HSIAO-WEN CHENG is assistant professor of Chinese religion and history at the University of Pennsylvania. She is a cultural and intellectual historian interested in issues related to gender, sexuality, medicine, and religion in Middle Period China. She is currently completing a book manuscript on female sexuality in Chinese history. The book examines the emerging interest in women's heterosexual inactivity in Song medicine and the new narratives about celibate women in popular anecdotes and hagiographies. Her next project will investigate the shifting categorization of sexual anomalies in premodern China and the notion of chang in both its synchronic (common) and diachronic (constant) senses.
RONALD EGAN is professor of sinology at Stanford University and department chair of East Asian Languages and Cultures. His research is on Song Dynasty literary culture, aesthetics, biji and supernatural tales, and the interplay of poetry and image in later Chinese painting. He is the author of The...
