Education
B.A. Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing, China, 1991
M.A. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2001
Ph.D. University of Chicago, 2011
Research Interests
Chinese Art, Gender and material practice in late imperial China. Lay Buddhist women, the cult of Guanyin and image making, women artists. History of Chinese textile and costume, opera and Chinese visual culture, Qing court art and Empress Dowager Cixi.
Publications
Becoming Guanyin: Artistic Devotion of Buddhist Women in Late Imperial China (New York: Columbia University Press, 2020).
“Mofang Guanyin faze: mingdai nüxing wangsheng de wuzhi meijie” 摹仿觀音髮簪: 明代女性往生的物質媒介(Mimicking Guanyin’s Hairpin: the Material Mediums for Women’s Transcendence), in Kanjian xingbie 看見性別(Seeing Gender), edited by Gao Yanyi (Dorothy Ko), Lai Yu-chi, and Ruan Yuan (Aida Yue Wong). (Taipei: Shitou chubanshe, forthcoming 2019).
“Producing Empress Dowager Cixi as Guanyin for Missionaries’ Eyes.” Orientations 46, no. 6 (November/December 2018):62–73.
Performing Images: Opera in Chinese Visual Culture, co-edited with Judith Zeitlin (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014).
“Narrating Morality on Textiles,” in Performing Images: Opera in Chinese Visual Culture, edited by Judith Zeitlin and Yuhang Li, 74–87 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014).
“Sensory Devotions: Hair Embroidery and Gendered Corporeal Practice in Chinese Buddhism,” in Sensational Religion: Sensory Cultures in Material Practice, edited by Sally M. Promey, 355–75 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2014).
“Rethinking Empress Dowager Cixi through the Production of Art,” co-authored with Harriet T. Zurndorfer, Nannü: Men, Women, and Gender in China 14, iss. 1 (2012):1–20.
“Oneself as a Female Deity: Representations of Cixi Posing as Guanyin.” Nannü: Men, Women, and Gender in China 14, iss. 1 (2012):75–118.
“Communicating with Guanyin through Hair: Hair Embroidery in Late Imperial China,” Journal of East Asian Science, Technology and Medicine 36 (2012):131–66.
Mingqing foxiang [Buddhist Sculptures of the Ming and Qing Dynasties] (Taipei: Yishu tushu gongsi, 1997).
Edited Project:
Nannü: Men, Women, and Gender in China: Special Issue on Rethinking Empress Dowager Cixi through the Production of Art. Co-editor with Harriet Zurndorfer. Vol. 14, issue 1, 2012.
Translation:
Cai Jiudi [Judith Zeitlin], “Chongshen yu fenshen: mingmo xiqu zhong de ‘hundan’” [Doubling and Splitting the Phantom Heroine in Early Seventeenth-Century Drama], in Tang Xianzu and Mudanting, edited by Hua Wei, 511–36 (Taipei: Zhongyang yanjiu yuan zhongguo wenzhe yanjiusuo, 2005).
Works in Progress:
Articles:
“Fragrant Orchid as Feminine Body: An Analysis of Ma Shouzhen’s Orchid Painting and the Emergence of Courtesan Painters in Early Modern China.”
“Remediated Antiquarianism: A Case Study of Qianlong’s Copy of Li Di’s ‘Two Chicks.’”
Teaching
AH 203: Survey of Asian Art
AH 307: Early Chinese Art: From Antiquity to the 10th Century
AH308: Later Chinese Art: From the 10th Century to Contemporary
AH 411: Topics in Chinese Art
– Modern and Contemporary Chinese Art
– Beijing: Staging Royalty in Late Imperial China
– Opera and Chinese Visual Culture
AH 576/876: Proseminar in Chinese Art
– Issues of Gender in Chinese Art
– Gender and Material Practice in the Cult of Guanyin
– Needle, Thread, Silk and Tapestry