Courtesan Culture & Gender Fluidity in The Late Ming
What started as a fascination with Ming Dynasty courtesans quickly evolved into a deeper inquiry into the ways gender, power, and performance blur under pressure. Writing Elegance in Ambiguity was both intellectually thrilling and personally transformative. I found myself continually surprised by how these women navigated a world that both romanticized and restricted them. Drawing on theories of gender performativity, loyalist poetry, and material culture, I explored how courtesans—poets, artists, and political intermediaries—used ritualized femininity as strategy, not submission. They challenged the moral contradictions of their time, not through rebellion, but through artful negotiation. This paper reveals how their aesthetic lives became acts of quiet resistance. Curious? Download the full paper below to discover how ambiguity became their most powerful form of survival.
