JANET M THEISS portrait
  • Associate Professor, History
  • Associate Editor, Journal Late Imperial China, Late Imperial China
  • Co-Director, The Society for QIng Studies, The Society for Qing Studies
801-585-6477

Presentations

  • "She whistles carelessly shunning companions": Fashioning a Life without Family in 18th-Century China," to be presented on panel, "Unconventional Exemplarity: Gender Performances in Qing China and Chosǒn Korea," Annual Meeting of the Association for Asian Studies, March 2022 (virtual panel). Conference Paper, Accepted, 09/2021.
  • Discussant, Panel titled: "Justice Through the Looking Glass: Fiction, Technology, and Law in Late Imperial and Modern China," Annual Meeting of the Association for Asian Studies, Seattle, March 2021 (virtual). Other, Presented, 03/2021.
  • Discussant, Panel titled: "Justice Through the Looking Glass: Fiction, Technology, and Law in Late Imperial and Modern China," Annual Meeting of the Association for Asian Studies. Presentation, Presented, 09/2020.
  • Roundtable titled “Making Scholarship Work in the Digital No-Man's Land: Strategies for Research in the Partially Digital Age,” Annual Meeting of the Association for Asian Studies, Denver, March 2019. Presentation, Presented, 03/15/2019.
  • “The Inner Quarters as an Information Hub: A Case Study from a Qianlong Era Scandal,” on December 8, 2018 at a conference titled “The Politics of Scholarship: Experts, Lay People and the Production of Knowledge” held at the University of Chicago Campus in Hong Kong. Conference Paper, Refereed, Presented, 12/08/2018.
  • “Factions and Family in the Making of a High Qing Scandal.” Hosted by the East Asian Studies Program at Princeton University. Invited Talk/Keynote, Presented, 10/10/2017.
  • Presenter, Roundtable on “Celebrating Progress and Facing New Challenges,” at the Asian Studies Association of Australia Annual Meeting, in Canberra, July 5-7, 2016. Conference Paper, Refereed, Presented, 07/2016.
  • “Lessons from a Scandal: Sex, Corruption and Social Ferment in China’s "Flourishing Age." Presented at Part Two of the Workshop, “Moralism, Fundamentalism, and the Rhetoric of Decline in Eurasia, 1600-1900,” UCLA, February 27-28, 2015. Conference Paper, Refereed, Presented, 02/2015.
  • “A Private Scandal and Its Public Afterlife in Eighteenth-Century China,” Invited lecture presented at Northwestern University, October 31, 2014. Invited Talk/Keynote, Presented, 10/31/2014.
  • Discussant, Panel on “New Perspectives on the Cult of Female Chastity in Late Imperial China,” at the Annual Meeting of the Association for Asian Studies, Philadelphia, March 27-30, 2014. Presentation, Presented, 03/2014.
  • K.C.Liu Lecture in East Asian Studies, “Illicit Intimacies in the Flourishing Age: A Scandal and Its Afterlife in 18th-Century China,” University of California, Davis, May 14, 2013. Invited Talk/Keynote, Presented, 05/2013.
  • Discussant, Panel on “Family, Gender, and Law in Early Modern East Asia,” at the Annual Meeting of the Association for Asian Studies, San Diego, March 21-24, 2013. Presentation, Presented, 03/2013.
  • “Lessons from a Scandal: Sex, Corruption and Social Ferment in China’s "Flourishing Age." Presented at the Conference, “Moralism, Fundamentalism, and the Rhetoric of Decline in Eurasia, 1600-1900,” UCLA, February 8, 2013. Conference Paper, Refereed, Presented, 02/2013.
  • Paper on "Love Letters as Legal Evidence" to be presented at the workshop on "Chinese Letter Writing" at the University of Colorado, Boulder on August 17-19th 2012. Conference Paper, Presented, 08/2012.
  • “The Letter as Artifact of Sentiment & Legal Evidence,” Presented at the Workshop on Letters and Epistolary Culture in China, University of Colorado, Boulder, August 17-18, 2012. Conference Paper, Refereed, Presented, 08/2012.
  • "Elite Engagement with the Judicial System in the Qing and its Implications for Legal Practice and Legal Principle", to be presented at Columbia University in May 2012. Conference Paper, Presented, 05/2012.
  • “Elite Engagement with the Judicial System in the Qing and its Implications for Legal Practice and Legal Principle,” Presented at the International Workshop on Chinese Legal History/Culture/Modernity, Columbia University, May 4-6 2012. Conference Paper, Refereed, Presented, 05/2012.
  • “Corruption and Social Networks: The Workings of Bribery in Two Qianlong Era Family Lawsuits.” Paper presented at the conference Ming Qing Legal History at Nanjing Shifan Daxue, Nanjng, China, December 9-12, 2011. Conference Paper, Presented, 12/09/2011.
  • “Why Global Perspectives Matter in East Asian Gender History.” Paper presented at the conference, Re-Considering East Asian Studies,” Korea University, Seoul, June 2009. Conference Paper, Refereed, Presented, 2009.

