Yuhang Li

Curriculum Vitae

Additional Titles
Affiliate of the Religious Studies Program, Department of Asian Languages and Cultures, and Center for East Asian Studies

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.

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