practice and reflexivity as a fellow feminist.

Zhen Zhang, author of Women Filmmakers in Sinophone World Cinema

This timely book focuses on Ai Xiaoming, a professor and feminist activist who has had a great impact on a generation of Chinese feminists, including the author Zeng Jinyan herself. The book explores the life and work of Professor Ai that bridge scholarship, activism and film-making. The book provides new perspectives on gender issues as well China’s complex history and suppressed memories and will be of interest to readers not only in China studies but those who focuses on the role of scholars who maintain a critical voice globally.

Marina Svensson, author of Debating Human Rights in China: A Conceptual and Political History

Zeng Jinyan’s study of feminist scholar Ai Xiaoming’s practice of activism, scholarship and documentary investigation incorporates broader reflections on women intellectuals in 20th century China and globally. The unique positionality of the author as both insider and outsider provides her with poignant insights into the gendered logic of knowledge production.

Sebastian Veg, author of Minjian: The Rise of China’s Grassroots Intellectuals

Zeng Jinyan’s monograph offers a rich account of historical and conceptual perspectives on women intellectuals in China. By analysing Ai Xiaoming’s work, experiences and contributions against the backdrop of China’s socio-political transformation, the reader gets to rediscover an intellectual whose thoughts and contributions are as relevant and needed as ever.

Lisa Eklund, Associate Professor in Sociology, Lund University, Sweden.

ISBN: 9781041219613

Dimensions: unknown

Weight: unknown

190 pages