Matthew Sommer
I am a social and legal historian of China in the Qing dynasty (1644-1912). My research focuses on gender, sexuality, and family, and the main source for my work is original legal case records from local and central archives in China. My first book, SEX, LAW, AND SOCIETY IN LATE IMPERIAL CHINA (Stanford UP, 2000), was recently published in a Chinese translation (Guangxi Normal UP, 2023) that sold more than 40,000 copies in its first year and was ranked by Douban.com as one of the year’s ten best books in History and Culture. My second book, POLYANDRY AND WIFE-SELLING IN QING DYNASTY CHINA: SURVIVAL STRATEGIES AND JUDICIAL INTERVENTIONS (U of California P, 2015), was the inaugural winner of the American Society for Legal History’s Peter Gonville Stein Award for the best book on non-US legal history in English published in 2014-15. My third book, THE FOX SPIRIT, THE STONE MAIDEN, AND OTHER TRANSGENDER HISTORIES FROM LATE IMPERIAL CHINA (Columbia UP, 2024), won the LGBTQ+ History Association’s John Boswell Prize (co-winner for 2023-24). Future plans include a fourth book, tentatively entitled MALE SAME-SEX RELATIONS AND MASCULINITY IN QING CHINA, and a fifth, CRIMINAL PROCEDURE IN EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY CHINA: THE QING JUDICIARY IN ACTION.
