Dorothy Ko

Professor of Chinese History

Office: Milstein 803
Office Hours: T 2-4 PM

Phone: (212) 854-9624
Email: dk2031@columbia.edu

Educational Background

BA: Stanford University
MA: Stanford University
PhD: Stanford University

Classes Taught

HIST BC2861 Chinese Cultural History
HIST BC2865 Gender and Power in China
HIST BC3514 Historical Approaches to Feminist Questions
HIST BC3864 Feast and Famine: Food and Environment in Chinese History

Research Interests

History of China, Gender, History of science, technology and medicine

Professor Ko’s research interest is the everyday lives of women in China –along with the domestic objects they made by hand–as a significant part of country’s cultural, economic and political development. She works at the intersections of anthropology, history, and women’s studies. Ko’s 2005 book, Cinderella Sisters: A Revisionist History of Footbinding, won the Joan Kelly Memorial Prize of the American Historical Association. Recently, she has been turning her attention to the skills of women’s artisans such as embroiderers, stone carvers, and ceramic artists. She is also co-editor of Women and Confucian Cultures in Pre-modern China, Korea, and Japan. Ko’s courses include Chinese cultural history, body histories, women and culture in 17th century China, and Confucian cultures.

Ko earned undergraduate and advanced degrees at Stanford University, including the doctorate. Her honors include lifetime memberships at the Academia Sinica and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 2022 she served as the Kluge Chair in Countries and Cultures of the North at the John W. Kluge Center, Library of Congress. She has received fellowships from the Institute for Advanced Study (2000-2001), the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation (2000-2001), the American Council of Learned Societies (2012-13), and the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin, among others. Before joining the Barnard faculty in 2001, Professor Ko taught at Rutgers University.

Selected Publications

The Social Life of Inkstones: Artisans and Scholars in Early Qing China (Washington, 2017)

Cinderella’s Sisters: A Revisionist History of Footbinding (University of California, 2005)

Teachers of the Inner Chambers: Women and Culture in Seventeenth-century China (Stanford, 1994)