We envision a three-day conference starting from the 2019 International Women’s Day to consider the roles that women have had in the Ru tradition and to elaborate resources from within the tradition for re-envisioning women as exemplary persons in the contemporary world. The notion of an exemplary person 君⼦is central to the tradition as the goal of moral self-cultivation, attained by education and character cultivation, but its application to women has not been common, and the moral status of women has been ambiguous in the tradition. This conference will undertake the work of excavating the ways in which women have been exemplary persons in the tradition and make contributions to reconfiguring the tradition to include and celebrate the moral leadership of women today.
We will particularly solicit papers addressing the following topics:
- Confucian teaching by, about, or directed to women in various historical periods.
- Philosophical resources within the Ru tradition that address women as exemplary persons.
- Discussions and critiques of contemporary scholarship on the role and work of women in Confucianism.
- Dialogue and comparison between Confucian thinking about women and feminist philosophy.
- Considerations of the leadership role of women in contemporary society inspired by Confucian and related
intellectual resources.
