Gary Wang

My dissertation, “Modern Girls and Musclemen: Engendering Beauty in China’s ‘New Culture,’ 1917–1954,” examines the early-twentieth-century emergence of two gendered motifs in paintings, advertisements, pictorial magazines, and movies. The study considers how the relationship between these images and the neologism meishu (fine art) impacted pre-existing notions of mei (beauty), art, the body, and respectability. Other projects include “Manchuness and the Liangbatou, from Hairdo to Headpiece (1830s–1930s),” which historicizes the material evolution of a headdress worn by Manchu women that became increasingly conspicuous during the first decade of the 20th century. This was a period when anti-Manchu sentiment among Chinese intellectuals intensified and, in 1911, ended the Qing dynasty lineage of Manchu emperors who reigned in Beijing since conquering it in 1644.