Rural Girls' Performances through Literacy: Reconceptualizing Rural Chinese Literate Girlhoods
Open Access
- Author:
- Wang, Jue
- Graduate Program:
- Curriculum and Instruction
- Degree:
- Doctor of Philosophy
- Document Type:
- Dissertation
- Date of Defense:
- April 29, 2021
- Committee Members:
- Allison Henward, Major Field Member
Xiaoye You, Outside Unit & Field Member
Gail Boldt, Chair & Dissertation Advisor
Jacqueline Reid-Walsh, Major Field Member
Kimberly Anne Powell, Program Head/Chair - Keywords:
- ethnic minority
literacy
rurality
girlhood
emerging identities - Abstract:
- My dissertation is a critical ethnographic study that examines how young girls perform gender identities in a rural Chinese context by accepting, negotiating and/or resisting social regulations. Another way of framing this is that I am curious how factors such as gender, socio- economic status, race and ethnicity, history, religious and rural/urban identifications impact young girls’ uptake of gender identities. This work is situated during a period of a great economically driven transformation of rural life in China stemming from modernization policy responding to the pressure of globalization. In particular, the qualitative study utilizes a feminist post-structural lens to analyze the gender discourses that shape the girls’ daily lives in and out of school, and how they construct literate identities through their uses of literacy in ongoing social practices. Although my study is specific to China, it represents a contribution that grows from my deep commitments to research that can support the education of all young girls in rural areas the world over, and particularly those who may be economically disadvantaged. This study contributes to the scholarship on the lived experiences of young girls in a rural context by uncovering how the COVID-19 pandemic has affected these young girls’ gendered experiences of school and family life. Girls in this study live on their own terms which include their own desires as well as negotiating policies created by the central and local governments that focus on the relationship between the U.S. and China as well as the maintenance of the Lengyu culture. The story of these girls emphasizes their gendered and intersectional realities, which have been magnified during COVID-19. Their experiences provide rich insight into what it means to be a girl, an ethnic minority growing up in the rural area with the trends of globalization, and how these identities contribute to girlhoods. From their stories, we learn how they utilized literacy as a tool in authoring their lives to shape and develop ongoing and emerging identities while negotiating perpetual global change.