Wikipedia

Susan L. Mann

Not to be confused withSusan Mann (Canadian historian).

Susan Louise Mann(born 1943) is an American historian of China best known for her work on theQing dynastyand the role of women and gender in Chinese history. She was professor of history atUniversity of California, Davisfrom 1989 until her retirement in 2010.[1]

Susan L. Mann
BornSusan Louise Mann
1943 (age 80–81)
United States
LanguageEnglish
Alma materUniversity of Michigan
Stanford University
SubjectHistory of China
Notable awardsJoseph Levenson Book Prize
John K. Fairbank Prize
SpouseG. William Skinner

Her 1997 bookPrecious Records: Women in China's Long Eighteenth Centurywon theJoseph Levenson Book Prizein the field of pre-20th century China and theAmerican Historical Associationawarded theFairbank Prizefor the best book in East Asian history toThe Talented Women of the Zhang Family(2007). In making their award, the Historical Association said both books were "path-breaking interventions", praising the former for recognizing the important influence of elite Chinese women and the latter for exploring the significance of same-sex social environments for both genders in elite Chinese society, adding that both "brilliantly demonstrated how placing women and gender at the center of the inquiry changes our overall view of Chinese history."[2]

She was president of theAssociation for Asian Studies(2000) and has been a member of theAmerican Academy of Arts and Sciencessince 2013.[3]

Education and career

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Mann graduated in Far Eastern languages and literatures from theUniversity of Michigan,then earned her master's degree in Asian languages atStanford Universityand then her doctorate there in 1972.[4]Her doctoral dissertation concerned the eighteenth century scholar,Hong Liangji.[5]

She taught briefly atNorthwestern Universityand theUniversity of Chicagoin the mid-1970s, and atUniversity of California, Santa Cruzbefore joining the University of California, Davis, in 1989. At Davis she served as chair of the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures and the Department of History. She received the Outstanding Mentor Award from the UC Davis Consortium for Women and Research.[4]

She was married to the anthropologistG. William Skinneruntil his death in 2008.[6]

Scholarship on gender and women

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Mann's first works focused on the relation between the Chinese merchant class and local officials,[7]but while at the University of Chicago, The Women's Union asked Mann to be their sponsor. The students discussed feminist theory, which led Mann to ask new questions. She then turned her attention towomen and gender relations in Chinese history.[4]

Mann joined feminist scholars in the 1980s and 1990s, includingPatricia Ebrey,Charlotte Furth,Dorothy Ko,Evelyn Rawski,Paul Ropp,Ann Waltner,andEllen Widmer,who turned their attention to the roles of women in the lateMing dynastyand early and mid ManchuQing dynasty,the 16th through early 19th centuries. This period was relatively unstudied in spite of being the most richly documented period of Chinese history before Western influences became powerful in the 19th century. Economic growth and urbanization brought social mobility, while an expansion of printing and literacy gave voice to women. These recent scholars used texts writtenbywomen andforwomen in addition to texts written by menfororaboutwomen. They found that the anti-traditional biases of modern Chinese intellectuals against Confucianism and the traditional family had too often confirmed the same sorts of bias among Western scholars. The new work moved to correct misunderstandings about Confucian traditional society and the assumption that women were passive victims who helped to perpetuate their own victimhood because they were ignorant and powerless.[8]

Precious Records: Women in China's Long Eighteenth Century(1997), won the Joseph Levenson Prize from the Association for Asian Studies, andThe Talented Women of the Zhang Family(2007), was agroup biographyof women in several generations of a literati family in the lower Yangzi region.[3]The first,Precious Records,showed that upper-class women, although kept in the "inner quarters" and not allowed to participate in political life outside the home, were not mere victims of Confucian patriarchy. Mann used both the writings of the literati in their families, who wrote often appreciative accounts, and their own writings, mainly poetry.[9]

Mann's second prize-winning book,The Talented Women of the Zhang Family,explores many of the same themes but through portraits of three women, a mother, her daughter, and a great-niece, over a period from the 1790s to the 1860s, going from the height of Qing prosperity and peace to the chaos of theTaiping Rebellion.Mann not only translates the poetry of the women, but allows herself to recreate their feelings and invent some scenes that reveal their character.[10]

