Writing Against Erasure: Courtesans, Performance, and the Making of Late Ming Drama (名妓、表演與晚明戲劇)

Please join the GW Chinese Arts and Humanities Initiative for a book talk and lecture with Professor Peng Xu, associate professor at ShanghaiTech University. Peng Xu’s The Courtesan’s Memory, Voice, and Late Ming Drama (University of Michigan Press, 2025) reinterprets late Ming drama by foregrounding courtesan performance culture as a generative force in theatrical production. Drawing on a wide range of sources — including scripts, city guides, biographies, diaries, letters and visual materials — it argues that courtesans were not merely subjects of representation but active agents who reshape