Tani Barlow personal records

Tani Barlow is a historian and scholar who studied and published works about feminism in China. She is the George and Nancy Rupp Professor of Humanities and Professor of History at Rice University and was also the inaugural director of the Chao Center for Asian Studies at Rice. She previously worked as a professor of history and women's studies at the University of Washington and the University of Missouri-Columbia.

She is the author of "In the Event of Women" (Duke University Press, forthcoming, 2018), "The Question of Women in Chinese Feminism" (Duke University Press, 2004), and "Inter/National Feminism and China", Ito Ruri and Kobayashi Eri, trans., (Tokyo: Ochanomizu Press, 2003). In addition, Barlow has edited and co-edited nine published books, including "The World Looks at China: Twenty Years of positions: asia critique" (Nanjing University Press, 2016, in Chinese), "The Modern Girl, Colonial Modernity, and East Asia" (Iwanami Shoten, in Japanese, 2008); "New Asian Marxisms" (Duke University Press, 2002); "Cinema and Desire: The Cultural Politics of Feminist Marxist Dai Jinhua" (Verso, 2002); and "I Myself Am a Woman: Selected Writings of Ding Ling" (Beacon Press, 1999). Barlow has published twenty papers in edited books, about forty articles in academic journals, edited or co-edited forty-seven journal issues, and curated a contemporary arts festival.

Tani Barlow was born February 18, 1950 in Madison Wisconsin to Claude Abner Barlow (1921-1995) and Alice Voorsanger Barlow (1924-2010), with three siblings, Gayne, Naomi, and Dika. After moving several times, the family eventually settled in Palo Alto, California. At the age of sixteen, Barlow's father withdrew her from high school and she was enrolled in university in Hawaii. Barlow later left and travelled for a few years before returning to school. In 1975, Barlow received her BA from San Francisco State University with a dual degree in History and Chinese Language. She then went on to get her MA (1979) and PhD (1985) from UC Davis in History. Barlow began teaching in 1981 as a lecturer in American Culture for Shanghai Teachers University, then moved to Missouri as an assistant professor at the University of Missouri-Columbia. She married Donald Lowe (1929-2009), a fellow academic and Asian Studies scholar and formerly her professor at San Francisco State University, in 1990. Barlow continued teaching at institutions such as San Francisco State University, University of Washington, and finally Rice University.