Dr. Li-Hsiang Lisa Rosenlee, professor of Philosophy at the University of Hawai‘i–West O‘ahu, recently published an article in a journal devoted to the study of Chinese philosophy.
Rosenlee’s article, “The Scarcity of Women’s Records in Antiquity: Where Did All the Women Go?,” was published online this month by Brill in the “Journal of Chinese Philosophy,” an anonymously peer-reviewed philosophical journal devoted to the study of Chinese philosophy and Chinese thought in all their phases and stages of development and articulation.
“The scarcity of women’s writings in antiquity presents an intractable problem for feminists intending to integrate women’s perspectives into the existing philosophical canon,” according to the abstract for the article.
The abstract continues, “One way to undo the erasure of women is for feminists to look to the east; in China, there is an abundance of well-preserved women’s writings, along with their biographical records, as early as the 6th century BCE. This essay will provide a survey of those women’s records, focusing on the 6th century BCE to the 4th century CE, as a way to re-imagine the discipline of Philosophy and its canon.”
Rosenlee’s article is featured in Volume 50 (2023): Issue 4 (March 2024) of the journal, in a special issue, “Women and the Newest Edge in Comparative Philosophy (I).”