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Jul 20, 2024
The Women Who Ruled China
Buddhism, Multiculturalism, and Governance in the Sixth Century
Summary
In the late fifth century, a girl whose name has been forgotten by history was born at the edge of the Chinese empire. By the time of her death, she had transformed herself into Empress Dowager Ling, one of the most powerful politicians of her age and one of the first of many Buddhist women to wield incredible influence in dynastic East Asia. In this book, Stephanie Balkwill documents the Empress Dowager’s rise to power and life on the throne against the broader world of imperial China under the rule of the Northern Wei dynasty, a foreign people from Inner Asia who built their capital deep in the Chinese heartland.
Building on largely untapped Buddhist materials, Balkwill shows that the life and rule of the Empress Dowager is a larger story of the reinvention of religious, ethnic, and gender norms in a rapidly changing multicultural society. The Women Who Ruled China: Buddhism, Multiculturalism, and Governance in the Sixth Century (U California Press, 2024) recovers the voices of those left out of the mainstream historical record, painting a compelling portrait of medieval Chinese society reinventing itself under the Empress Dowager’s leadership.
A free ebook version of this title is available through Luminos, University of California Press’s Open Access publishing program. Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more.
A transcript of the interview is available here.
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Jessica Zu
Jessica Zu is an intellectual historian and a scholar of Buddhist studies. She is an assistant professor of religion at the University of Southern California.
