Professor Ko’s research interest is the everyday lives of women in China –along with the domestic objects they made by hand–as a significant part of country’s cultural, economic and political development. She works at the intersections of anthropology, history, and women’s studies.
Ko’s recent book, Cinderella Sisters: A Revisionist History of Footbinding, published in 2005, shattered the popular conception of footbinding as a tool to oppress women and demonstrated that it was instead a source of female identity, purpose, pride, and power. It won the Joan Kelly Memorial Prize of the American Historical Association, Recently, she has been turning her attention to the skills of women’s artisans such as embroiderers, stone carvers, and ceramic artists. Her research during spring semester, 2004, as a senior fellow at the Hopkins-Nanjing Center’s Institute for International Research in Nanjing, focused on the importance of ancient art of silk-weaving for a study of the dress-making tradition and domestic work culture in China’s silk industry region. More recently, as a fellow at the Needham Research Institute in Cambridge, England, in spring 2007, she researched ancient swordsmith legends for insights into the relations between bodily investments and transformation of matter.
In addition to Cinderella’s Sisters, Ko has written numerous books and publications, including “Between the Boudoir and the Global Market: Shen Shou, Embroidery and Modernity at the Turn of the Twentieth Century,” in Looking Modern (forthcoming), Every Step a Lotus (2001), and Teachers of the Inner Chambers (1994). She is also co-editor of Women and Confucian Cultures in Pre-modern China, Korea, and Japan.
Ko’s courses include Chinese cultural history, body histories, women and culture in 17th century China, and Confucian cultures.
Ko earned undergraduate and advanced degrees at Stanford University, including the doctorate. She has received a number of fellowships and awards. She was a member of the School of Historical Studies at the Institute for Advanced Study (2000-2001), a fellow of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation (2000-2001) and a fellow at the Center for Critical Analysis of Contemporary Culture, Rutgers University (1999-2000). Before joining the Barnard faculty in 2001, Professor Ko taught at Rutgers University.
Rejecting popular image and accepted scholarship on the status of women in premodern China, this pathbreaking work argues that literate gentrywomen in seventeenth-century Jiangnan were far from oppressed or silenced. As writers, readers, editors, and teachers, these women created a rich culture and meaningful existence from within the constraints of the male-dominated Confucian system. The author reconstructs the social, emotional, and intellectual worlds of these women from the interstices between ideology, practice, and self-perception. Born out of curiosity about how premodern Chinese women lived, this book proposes a new way to conceptualize China's past. This reconception rests on the premise that by understanding how women lived, we better grasp the dynamics of gender relations and gain a more complete knowledge of the values of Chinese culture, the functioning of Chinese society, and the nature of historical change. The book examines three types of women's communities that developed in this environment: domestic, social, and public. Women from different families, age groups, and social stations were brought together by their shared love of poetry and common concerns as women. Though important at the time, most of these ties proved fragile and transitory because of women's inherently ambivalent position. The author argues that the gender system identified women both by their shared gender, or women-as-same, and by their social station, or women-as-different. This contradiction accorded women freedoms within their own limited spheres, but these spheres were fragmented and often demarcated by the class of male kin. As a result, even the most mobile and articulate of women had noinstitutional means of launching fundamental attacks on the gender system.
原本想用“这是我今年目前为止读到的最可读的一本书”作为开头,然后意识到我今年目前为止并没有正儿八经地读完过几本书,这话似因样本太少而全无说服力。但转念一想,如果考虑到我今年开读的书大都因浮躁而半途停辍,那么这本难得的在一个相对较短的时间里一气看完的书,或许...
評分「闺塾师」中有个轶闻让我印象非常深刻:晚明江南有个叫冯云将的公子,一次偶遇看上了小青,便纳为妾侍,但畏惧家中悍妻崔氏,不敢告知;后因觉得妻子并为有所出,便把小青带回了家;不久,冯公子远游,小青被崔氏隔离出冯家,幽禁在西湖边上的别院里,小青只可独怜孤影,自作...
評分五四對女學的妄斷造成的負面影響並非對過去,而是對未來。如果人們認為“曾經”的女性如此卑弱,那麼“現在”的女性但凡增獲丁點權利,便視之為重大的勝利。而結果卻是,中國女性在百年前後的地位,其實並沒有根本性的變化。這才是五四女學臉譜化的最大惡果。 而從另一...
評分「闺塾师」中,最让我印象深刻的莫过于「牡丹亭」。那是明代大匠汤显祖的作品。其实从未完整或深刻地去品读这部作品,在有机会认真读文学的时候,我更心向往于那些慷慨激昂或沉稳道来的奏折,对这部剧本的印象也不过停留在执拗的杜丽娘,或是那句“原来姹紫嫣红开遍,似这...
評分第一遍看:这都是什么乱七八糟的 第二遍看:好像有点道理 第三遍看:每句话都有特别的涵义 1、很多人纠结,为什么题目是闺塾师,而写的却不是闺塾师?作者已经在文章中阐述了其中的原因: “所有出现在本书中的女性,无论是妻子、女儿或寡妇,都通过她们的作品,互相讲授着各自...
某種程度上修正得有點過頭,當然因為是研究的上層女性,她們因階級差彆享有一定的自由可以理解,但這極少數的女性隻能使我們對古代婦女的認識更多樣化,不能改變婦女被壓迫這一總體的認識。
评分Delicate rendition, sensitive writer~
评分唉。。其實我的興趣就在性彆史,可為什麼我一直在寫民族主義的論文。。
评分我覺得這本書名字譯為女先生或者纔女什麼的是不是更好一點。文章的問題不是簡單的男女權力的不平等問題,而是how the gender system sustained in the Ming-Qing period? 比較喜歡的是講婦女的知識傳承和人際關係的展開。而且還把女藝人courtesan和大傢閨秀放在同一個情景裏講,她們之間因為文學的交往更加顯示gender as social organisation 而非階級的分野,她們之間因為需要迎閤男性的審美而展開的“美麗”競爭也更加固化瞭gender system.這樣的敘述極大突破瞭以往婦女史以階級來劃分女性,將藝妓作為專門獨立的一個章節的做法。
评分作為一本批判“五四女性史觀”的經典之作,此書有兩個缺陷,都跟它的subject matter——明清之際的江南文人階級纔女——有關:1. 作者提到的江南纔女屬於士紳階級,是否status overruling gender纔使得她們比一般平民婦女甚至內陸同階層婦女有更多參與文化生活的機會?2. 作者不斷強調明清之交的社會與政治轉型給瞭江南閨秀拓展女性空間的機會,那麼是不是可以認為明清朝代更替是個特殊情況,本書中的江南纔女隻是特殊歷史背景下的temporary transgression?結閤Matthew Sommer對清代婚姻與性別的法律研究,雍正改革大大延伸瞭國傢對性規範的治理,Ko書中提到的晚明名妓文化也不復存在。兩個缺陷結閤起來,本書是否真正推翻瞭它意圖批判的“五四女性史觀”?
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