Education
Ph.D., Washington University in St. Louis, 2019
Gilbert (Zhe) Chen, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
Contact Info
Areas of Expertise
Late Imperial China, 14th-19th century; social history; history of religion; gender and sexuality
Biography
Gilbert Chen joined the History Department in 2019. In the same year, he earned his Phd in History from the Washington University in St. Louis for his dissertation, “Living in This World: A Social History of Buddhist Monks and Nuns in Nineteenth-Century Western China.” Dr. Chen studies the social, religious, and gender history of Chinese society during the late imperial era. Currently, he is working on a book manuscript project, tentatively titled Manly Monks: Sex, Family, and Community in Late Imperial China, investigating the construction of Buddhist monastic masculinity in the Qing dynasty (1644-1912). Drawing on monastic literature, popular culture, and legal archival research, Manly Monks takes seriously how ordinary monks negotiated masculine identities that straddled different normative gender regimes.
Selected Publications
“The Hybrid Court at Work: The Local Practice of the Buddhist Office in Qing China.” Buddhism, Law & Society (Forthcoming).
“Becoming a Nun in the Absence of Her Husband: Male Migration and Female Religiosity in Nineteenth-Century China.” International Journal of Asian Studies 21.1 (2024): 128-45.
“Local Matters: A Socioeconomic History of Monastic Reconstruction in Nineteenth-Century China.” Journal of Chinese Religions 50.2 (2022): 155-84.
“Monastic Mobility, Social Embeddedness, and Kinship Networks: Buddhist Clerical Sexuality in Late-Qing Sichuan.” Late Imperial China 43.1 (2022): 85-126.
“Impermanent Expulsion: Monastic Discipline in Nineteenth-Century China.” Buddhism, Law & Society 6 (2020-21): 185-223.
“Castration and Connection: Kinship Organization among Ming Eunuchs.” Ming Studies 74 (2016): 27-47.
“A Confucian Iconography of Cao E (Maiden Cao): Narrative Illustrations of a Female Deity in Late Imperial China.” NAN NÜ: Men, Women and Gender in China 18:1 (2016): 84-114.
Recent Book Reviews
Review of Making the Gods Speak: The Ritual Production of Revelation in Chinese Religious History, by Vincent Goossaert. China Review International 27:3&4 (2020): 181-86.
Review of Nursing Shifts in Sichuan: Canadian Missions and Wartime China, 1937-1951, by Sonya Grypma. China Review International 27:3&4 (2020): 194-97.
Review of The Religious Ethic and Mercantile Spirit in Early Modern China, by Ying-shih Yü. China Review International 27.2 (2020): 153-57.
Review of The Renewal of Buddhism in China: Zhuhong and the Late Ming Synthesis (Fortieth Anniversary Edition), by Chün-fang Yü. Reading Religion, June 30, 2022, https://readingreligion.org/9780231198530/the-renewal-of-buddhism-in-china/.
Review of Inside the World of the Eunuch: A Social History of the Emperor’s Servants in Qing China, by Melissa S. Dale. Orientalistische Literaturzeitung 116.1 (2021): 80-82.
Review of Sold People: Traffickers and Family Life in North China, by Johanna S. Ransmeier. China Review International 23.2 (2016): 182-87.
Courses Taught
| Fall 2024 | |
|---|---|
| HIST 210 | Urban Asia: Past and Present |
| HIST 316 | Revolutionary China |
| HIST 513 | Revolutionary China |