Languages

  • French, functional.
  • Japanese, basic.
  • Mandarin Chinese, fluent.
  • Russian, basic.

Geographical Regions of Interest

  • Asia
  • China

Publications

  • Janet Theiss (2023). "She whistles carelessly shunning companions": Fashioning a Life without Family in 18th-Century China". Journal of Chinese Literature and Culture. Published, 09/2023.
  • Janet Theiss (2020). The Logic of Gender in Chinese Legal Culture. Routledge. Accepted, 03/2020.
  • Janet Theiss, Barbara Molony, Hyaeweol Choi & Barbara Molony, Hyaeweol Choi (2020). Oxford Handbook of Gender History in Modern East Asia . Oxford University Press. Accepted, 02/2020.
  • Whither Confucian Family Values? New Research on Marriage, Trafficking, and the Things People Do to Survive,” a review of Matthew Sommer, Polyandry and Wife-Selling in Qing Dynasty China (University of California Press, 2015) and Zhao Ma, Runaway Wives, Urban Crimes, and Survival Tactics in Wartime Beijing, 1937-1949 (Harvard University Press, 2015). Published, 09/2016.
  • Gender in Modern East Asia, co-authored with Barbara Molony and Hyaeweol Choi, in press with Westview, 2015. Published, 03/2016.
  • “Elite Engagement with the Judicial System in the Qing and its Implications for Legal Practice and Legal Principle.” In Chen Li and Madeleine Zelin, eds., Chinese Law: Knowledge, Practice and Transformation, 1530s to 1950s (Leiden: Brill, 2015). Published, 01/2015.
  • “The Letter as Artifact of Sentiment & Legal Evidence.” In Antje Richter, ed., History of Chinese Epistolary Culture (Leiden: Brill, 2015). Published, 01/2015.
  • 婚姻暴力描述及對男性修養的批判 (Translation of “Explaining the Shrew: Narratives of Spousal Violence and the Critique of Masculinity in 18th-Century Criminal Cases”). Published in Falu, shehui jingji ziyuan yu xueshu huayu kongjian: shijie jingying xuezhe guanyu zhongguo chuantong falu wenhua lunbian (Scholarly Discourse on Legal and Socio-economic Sources: Essays by Noted Scholars from Around the World on Chinese Legal Culture) (Legal Studies Press, Beijing, 2010). Published, 2010.
  • “Love in a Confucian Climate: The Perils of Intimacy in Eighteenth-Century China.” Nan Nü: Men, Women and Gender in Early and Imperial China, 2009. Published, 2009.
  • “Explaining the Shrew: Narratives of Spousal Violence and the Critique of Masculinity in 18th-Century Criminal Cases.” In Law and Writing in Late Imperial China, Robert Hegel and Katherine Carlitz, eds. The University of Washington Press, 2007, pp. 44-63. Published, 2007.
  • “Female Suicide, Subjectivity and the State in Eighteenth-Century China.” Gender & History 16:3 (November 2004): 1-25. Published, 2004.
  • Disgraceful Matters: The Politics of Chastity in Eighteenth-Century China (The University of California Press, 2004). Published, 2004.
  • "Femininity in Flux: Gendered Virtue and Social Conflict in the Mid-Qing Courtroom." In Chinese Femininities/Chinese Masculinities: An Introductory Reader, edited by Susan Brownell and Jeffrey Wasserstrom (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002), pp. 47-66. Published, 2002.