Talk by Matthew H. Sommer, Stanford University
Thursday, February 19, 2026
11:30 AM - 1:00 PM
Bunche Hall 6275
Matthew Sommer’s new book The Fox Spirit, the Stone Maiden, and Other Transgender Histories from Late Imperial China (Columbia UP, 2024) considers a range of transgender practices and paradigms in Late Imperial China, illuminating how certain forms of gender transgression were sanctioned in particular contexts and penalized in others. This talk will focus on the crime of “a male masquerading in female attire” (男扮女裝), which was prosecuted by applying the statute against “using deviant ways and heterodox principles to incite and deceive the common people” (左道異端煽惑人民). Anatomical males who presented as women sometimes took a conventionally female occupation such as midwife, faith healer, or even medium to a fox spirit — yet, suspected of sexual predation, they risked death for the crime of “masquerading in female attire,” even when they had lived peacefully in their communities for years.
Matthew H. Sommer (BA Swarthmore, MA U. of Washington, PHD UCLA) is the Bowman Family Professor of History and, by courtesy, of East Asian Languages and Cultures at Stanford University. A social and legal historian of Qing dynasty China (1644-1912), his research uses original legal case records from local and central archives to explore gender, sexuality, and family. He is the author of SEX, LAW, AND SOCIETY IN LATE IMPERIAL CHINA (Stanford 2000) and POLYANDRY AND WIFE-SELLING IN QING DYNASTY CHINA (California 2015), which was the inaugural winner of the American Society for Legal History’s Peter Gonville Stein Book Award. His latest book, THE FOX SPIRIT, THE STONE MAIDEN, AND OTHER TRANSGENDER HISTORIES FROM LATE IMPERIAL CHINA (Columbia 2024) won the American Historical Association’s John K. Fairbank Prize, the American Society for Legal History’s Peter Gonville Stein Book Award, and the LGBTQ+ History Association’s John Boswell Prize.
Co-sponsored by the History Department’s History of Gender & Sexuality (HGS) Group.
Sponsor(s): Center for Chinese Studies