The UVA East Asia Center and Corcoran Department of History will be joined by Ying Zhang, Professor of Chinese History at Leiden University, for a talk entitled "The History of Imprisonment as Family History: Rethinking the 'Patrimonial-Patriarchal-Bureaucratic' Framework in Ming History (1368-1644)."
The final talk in our Late Imperial China series, the event is free and open to the public, and will be held Friday, April 26, from 3:15 - 4:30 pm in Gibson 211.
Ying Zhang's current book on jailing officials in Ming China studies the history of imprisonment as family history and argues that the patriarchy played a critical role in sustaining the patrimonial bureaucracy. This presentation will specifically focus on how jailed officials managed their households remotely as patriarchs. How did the families and lineages organize to coordinate support? Did the gendered division of labor evolve to accommodate special needs? I show how the wife and concubines, adult sons, brothers, and other male relatives could all get involved in providing material and non-material assistance to ensure the bureaucrat's wellbeing during this time.. Meanwhile, the patriarch in confinement felt the urgency to implement greater control over gender and status boundaries within their households. These dynamics in turn reinforced the patriarchal values that integrated loyalty to the emperor, filial piety to parents, and fraternal and spousal dedications, core values of the Confucian ethical system.
