Weijing Lu

Weijing Lu has received academic training in classical literature and history in China and the United States. She earned her B.A. and M.A. degrees from Fudan University in Shanghai. In 1993, she came to the U.S. to study, and received her Ph.D. in history from the University of California, Davis in 2001.

Professor Lu teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in Chinese and East Asian history. Her primary research interests include Chinese women's and gender history, the history of the Chinese family and marriage, and late imperial social and cultural history. Her first book, True to Her Word: The Faithful Maiden Cult in Late Imperial China, explores the intellectual controversy and family conflict that surrounded the faithful maidens, and the beliefs, mentality, and lived experiences of these women. Recently, she guest-edited a special issue on China for the Journal of the History of Sexuality (2013).

Professor Lu is currently working on a book project investigating marriage, family relations, and intimacy in late imperial China. The project is making use of abundant (and largely underexplored) personal writings of men and women, including biographies, memoirs, poetry, and correspondences from the 17^th through the 19^th centuries. Her research has been supported by a number of sources, including fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the American Council of Learned Societies and a membership in the Institute for Advanced Study.

BOOKS AND EDITED JOURNAL ISSUE

Arranged Companions: Marriage and Intimacy in Qing China. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2021.

Chinese translation: Zhi zi zhi shou: Qingdai de hunyin he kangli qing’ai 执子之
手：清代的婚姻和伉俪情爱. Guilin: Guangxi shifan daxue chubanshe, 2024.

明清和近代的家庭与性别：曼素恩学术论文集 (Gender and the Family in Late Imperial and Modern China: Selected Works of Susan Mann). Shanghai: Fudan daxue chubanshe, 2021. Co-editor

True to Her Word: The Faithful Maiden Cult in Late Imperial China (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2008).

            Winner of Berkshire Conference of Women Historians 2008 First Book Prize.

Chinese translation: Shizhi buyu: Ming-Qing shiqi de zhennü xianxiang 矢志不渝：明清时期的贞女现象. Nanjing: Jiangsu renmin chubanshe, 2010. (海外中国研究系列丛书)

Journal of the History of Sexuality “Special Issue on China.” 22.2 (May 2013). Guest editor.

ARTICLES

“Mystery and History: Revisiting ‘A Letter to My Husband’ by Yunzhen.” Journal of
Chinese History. Published online by Cambridge University Press. 14 September 2023,
pp. 1-28

“Poetry, Intimacy, and Male Fidelity: The Marriage of Wang Caiwei and Sun Xingyan.”
Journal of Chinese History 6.2 (July 2022), pp.315-336.

“Gender and Social Life in Imperial China.” In Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Asian History. Oxford University Press, 2019. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190277727.013.201

“A Wife’s Sacrifices.” In Patricia Ebrey, Ping Yao, and Cong Ellen Zhang eds., Chinese Funerary Biographies: An Anthology of Remembered Lives. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2019. 

“Qu Dajun and His Polygynous Relationships.” Mingdai yanjiu No. 31 (December 2018).

“Women, Gender, the Family, and Sexuality.” In Michael Szonyi ed. A Companion to Chinese History. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., 2016.

“Writing Love: The Heming ji by Wang Zhaoyuan and Hao Yixing.” In Beverly Bossler ed.  Gender and Chinese History: Transformative Encounters. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2015.

“Reviving An Ancient Filial Ideal: The 17^th-Central Practice of Lumu廬墓.” The Chinese Historical Review 20.2 (November 2013).

“Abstaining from Sex: Mourning Ritual and the Confucian Elite.” Journal of the History of Sexuality 22.2 (May 2013).

“Introduction.” Journal of the History of Sexuality 22.2 (May 2013).

“Personal Writings on Female Relatives in the Qing Collected Works.” In Clara Wing-ching Ho ed.  Overt and Covert Treasures: Essays on the Sources for ChineseWomen’s History. Hong Kong: The Chinese University Press, 2012.

“Chinese Women’s Studies in the United States.” In Zhang Haihui et al eds. Chinese Studies in North America – Research, Teaching and Resources. (In Chinese). Beijing: Zhonghua Shuju, 2011.

“ ‘A Pearl in the Palm:’ A forgotten Symbol of the Father-daughter Bond.” Late Imperial China 31.1 (June 2010).

“Faithful Maiden Biographies: A Forum for Ritual Debate, Moral Critique, and Personal Reflection.” In Joan Judge and Hu Ying eds. Beyond Exemplar Tales: Women’s Biography in Chinese History. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010.

“The Chaste and the Licentious: Female Sexuality and Moral Discourse in Ming and early Qing China.” Early Modern Women: An Interdisciplinary Journal 5 (2010).

“Beyond the Paradigm: Tea-picking Women in Imperial China.” Journal of Women’s History 15.4 (Winter 2004).

“Poems on Tea-picking.” In Susan Mann and Yuying Cheng, eds., Under Confucian Eyes: Writings on Gender in Chinese History. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001.

“Uxorilocal Marriage among Qing Literati.” Late Imperial China 19.2 (December 1998).

• Meanings of Marriage in late Imperial China

• HIEA 137. Women and the Family in Chinese History.
• HIEA 138. Women and the Chinese Revolution.
• HILD 11. East Asia and the West, 1279-1911.
• HIEA 125. Women and Gender in East Asia.
• HIEA 171/271. Society and Culture in pre-modern China.
• HIGR 217C Historical Scholarship in Pre-modern Chinese History, 1200-1800
• HIGR 164/264. Seminar in Late Imperial Chinese History