Please note that learners must be 18 years of age or older.

Instructor: Xiaoxing (BA, MA in History)

Course description: How did people in imperial China understand love, virtue, and desire before the arrival of Western gender and sexual categories? This course investigates how gender and power were organized and contested from the early Chinese empires to the revolutionary dawn of twentieth-century China.

Drawing on historiography alongside primary materials such as literature, art, legal and medical texts, we'll examine how gender and sexuality were lived, understood, and reimagined across centuries. We'll move from Confucian ideals that defined virtue and deviance to the "shared peach" stories of the Han and the gender-nonconforming tales of the Qing, from the physical discipline of foot binding to revolutionary currents of feminist movements.

What counted as normal? What was condemned as deviant? How can we meaningfully talk about the modern terms like "homosexuality," "transgender," and "queer" in imperial China? By the end of the course, we will uncover how these categories of intimacy shifted when the weight of tradition met Western imperialism, colonialism, and modern reforms.

Course time: online on Zoom, 7:00 - 9:00 pm (Eastern Time Zone), Mondays, March 30th, 2025 - May 18th, 2026 (8 weekly sessions in total)

Course fees: 250~360 USD, based on a sliding scale of what you can afford. (If you require further financial accommodation, please reach out to us.)

Net proceeds from this course will be donated to Palestinian families in Gaza on our list, as well as other NPOs and registered charities helping Palestinian families. Please see our donation logfor our past donations.