Talks by Robin D.S. Yates, James McGill Professor, Department of History and Grace S. Fong, Professor, Department of East Asian Studies.
Monday, November 17, 2025
1:00 PM - 4:00 PM
Bunche Hall 10383
The Question of Slavery under the Qin
The topic of slavery has been and continues to be of major significance in studies of the civilizations and empires of the ancient Mediterranean World. Scholars of that world have examined the many sources in different genres deploying a range of methodologies, theoretical approaches, and comparative perspectives to reach new insights. In contrast, far fewer scholars have studied ancient Chinese slavery and the sources are much more limited. However, in recent years a great number of new legal and administrative sources have been recovered by archaeologists that enable research on the institution and practice of slavery under the Qin and early Han dynasties, the first unified empires. This paper will initiate an exploration of this new data in the light of some of the questions that have been raised by scholars of classical antiquity. Specifically, it will discuss the definition of ‘slave’ in comparison with ‘laborer-servant’.
Robin D. S. Yates is James McGill Professor (Emeritus) of East Asian Studies and History and Classical Studies, McGill University, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. He specializes in the social and cultural history of pre-modern China, the history of Chinese military science and technology, and the history of Chinese law. He has a strong interest in the history of Chinese women and in slavery in China. Among his numerous publications, he co-authored with the late Dr. Joseph Needham the second volume on military technology in the series Science and Civilisation in China, and, later, Law, State, Society in Early Imperial China with Anthony J. Barbieri-Low (Brill, 2015). He is currently researching the newly excavated and recovered early imperial administrative and legal documents and is working on a book, Inscribed on Bamboo and Wood: Revisions of the History of China’s First Empire, the Qin.
Xiao as Moral Agency: Filial Daughters and Family in Late Imperial China
This lecture explores how gender inflects the Confucian virtue of xiao 孝, commonly translated as filial piety. With the spread of women’s education in the Ming and Qing, the daughter’s filial piety towards her own parents emerged as a self-determining category in the general intensification of female virtue. Within this process, some daughters were able to appropriate filial piety as moral agency to determine their own life course and were able to avoid the normative female destiny of marriage. This study will draw on historical sources, such as biographies, and poetry to show how a different conception of family and care prompts female agency and self-determination.
Grace S. Fong is Professor Emerita of Chinese literature and former Chair in the Department of East Asian Studies, McGill University. She was trained by the late Professor Ye Jiaying at the University of British Columbia and specializes in poetry, especially that of women in the Ming and Qing dynasties. She was the Founder and Project Director of the Ming Qing Women’s Writings database until this year. She has published extensively, such as Wu Wenying and the Art of Southern Song Ci Poetry, Herself an Author: Gender, Agency, and Writing in Late Imperial China, recently translated into Chinese (2024); and co-edited several volumes. She is currently working on a literary biography of Lü Bicheng (1883-1943), a classical poet of modern times.
Sponsor(s): Center for Chinese Studies