Dr Cheuk Yee Wai is the Project Support Coordinator for the ERC Project ‘TEXTCOURT: Linking the Textual Worlds of Chinese Court Theater, ca. 1600‒1800’. Her areas of responsibility include:
- Reporting and communications for the project
- Administrative support for project team members and partners
- Organising workshops and other events associated with the project.
Educational Background:
2019-2023: DPhil in Chinese Studies, University of Oxford
2017-2019: PhD in Chinese and Inner Asian Studies, SOAS University of London
2015‒2017: MPhil in Gender Studies, The Chinese University of Hong Kong
2010‒2013: BA in Religious Studies, The Chinese University of Hong Kong
Research Interests:
Dr Wai’s general research interests revolve around representations of the erotic, females and taboos. She began studying late imperial Chinese erotic novels for her MPhil thesis, in which she investigated the images of Buddhist monks in selected erotic novels. For her DPhil thesis, ‘Sisters in Crime: Women and Illicit Sexual Affairs in Late Imperial Chinese Erotic Fiction’, she shifted her focus to the representation of female bodies and female inter-relationships to the stereotypes of women from different background, and the instability of their relationship irrespective of their presumed social status. Dr Wai is currently exploring further the topics of sexuality, women's everyday life and the perceptions of menstruation in pre-modern China.
Courses Taught:
Literary Worlds and Cultural Flows in Pre-modern China
Recent Publications and/or Conferences:
Presentation on ‘Exploration of Religious Worldview in Court Theatre: with Hunyuanhe as an Example’, in the Digital Humanities and Literary Transmissions in Pre-modern East Asia Workshop (Vietnam Academy of Social Sciences, 26 September 2023).
Presentation on ‘Reading Maidservants in the Imperial Chinese Erotic Novel Langshi’, in the Talking Bodies 2023 Conference (University of Chester, 13 June 2023).
Presentation on ‘Sex life of pre-modern Chinese maidservants’, in the British Association of Chinese Studies 2022 Conference (University of Oxford, 31 August 2022).
Presentation on ‘Sleeping with Mothers: Mother characters in Ming and Qing Erotic Fictions’, in the 2019 International Conference on Ming-Qing Studies (Academia Sinica, Taiwan, 29 August 2019).
Presentation on ‘Libertine Monks and Women: Sexual Fantasies in Late Imperial Chinese Vernacular Erotica’, in the University of Oxford China Humanities Graduate 2017 Conference: Extra(ordinary) China: Practices of the Everyday (University of Oxford, January 2017).
Email: cheukyee.wai@humanities.ox.ac.uk
