#  2025 Gender Studies Workshop — The Beauty and the Book: Women, Knowledge, Literature, and Book Culture in Late Imperial China and Beyond 

 



####  calendar\_today Date and Time 

 **April 25, 2025** 

 08:45AM - 06:00PM EDT 

####  pin\_drop Location 

 **Harvard Yenching Auditorium, 2 Divinity Ave, Cambridge MA, 02138**  



 

 



 

 This year’s Gender Studies Workshop—**The Beauty and the Book: Women, Knowledge, Literature, and Book Culture in Late Imperial China and Beyond: A Conference in Honor of Ellen Widmer**—will explore new directions in the study of writings by and about women in late imperial China and will take place on April 25, 2025. The conference is generously sponsored by the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation, Wellesley College, Fairbank Center (Harvard University), and Asia Center (Harvard University). It will have four panels: 1. Uncovering the Hidden; 2. New Perspectives on Gender Roles and Gender Boundaries; 3. Gender and Knowledge; 4. Modern, Post-modern, Diasporic, and Transnational Reverberations.

 ****Panel 1, Uncovering the Hidden (9:00a.m.-10:30a.m.)****  
**Chair and Moderator: Elizabeth J. Perry,** Harvard University  
**Discussant: Dorothy Ko**, Barnard College

 **Ellen Widmer,** Wellesley College — *Mingyuan shiwei*, Zhang Hao, and Wang Duanshu’s Editorial Hand  
**Wu Hung**, University of Chicago — What is She Reading? A Closer Look at Some ‘Beautiful Women’ Paintings from Late Imperial China  
**Grace Fong,** McGill University — A Significant Year: Zong Wan’s *Diary of My Sojourn in Baoding, 1877*  
**Shengqing Wu,** Hong Kong University of Science and Technology — Embodying ‘Pure Love’: Tactility and Female Subjectivity in Republican Literature

 **Panel Two: New Perspectives on Gender Roles and Gender Boundaries** **(10:45a.m.-12:15p.m.)**  
**Chair and Moderator: Robin Yates**, McGill University  
**Discussant: Sophie Volpp**, UC Berkeley  
  
**Judith Zeitlin,** University of Chicago — The Gender of the Operatic Voice from Li Yu (1611-1680) to Xu Dachun (1693-1771)  
**Wai-yee Li,** Harvard University — The Pleasure of Refusal: New Perspectives on Desire in Chen Duansheng’s (1751-1796) *Love in Two Lives* (*Zaisheng yuan*)  
**Maram Epstein**, University of Oregon — How Conservative is Hou Zhi (ca. 1768-1830)?  
**Rania Huntington**, University of Wisconsin Madison — A Laughing Flower’s Guide to the Party: Knowledge, Pleasure, and Pattern in *Jinghua yuan* (*Flowers in the Mirror*)

 **Lunch Break (12:15-1:30p.m.), Common Room, 2 Divinity Avenue**

 **Panel Three: Gender and Knowledge (1:30-3p.m.)**  
**Chair and Moderator: Catherine Yeh**, Boston University  
**Discussant: Cynthia Brokaw**, Brown University

 **Huan Jin**, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology — Gender Dynamics in Late Imperial Letter-Writing Manuals  
**Xu Man**, Tufts University — *The Precious Mirror for Womanly Virtue* (*Kunde baojian*): A Daily-Use Encyclopedia for Women in High Qing China  
**Suyoung Son,** Cornell University — Female Authorship for Technical Writing  
**Joan Judge,** York University — Women as Vernacular Knowers in China’s Long Republic (1894-1954): What We Can Learn from Cheap Print

 **Panel Four: Modern, Post-modern, Diasporic, and Transnational Reverberations** **(3:15p.m.-4:45p.m.)**  
**Chair and Moderator: David Wang**, Harvard University  
**Discussant: Eileen Chow**, Duke University

 **Hyaeweol Choi**, University of Iowa — Christian Networks and Gender Norms in Colonial Korea from a Transnational Perspective  
**Emma Teng,** MIT — Cooking and Gender/Cooking and Genre: Grace Zia Chu (1899–1999)  
**Paize Keulemans**, Princeton University — The Poisonous Touch: Haptic Modes of Reading and Playing in *Jin Ping Mei* in the Late Ming and Early Twenty-first Century  
**Mingwei Song,** Wellesley College — The Rise of She-SF: Chinese SF’s Next Wave  
  
**Reception (5p.m.-6p.m.), Common Room, 2 Divinity Avenue**



 

 



 

 See also:- [ Conference ](/event-categories/conference)
 
 

 Share on:- [     Facebook ](#)
- [     Twitter ](#)
- [     Linkedin ](#)
 


 Save: [ Add to calendar calendar\_today ](https://bookhistory.harvard.edu/node/1945646/event-feed.ics)  Copy link link