Women Through the Lens raises the question of how gender, especially the image of woman, acts as a visual and discursive sign in the creation of the nation-state in twentieth-century China. Tracing the history of Chinese cinema through the last hundred years from the perspective of transnational feminism, Shuqin Cui reveals how women have been granted a and "privileged visibility and " on screen while being denied discursive positions as subjects. In addition, her careful attention to the visual language system of cinema shows how and "woman and " has served as the site for the narration of nation in the context of China's changing social and political climate.