Nationalism, feminism, and martial valor: Rewriting biographies of women in 'Nuzi shijie' (1904--1907)

This thesis examines images of martial women as they were produced in the biography column of the late Qing journal Nuzi shijie (NZSJ; 1904-1907). By examining the historiographic implications of revised women's biographies, I will show the extent to which martial women were written as ideal citizens at the dawn of the twentieth-century. In the first chapter I place NZSJ in its historical context by examining the journal's goals as seen in two editorials from the inaugural issue. The second and third chapters focus on biographies of individual women warriors which will be read against their original stories in verse and prose. Through these comparisons, I aim to demonstrate how these "transgressive women" were written as normative ideals of martial citizens that would appeal to men and women alike.