The four panelists present diverse modes of female political participation as well as various approaches to studying them. Yunxin Li discusses the male and female favorites at the Han court, going beyond modern assumptions about gender and sexuality by looking at their specific relationships with emperors and different ways of participating in politics. Qingfeng Nie focuses on China’s only female emperor Wu Zhao, considering her political activities through the lens of gossip and Tang urban culture. Qin Fang examines a woman in late imperial China who engaged in politics through writing poems and socializing with local literary elites. Mei Li Inouye treats anecdotes and rumors about Jiang Qing (Madame Mao) as a social text to ask what made Jiang Qing so objectionable to both women and men in the elite circles of film, theater, and Party politics across three decades, when marriage and art were closely intertwined with revolutionary politics.

All of the four presenters grapple with the challenges of using surviving sources to study gender and politics. Yunxin Li and Qingfeng Nie’s papers deal with the biases against palace women in histories written by scholar-officials as well as the historical value of scandal and gossip. Qin Fang’s paper presents the political views of a local elite woman through her own poems written during the Ming-Qing dynastic change. Mei Li Inouye’s research further complicates the picture, showing that anecdotes, rumors, film, and theater, whether by others or by Jiang Qing herself, could all reveal partial truths about a “complicated” first lady and female artist.

This panel will be interesting to a broad audience of Chinese history, gender, and sexuality, especially those studying gender and politics from a long-term view and interdisciplinary perspectives.