Something Old, Something New Everyone has a favorite TV show, film genre or martial art. So here is a quick experiment that you can carry out from the comfort of your own smart phone. Head on over to... Continue Reading →
Introduction Its hard to think of a single individual who had a greater impact on the development of the Chinese martial arts during the all important years of the Republic than Zhang Zhijiang (1882-1966). His name peppers the... Continue Reading →
Regulating Kung Fu in Canton The brave new world of electronic databases and digital humanities is certainly opening many doors to new and exciting types of research. Increasingly scholars can sit down at any university terminal and access previously... Continue Reading →
Introduction Welcome to “Chinese Martial Arts in the News!” Lots has been happening in the Chinese martial arts community, so its time to see what people have been saying. For new readers, this is a semi-regular feature here at Kung Fu... Continue Reading →
T’ai Chi Ch’uan is not a by-product, as it were, of any other art-dance form; it is not derived from ancient Chinese commemorative dance [ritual], folk, or classical Chinese theatre dance [opera], and does not resemble them in dynamics,... Continue Reading →
Men fighting men to determine worth (i.e., masculinity) excludes women as completely as the female experience of childbirth excludes men….The female boxer violates this stereotype and cannot be taken seriously—she is parody, she is cartoon, she is monstrous.... Continue Reading →
We take the “concrete and palpable” presence of a thing to attest to the reality of that which we have made it to signify; our fantasies find confirmation in the materiality of things that are composed more of objectified... Continue Reading →
Of Boy Scouts and Kendo A recent post focused on the role of the global scouting movement in promoting the spread of the Asian martial arts during the first half of the 20th century. In that essay I mentioned... Continue Reading →
Structure and Agency Contrary to popular opinion, nature does not love parsimony. This frequently repeated opinion is more an aesthetic judgement on the part of some scholars rather than an empirical observation about the actual functioning of the natural... Continue Reading →
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