Women’s Literacy Practices in Late Medieval China (600-1000)

Women’s Literacy Practices in Late Medieval China (600-1000)

Rebecca Fu - CEAS Postdoctoral Associate & Lecturer in East Asian Languages and Literatures

Wednesday, January 20, 2016 - 12:00pm to 1:30pm
Room 241, Rosenkranz Hall See map
115 Prospect Street
New Haven, CT 06511

Female literacy is an issue with both historical and contemporary relevance. My study traces women’s engagement and involvement in text-based activities back to the second half of the 1st millennium, a period during which the written word played an ever-increasing role in people’s day-to-day lives. By introducing the concepts of “literacy practices” and “literacy events” into this work’s analytical framework, I expand the scope of my research to encompass women who used literacy without necessary being literate themselves. This view of literacy is concerned less with an individual’s unaided ability to read or write than with their understanding of and ability to use the power of writing. The use of certain types of primary materials underutilized in the field of Chinese literature, such as Turfan and Dunhuang manuscripts and Tang dynasty tomb inscriptions, helps bring into focus the generally overlooked category of non-elite women. My study develops a new approach to the decoding of Chinese manuscripts. Rather than restricting my examination to the content of the written word, I pay special attention to a manuscript’s material and social properties, as well as its specific physical features. These “extra-textual” features offer testimony, not mediated by the literate male elite, to women’s ability to manipulate the powerful tool of writing to achieve their ends. 


Rebecca Shuang Fu focuses on Chinese literature and textual culture in the 1st millennium, particularly Turfan and Dunhuang manuscripts (200–1000). At the same time, she also has a broad range of interests in social history, art history, popular religion and culture, current archaeology, history of writing, and women’s and gender studies. Her current book project, Women’s Literacy Practices in Late Medieval China, traces women’s engagement and involvement in text-based activities back to the second half of the 1st millennium, a period during which the written word played an ever-increasing role in people’s day-to-day lives. Drawing on certain types of primary materials underutilized in the field of medieval Chinese literature, such as Turfan and Dunhuang manuscripts, this book’s interdisciplinary approach brings into focus the generally overlooked category of non-elite women. Rebecca received her Ph.D. from University of Pennsylvania in 2015. While at Yale, she will be revising her dissertation into a book manuscript, frequenting the libraries, deciphering manuscripts, and teaching an undergraduate seminar, “Writing and Textual Culture in China and Beyond.”

A light lunch will be provided.  Please RSVP to eastasian.studies@yale.edu by 1/15.

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