Dr. Ling Ma is a social and cultural historian of late imperial and modern China. She received her B.A. and M.A. in history from Peking University and her PhD from the University at Buffalo. Her research focuses on reproductive health, clinical practice, everyday life, as well as gender, law, and petty crimes in late nineteenth- and early 20th-century China.
She is completing a book manuscript tentatively titled Mortal Labor: Abortion, Childbirth, and Everyday Crisis in Early Twentieth-Century China. Her book focuses on a diverse set of rank-and-file players of varying nationalities, upbringings, occupations, and genders, who found themselves in the eclectic medical, legal, and cultural environment of late Qing and Republican China. It examines the ways in which these historical actors interacted with each other, negotiated their public/professional and personal lives, and addressed their reproductive needs, aspirations, crises through actions, words, and emotions.
Office Hours, Spring 2023
T/TH 12:30-1:30, and by appointment.
Curriculum Vitae
Education
PhD, University at Buffalo
MA, Peking University
BA, Peking University
Scholarly Activities
Monograph in Preparation
Mortal Labor: Abortion, Childbirth, and Everyday Crisis in Early Twentieth-Century China.
Select Research Publications
- “Bringing the Law Home: Abortion, Reproductive Coercion, and the Family in Early Twentieth-Century China,” Women’s History Review, 30, no. 6 (2021), 990-1008.
- “Repositioning the Family and the Household in a Global History of Abortion: The Case of Early-Twentieth-Century China.” Nursing Clio, August 30, 2018.
Select Book Reviews
- Review of The Suicide of Miss Xi: Democracy and Disenchantment in the Chinese Republic, by Bryna Goodman, Twentieth-Century China, 47, no. 2 (May 2022)
- Review of Reinventing Licentiousness: Pornography and Modern China, by Y. Yvon Wang, Choice, 59, no. 3 (November 2021)
Recent Conference Presentations and Invited Talks
- Panelist for “Standing Together: Patterns of Resistance in China and Iran: Celebrating March 8th—International Women’s Day,” RIT Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program Speaker Series, Rochester Institute of Technology, March 2023.
- “Mortal Feelings: Fetal and Infantile Deaths as Experience and Memory in Republican China,” paper presented at the Association for Asian Studies 2023 Annual Conference, February, 2023.
- “Men, Masculinity, and Childbirth in Late Qing and Republican China,” lecture for the Cornell Contemporary China Initiative “Engendering China” Lecture Series, Ithaca, New York, February, 2023.
- “Rediscovering Abortion by Turning Away from It: Researching Abortion in Early Twentieth-Century China,” lecture for the “Globalizing Roe” Speaker Series, organized by the Willson Center, the Gender & History Workshop in the History Department, and the Institute for Women’s Studies at the University of Georgia, November 2022.
Signature Courses
History Matters: Women and Gender in East Asian History (HIST 112)
History of Modern East Asia (HIST 282)
The Art of Saying No: Dissent in Chinese History and Culture (HIST 284)
Interpretations in History: Treaty-Port Shanghai (HIST 301)
Modern China (HIST 476)
Race, Class, and Gender (WGST 310)
History of Unpopular Ideas (INTD 105)
Research Interests
- Modern China
- Women, Gender, and Reproduction
- Law, Medicine, and Crime
- Material Culture and Everyday Life
- Death and Dying
- Masculinity and the History of Emotions