Dorothy Ko papers (Ms.2019.006)

Biographical / Historical

Dorothy Ko is a cultural historian who works on gender, the body, technology and art in early modern China. She received her BA in 1978, her MA in 1979, and her PhD in 1989, all from Stanford University. Her PhD dissertation was titled, "Toward a Social History of Women in Seventeenth Century China."

After earning her PhD, Ko served as Assistant Professor at the State University of New York at Stony Brook from 1989 to 1990, at Temple University in Japan in 1991, and at the University of California, San Diego from 1991 to 1995. She was promoted to Associate Professor in 1996 and moved on to Rutgers University. Today Ko teaches undergraduate and graduate courses on gender and writing in China; visual and material cultures in China; and the history of the body in East Asia at Barnard College and Columbia University.

Ko is the author of several books including "The Social Life of Inkstones: Artisans and Scholars in Early Qing China" (University of Washington Press, 2017), "Every Step a Lotus: Shoes for Bound Feet" (University of California Press, 2001), and "Teachers of the Inner Chambers: Women and Culture in Seventeenth-Century China" (Stanford University Press, 1994). "Cinderella's Sisters: A Revisionist History of Footbinding" (University of California Press, 2005) was awarded the Joan Kelly Memorial Prize of the American Historical Association for the best book in women's history and/or feminist theory. Along with Lydia Liu and Rebecca Karl, Ko also coedited "The Birth of Chinese Feminism: Essential Texts in Transnational Theory" (Columbia UP, 2013).

Ko has won many awards and fellowships including a Guggenheim Fellowship (2000–2002) and an appointment at the Institute for Advanced Study (2000–2001) for her research on textiles, fashion, and women's work. More recently, she was awarded an American Council of Learned Societies fellowship (2012–2013) for her research project on female artisans in China. She served as guest curator for an exhibition, "Shoes in the Lives of Women in Late Imperial China," at the Bata Shoe Museum in Toronto.

In 2018, Ko became a member of the Feminist Theory Archive Board at the Pembroke Center for Teaching and Research on Women, Brown University. Additional research and teaching materials will be available upon her retirement.