Keith McMahon, "The Polyandrous Empress"

The Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies at Harvard University presents a talk with Keith McMahon on how history and literature wrote about the sexuality of imperial women.

From Zhao Feiyan in the Han to Wu Zetian in the Tang, historical sources contain at least eight accounts of polyandrous women in the royal palace.  After Wu Zetian, the accounts of such women decrease, though rumors about others appear until the last great empress of Chinese history, Cixi of the Qing.  Keith McMahon will discuss how history and literature wrote about the sexuality of imperial women, especially in light of the fact that the discourse of female fidelity did not allow for the polyandrous woman to exist to begin with.

Keith McMahon is professor in the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures at the University of Kansas, where he has taught Chinese language and literature since 1984.  His research is in Ming and Qing fiction and gender in Chinese history.  He has recently published Polygamy and Sublime Passion: Sexuality in China on the Verge of Modernity (2010) and Women Shall Not Rule: Imperial Wives and Concubines in China from Han to Liao (2013).