Gender, Power, and Talent
During the Tang dynasty (618–907), changes in political policies, the religious landscape, and gender relations opened the possibility for Daoist women to play an unprecedented role in religious and public life. Women, from imperial princesses to the daughters of commoner families, could be ordained as Daoist priestesses and become religious leaders, teachers, and practitioners...
During the Tang dynasty (618–907), changes in political policies, the religious landscape, and gender relations opened the possibility for Daoist women to play an unprecedented role in religious and public life. Women, from imperial princesses to the daughters of commoner families, could be ordained as Daoist priestesses and become religious leaders, teachers, and practitioners in their own right. Some achieved remarkable accomplishments: one wrote and transmitted texts on meditation and inner cultivation; another, a physician, authored a treatise on therapeutic methods, medical theory, and longevity techniques. Priestess-poets composed major works, and talented priestess-artists produced stunning calligraphy.
In Gender, Power, and Talent, Jinhua Jia draws on a wealth of previously untapped sources to explain how Daoist priestesses distinguished themselves as a distinct gendered religious and social group. She describes the life journey of priestesses from palace women to abbesses and ordinary practitioners, touching on their varied reasons for entering the Daoist orders, the role of social and religious institutions, forms of spiritual experience, and the relationships between gendered identities and cultural representations. Jia takes the reader inside convents and cloisters, demonstrating how they functioned both as a female space for self-determination and as a public platform for both religious and social spheres. The first comprehensive study of the lives and roles of Daoist priestesses in Tang China, Gender, Power, and Talent restores women to the landscape of Chinese religion and literature and proposes new methodologies for the growing field of gender and religion.
贾晋华，厦门大学文学硕士，科罗拉多大学哲学博士；现任武汉大学中国传统文化研究中心研究员、澳门大学兼职教授，曾执教于厦门大学、香港城市大学及香港理工大学；研究领域涉及中国古代思想、宗教、文学及性别，已出版众多学术论著，主要有《从礼乐文明到古典儒学》(东方出版中心,2020)；Gender,Power,and Talent:The Journey of Daoist Priestesses in Tang China (Columbia University Press,2018)o《古典禅研究》(牛津大学出版社,2010;上海人民出版社，2013；汲古书院，2017)、The Hongzhou School of Chan Buddhism in Eighth- through Tenth-Century China(State University ...
贾晋华，厦门大学文学硕士，科罗拉多大学哲学博士；现任武汉大学中国传统文化研究中心研究员、澳门大学兼职教授，曾执教于厦门大学、香港城市大学及香港理工大学；研究领域涉及中国古代思想、宗教、文学及性别，已出版众多学术论著，主要有《从礼乐文明到古典儒学》(东方出版中心,2020)；Gender,Power,and Talent:The Journey of Daoist Priestesses in Tang China (Columbia University Press,2018)o《古典禅研究》(牛津大学出版社,2010;上海人民出版社，2013；汲古书院，2017)、The Hongzhou School of Chan Buddhism in Eighth- through Tenth-Century China(State University of New York Press,2006)、《唐代集会总集与诗人群研究》（北京大学出版社，2001/2015）等。