Thesis: Making Female Authority: Empress Dowager Chongqing and the Arts of the Qianlong Court
Supervised by Professor Stephen Whiteman and advised by Dr Sujatha Meegama
Funded by The Courtauld Scholarship
My thesis examines the art and architecture related to Empress Dowager Chongqing’s (Empress Xiaoshengxian, 1693–1777) three decennial birthdays and Buddhist worship to explore the construction of her authority and identity as the most powerful woman in the Qing empire during the Qianlong reign (r. 1735–1795). Empress Dowager Chongqing did not hold direct political power or serve as a regent. How do we understand the authority of an empress when it is not expressed through rulership or regency? By analysing works of art and architectural spaces, this dissertation argues that decennial birthday celebrations and Buddhist devotion became essential means of constructing the empress dowager’s social identity as the imperial matriarch. It shows that these practices enabled the public display of a gendered form of imperial authority grounded in maternal virtue and religious merit rather than direct political contribution.
Empress Dowager Chongqing’s sixtieth, seventieth, and eightieth birthdays and Buddhist worship led to some of the major Qing court patronage of art and architecture associated with imperial women in the Qianlong period. Previous studies have largely approached these materials from the perspective of the emperor’s filial piety. This dissertation studies the empress dowager as the central subject to reconsider the gendered power dynamic rooted in filial piety and to explore a feminine form of authority. Through documentary paintings, birthday gifts, Buddhist objects, spaces, and court archives, my PhD thesis demonstrates that birthday and Buddhist rituals became arenas that celebrated the authority of the empress dowager in the multicultural empire.
Education
- 2023-present: PhD in History of Art, The Courtauld Institute of Art
- 2020-2021: MA in History of Art, The Courtauld Institute of Art
- 2016-2020: BA in History of Art, New York University
