Matthew H. Sommer | email
Associate Professor of History, Stanford University
Matthew Sommer teaches Chinese history at Stanford. He was educated at Swarthmore College (B.A. 1983), the University of Washington (M.A. 1987), and UCLA (Ph.D. 1994). His research focuses on gender, sexuality, family, and law in late imperial China, with emphasis on the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. He is the author of Sex, Law, and Society in Late Imperial China (Stanford UP, 2000), and is currently completing a book entitled, "Wife-Selling and Polyandry in Qing Dynasty China: Survival Strategies and Judicial Interventions" (under contract to Stanford UP). Long-term research interests include the female deficit in China; male same-sex union in the Qing dynasty; and the history of abortion and contraception in China.
For his fellowship, Sommer will continue work on his forthcoming manuscript and will travel to China and/or Taiwan to research primary sources in the archives. He will give an informal talk to this year's Faculty Fellows and Clayman Institute Affiliated Faculty on March 17th. Details here.
Further information about Professor Sommer is available from his website.
Return to Faculty Research Fellows page
