Past Awards

Exile to the Stage: Costuming and Personhood in Early Qing Drama examines theatrical costuming in drama texts and performances of 17th-century China when the Manchu rulers regulated hairstyle and dress based on ethnicity and gender. The book argues that theatrical costuming provided a productive way to reconnect bodies, clothes, and identities dissociated by political turbulence.

This book analyzes the empire-wide construction projects of the Yongle Emperor of the Ming dynasty, one of the most famous emperors in Chinese history, to demonstrate how the siting, architecture, and the use of his palaces and temples established his authority and contributed to the legitimization of his usurpation of power. Although a number of books in English have dealt with the architecture of the Song (960–1279) and Yuan (1279–1368) periods, this will be the first book in any Western language that specifically addresses the architecture of the Ming.

The goddess Guanyin began in India as a male deity and by the Ming and Qing periods, Guanyin had become the most popular female deity in China. Li examines how lay Buddhist women in late imperial China forged a connection with the subject of their devotion, arguing that they used their own bodies to echo that of Guanyin. Combining empirical research with theoretical insights from art history and Buddhist studies, the book is a field-changing analysis that reveals the interplay among material culture, religion, and their gendered transformations.

In early modern China, Jesuit missionaries associated with the male elite Confucian literati in order to proselytize more freely, but they had limited contact with women, whose ritual spaces were less accessible. Amsler’s investigation brings the domestic and devotional practices of women into sharp focus, uncovering a rich body of evidence that demonstrates how Chinese households functioned as sites of evangelization, religious conflict, and indigenization of Christianity.

For many, the most obvious architectural symbol of Chinese imperial power is the Great Wall. Yet in the imperial period the Grand Canal was arguably much more important. To do justice to its multifaceted history, the workshop brought together scholars from different disciplinary backgrounds such as social history, the history of science, environmental history, comparative and Chinese literature, global and Chinese art history, and the history of architecture. Participants led discussions about documents that illuminated their scholarly approach to the Canal.

The 28 years following the Tumu Crisis was among the most politically unstable periods of the Ming Dynasty. Scholars have attributed this chaos to the constant change in rule. This political confusion marked almost every aspect of society, including that of imperial porcelain production. Featuring 158 items from the collection of the Jingdezhen Imperial Ware Museum, the exhibition and its associated programming explained how artistic innovation and experimentation not only survived, but thrived during this tumultuous period.

The vast majority of the porcelain that circulated throughout the early modern world was made
in Jingdezhen. This book traces the development of this remarkable city from its earliest
beginnings at the end of the tenth century, when Jingdezhen first emerged as site of imperial
production, through the appearance of the first blue-and-white wares in the Yuan dynasty
(1275–1368), to the height of its flourishing in the eighteenth century.

As part of their new outreach to junior scholars, the Society for Ming Studies invited nine promising Ph.D. candidates, fellows, and visiting professors to present their research at the Society for Ming Studies Annual Meeting at the Association for Asian Studies Conference in Denver, Colorado. The Geiss Hsu Foundation helped supplement the travel costs for the March 2019 meeting. The goal of the session was to grow the community of Ming scholars by helping junior researchers cement new connections.