Yuhang Li

Curriculum Vitae

Additional Titles
Affiliate of the Religious Studies Program, Department of Asian Languages and Cultures, and Center for East Asian Studies; Faculty Director of Material Culture at the Center for Design and Material Culture

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, Chinese visual culture and religious spectacles; Ephemeral art and paper medium; Qing court art and Empress Dowager Cixi.

Publications
Single Authored Book:
Becoming Guanyin: Artistic Devotion of Buddhist Women in Late Imperial China (New York: Columbia University Press, 2020), American Academy of Religion’s 2021 Religion and the Arts Book Award Winner; Society for Ming Studies’ Inaugural 2024 Geiss-Hsu Book Prize for the Best First Book in Ming Studies.

Edited Projects:
Performing Images: Opera in Chinese Visual Culture, co-edited with Judith Zeitlin (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014).

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.

Articles/Chapters:
“Classing the Classics: Investigating Artisanal Reproduction of Landscape Imagery in Nineteenth-Century Chinese Tombs.” Selva: A Journal of the History of Art 3 (2021):7–44.

“Burning Big Dharma Boats: Paper as Efficacious Medium,” in The Allure of Matter: Materiality Across Chinese Art, edited by Orianna Cacchione and Wei-Cheng Lin, 150–79 (Chicago: Center for the Art of East Asia and Smart Museum of Art, 2021).

“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), 18–47 (Taipei: Shitou chubanshe, 2020).

“Producing Empress Dowager Cixi as Guanyin for Missionaries’ Eyes.” Orientations 46, no. 6 (November/December 2018):62–73.

“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.

Teaching
AH 203: Survey of Asian Art
AH 307: From Tomb to Temple: Ancient Chinese Art and Religion in Transition
AH308: The Tastes of Scholars and Emperors: Chinese Art in the Later Periods
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
– Rethinking Birthdays in Chinese Arts