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