Keith McMahon

Keith McMahon
Professor, Chinese Language and Literature
East Asian Languages and Cultures
University of Kansas

Keith McMahon is professor in the department of East Asian Languages and Cultures at the University of Kansas, where he teaches Chinese language and literature. He studies fiction from the 16th to the early 20th centuries, sexuality and gender character types in literature and history of late imperial China, eroticism and pornography, the culture of opium smoking in 19th century China, and the history of imperial marriage from the Han to the Qing dynasties. Recently he published Saying All That Can Be Said. The Art of Describing Sex in Jin Ping Mei (2023), Women Shall Not Rule: Imperial Wives and Concubines in China from Han to Liao (2013) and  Celestial Women: Imperial Wives and Concubines from Song to Qing (2016), the latter of which appeared in Chinese in spring 2021.

He received his B.A. in 1974 in French and Comparative Literature from Indiana University, his M.A. in 1976 in Chinese from Yale University, and his Ph.D. in 1984 in Chinese literature from Princeton University. He studied one year of Chinese language in Taiwan and did Ph.D. and post-doctorate research in Shanghai and Beijing for a total of five years between 1977 and 1991. He has taught at the University of Kansas since 1984, where he was chair of the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures from 1996 to 2008, and is currently Director of Graduate Studies.

In the past decade, he has written on pornography and the art of describing sex in Ming and Qing fiction; the history of emperors and their wives and concubines, the institution of imperial polygamy, and the subject of queenship; nineteenth-century fiction and sexuality in China on the verge of modernity; and the culture of opium smoking in 19th and 20th century China and Euro-America. He has lectured in Chinese and English on these topics in the United States, China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Italy, Germany, the Czech Republic, France, and Denmark. He has published seven scholarly books, Causality and Containment in Seventeenth-century Chinese Fiction (Brill, 1988), Misers, Shrews, and Polygamists: Sexuality and Male/Female Relations in Eighteenth-century Chinese Fiction (Duke, 1995), The Fall of the God of Money: Opium Smoking in Nineteenth-century China (Rowman and Littlefield, 2002), Polygamy and Sublime Passion: Sexuality in China on the Verge of Modernity (University of Hawaii Press, 2010), Women Shall Not Rule: Imperial Wives and Concubines in China from Han to Liao (Rowman and Littlefield, 2013), Celestial Women: Imperial Wives and Concubines from Song to Qing (Rowman and Littlefield, 2016), and Saying All That Can Be Said. The Art of Describing Sex in Jin Ping Mei (Harvard Asia Center, 2023). He has also published a memoir in Chinese of his times in Taiwan and China up to the present, Isle Length of Road (Meng, zai lushang 梦，在路上, Beijing University Press, 2018).

马克梦教授从事明清小说、中国的性文化与性历史、晚清社会与文学中的鸦片文化、中国濒临现代的性别文化结构、以及历代宫廷中的后妃制度与性政治等方面的研究。于1974年获得印第安纳大学法语与比较文学系学士学位，于1976年获耶鲁大学东亚语言文化系的硕士学位，于1984年获得普林斯顿大学东亚研究系博士学位。1976 至1977年在台湾史丹福中心读书，1979年至1981年在上海复旦大学中文系进修，1984 年至1985年、1991年在北京大学访学。从1984至今在堪萨斯大学东亚语言文化系任教，从1996年至2008年任系主任。已出版了五本关于明末至晚清小说的著作。其中Misers, Shrews, and Polygamists: Sexuality and Male/Female Relations in Eighteenth-century Chinese Fiction, 于2001年由北京東方出版社出版了中译本《吝嗇鬼，潑婦，一夫多妻者》。最近专注于历代皇帝与后妃的婚姻关系的研究，于2013年出版了第一册《牝鸡无晨:中国历代皇帝的后与妃,汉至辽》, 于2016年出版了第二册，《天女临凡：中国历代皇帝与后妃，宋至清》（后者2021年用中文出版）。2018年出版了回忆录，《梦，在路上》（孟繁之编，北京大学出版社）; 2023 年出版了《一味打破世情。金瓶梅中写性的艺术》。