Xiaofei Kang, Professor of Religion at George Washington University, has received the Joseph Levenson Book Prize from the Association for Asian Studies for her recent publication, Enchanted Revolution: Ghosts, Shamans, and Gender Politics in Chinese Communist Propaganda, 1942-1953 (Oxford University Press).
The book describes how the Chinese Communist Party deployed the powerful forces of religion and gender for the revolution. Specifically, it explores how the propaganda machine co-opted traditional ghost lore in the production and dissemination of the White-haired Girl, a 1945 opera that has been hailed as a revolutionary classic up to the present day. The opera's gender-laden narrative created a renewed ethical and cosmological rationale for CCP leadership in the Civil War, and for the Party-state's civilizing mission of ethnic borderlands. The lasting appeal of the White-haired Girl illustrates that religion was not a mere adversary for the revolution; it also served as a model with which the Party mobilized support and constructed legitimacy.
Congratulations to our colleague in the Department of World Religions on this much deserved recognition!