The Board of Directors of the James P. Geiss & Margaret Y. Hsu Foundation is pleased to announce three awards made during the spring application cycle:
SUBVENTIONS
The Empress and the Dragon Throne: Women in the Imperial Family in the First Hundred Years of China’s Ming Dynasty by Ellen Soulliere I Hong Kong University Press, forthcoming spring 2025
The first of three planned volumes spanning the entire Ming dynasty, the book examines the social, political, economic, and cultural hierarchies, rituals, and codes of behavior that defined and protected the status of women within the family and the household during the early Ming dynasty. Richly informed by evidence from texts and material culture, it analyses and interprets women’s contributions to the many successes and the eventual failure of the dynasty and the state.
Forger’s Creed by J.P. Park I University of California Press, forthcoming spring 2025
Forger’s Creed examines how and why numerous fake texts, forged paintings, and bogus art theories were fabricated in the late Ming and early Qing periods. Investigating the forgeries as sites of conflict and negotiation in the production and consumption of art invisibly shared between different social groups, Park considers the establishment of a refined and elegant public sphere under the rubric of “legitimate lineage” as an attempt by elites to regulate public discourse on art.
PROJECT
Project Planning for “The Workers of the Ming World and Their Sources” I University of Warwick, PI: Anne Gerritsen (Warwick), with Sarah Schneewind (UC San Diego)
The award will support in-person and online project planning meetings for a workshop presenting transformative research on the “lesser relations” of the Ming world—brokers, merchants and shopkeepers; accountants and scribes; clerks and runners; gatekeepers and doormen; clergy; boatmen, porters, grooms, and sedan-chair carriers—who played key roles in shaping social and knowledge structures. The planners aim to organize the workshop for 2025 and to publish papers in 2026.