Gender and Sexuality in Modern Chinareprinted a range of her essays. Margaret Kuo, writing inChina Review Internationalpraised her insights on gender and sexuality in modern China and described her as a leading authority on the subject. The essays use approaches from history, literature, philosophy, religion, and other disciplines, but build into an argument that has larger dimensions. Mann shows that the Chinese state played a generous role in regulating gender and sexuality, categories which in turn give historians materials that they can use in innovative ways. Kuo singled out her "masterful treatment" ofthe rise and fall of dynastiesfor "illustrating how adopting sexuality as an analytic category enables the historian to tackle areas in which actual women may not have been present but gendered power formations and sexualized ways of understanding the world certainly were." Mann argues that the Chinese state was distinctive for the outsized role it played in regulating gender and sexuality, a role in which "the family, gendered division of labor, and processes of reproduction were more closely tied together with the operation of the state than perhaps in any other political system."[11]

Selected publications

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  • Jones, Susan Mann (1972).Hung Liang-Chi (1746–1809): The Perception and Articulation of Political Problems in Late Eighteenth Century China(PhD thesis). Stanford University.
  • Mann, Susan; Kuhn, Philip (1978). "Dynastic Decline and the Roots of Rebelion". In Fairbank, John King (ed.).Cambridge History of China.Vol. 10. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press. pp. 107–162.
  • Mann, Susan (1986). "New Perspectives on Chinese Urbanization".Journal of Urban History.13(1): 72–81.doi:10.1177/009614428601300104.S2CID144973491.
  • Mann, Susan (1987).Local Merchants and the Chinese Bureaucracy: 1750–1950.Stanford (Calif.): Stanford University Press.ISBN978-0-8047-1341-2.
  • Mann, Susan (1992). ""Fuxue" (Women's Learning) by Zhang Xuecheng (1738–1801): China's First History of Women's Culture ".Late Imperial China.13(1): 40–62.doi:10.1353/late.1992.0004.S2CID144166028.
  • Mann, Susan (1996). "Women in the Life and Thought of Zhang Xuecheng".Chinese Language, Thought, and Culture: Nivison and His Critics:98–105.
  • Mann, Susan (1997).Precious Records: Women in China's Long Eighteenth Century.Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press.ISBN978-0-8047-2743-3.
  • Mann, Susan (2000). "The Male Bond in Chinese History and Culture".American Historical Review.105(5): 1600–1614.doi:10.2307/2652032.JSTOR2652032.
  • Mann, Susan (2000). "Presidential Address: Myths of Asian Womanhood".The Journal of Asian Studies.59(4): 835–862.doi:10.2307/2659214.JSTOR2659214.S2CID161399752.
  • Mann, Susan; Cheng, Yu-Yin (2001).Under Confucian Eyes: Writings on Gender in Chinese History.Berkeley: University of California Press.ISBN978-0-520-22274-8.
  • Mann, Susan (2007).The Talented Women of the Zhang Family.Berkeley: University of California Press.ISBN978-0-520-25089-5.
  • Mann, Susan (2008). "Dowry Wealth and Wifely Virtue in Mid-Qing Gentry Households".Late Imperial China.29(1S): 64–76.doi:10.1353/late.0.0006.S2CID154221741.
  • Mann, Susan L. (2009)."Scene-Setting: Writing Biography in Chinese History".The American Historical Review.114(3): 631–639.doi:10.1086/ahr.114.3.631.
  • Mann, Susan (2011).Gender and Sexuality in Modern Chinese History.New York: Cambridge University Press.ISBN978-0-521-86514-2.

References

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Notes

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  1. ^Jones, Dave (November 12, 2014),LAURELS: Historian Mann earns lifetime achievement award,UC Davis
  2. ^Jones (2014).
  3. ^abAmerican Academy of Arts and Sciences (2016),Susan Mann
  4. ^abcMorain (2008).
  5. ^Jones (1972).
  6. ^Harrell, Stevan (2009)."In Memoriam: G. William Skinner, 1925–2008".The China Quarterly.198:453–458.doi:10.1017/S0305741009000411.
  7. ^American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2016),Susan Mann
  8. ^Ropp (1994),pp. 347–348.
  9. ^Furth (2008),pp. 1–2.
  10. ^Furth (2008),pp. 3–4, 6.
  11. ^Kuo (2012),p. 465.
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