"Injuring Customs and Corrupting Hearts": Pornography and Modernity in China at the Turn of the 20th Century
Stanford University Department of History 450 Serra Mall, Building 200 Stanford, CA 94305-2024
Matthew Sommer
This project uses explicit sexual media in Beijing's print markets at the turn of the twentieth century to illustrate how sex, information technology, and cultural politics collided in the transition from early modern sexual culture to a global sexual modernity. On the one hand, it connects experiences at the most intimate scale of individuals' bodies, desires, and self-identity to broader changes in institutions, ideologies, and material life at a transformational moment in Chinese history. On the other, it proposes a corrective intervention in the global histories of sexuality, information, and modernity. Sources range from police archives and chapbooks to periodicals.
Teaching Fellow (Instructor), Stanford University, Fall 2012-13. "Forbidden Desires in China, From Daoist Devotees to Dr. Sex." Teaching Assistant, Stanford University, Fall 2010. Professor Kären Wigen, "Japan in the Age of the Samurai." Teaching Assistant, Stanford University, Spring 2010. Professor Martin Lewis. "Global Historical Geography." Teaching Assistant, Stanford University, Winter 2009. Professor Matthew Sommer. "Late Imperial China." Trip Leader/Instructor/Resident Advisor, Putney Student Travel Excel China, Beijing, China, June-July, 2008. "Chinese Cuisine."
Entries for "China," "Drinking and gender in popular culture," and "East Asia," in Alcohol: Social, Cultural, and Historical Perspectives, SAGE, forthcoming 2015. "Introduction." Forthcoming in a special issue of Zannegaar Journal, "Feminism and Sexuality: Commercial Sex," Institute for War and Peace Reporting, Fall 2013. "Whorish representation": Pornography, Media, and Modernity in Beijing, 1880-1927." Modern China (OnlineFirst), August 27, 2013. Review of Wang, Dun. "Give Me a Day, and I Will Give You the World": Chinese Fiction Periodicals in Global Context, 1900-1910. (Doctoral Dissertation, University of California, Berkeley, 2008). Published at Chinese History Dissertation Reviews (http://dissertationreviews.wordpress.com/). "And the Men and Women Merely Players: Staging the Body in the Qing Courtroom." Paper presented at the All-California Modern Chinese History Graduate Research Conference, University of California, San Diego, May 29-31, 2009.
Stanford Center for East Asian Studies Summer Dissertation Research Grant, 2012. Stanford History Department Distinguished Departmental Scholar, 2011-12. Stanford Freeman Spongli Institute for International Studies, Dissertation Grant in Chinese Studies, 2011-12. Stanford Clayman Institute for Gender Research, Marilyn Yalom Grant, 2011. Stanford Center for East Asian Studies Summer Research Grant, June-August 2010. Invited Participant, Berkeley-Academia Sinica Trans-Pacific Chinese Historical Research Council Winter Institute, January 2010. Stanford Humanities and Sciences Ph.D. Fellowship/Assistantship, 2008-present Foreign Language and Area Studies Grant, Hakodate International Foundation Intensive Japanese Language and Culture Program, June-August 2009. Phi Beta Kappa Member, 2008-present. Princeton University History Department Senior Thesis Prize in Asian History, 2008. Princeton University History Department Carter Kim Combe '74 Prize in History for Best Second-Semester Junior Paper, ,2008. Princeton University History Department Laurence Hutton Prize in History for Best Overall Departmental Record, 2008. Princeton University Creative Writing Program Frances LeMoyne Page Creative Writing Prize for Fiction Creative Thesis, 2008. Princeton University History Department William Koren Jr. Memorial Prize for Best Junior-Year Record, 2008. Princeton University Creative Writing Program Junior Prize in Creative Writing for Fiction, 2007.