Visiting scholar to discuss changes in Chinese marriage laws

"Culture Wars, Conflicting Values, and Changes in Chinese Marriage Law in the Age of Khubilai Khan (1260-1368)" will be the topic of Bettine Birge when she visits Skidmore on Monday, Nov. 23. Free and open to the public, the lecture is scheduled from 4 to 5:30 p.m. in Murray Aikins Dining Hall (second floor, room four). 

The Mongols ruled China for more than a century (1260-1368). What are the legacies of the Mongol rule?  Birge will present her recent research on marriage disputes in 13th-century China, during the Mongol occupation. She will show how the Mongol invasions created a clash of cultures that led to a rethinking of fundamental social and religious values, which resulted in major changes in Chinese marriage law that lasted into the 20th century.

Birge is a professor of East Asian Languages and Cultures and History at the University of Southern California.  Her research focuses on Chinese and Inner-Asiansocial and cultural history, specializing in comparative systems of marriage, property law, Confucianism and gender relations.

She is the author of Women, Property, and Confucian Reaction in Sung and Y an China (Cambridge University Press, 2002), and is completing another book Marriage and the Law in the Age of Khubilai Khan: A Study and Translation of Marriage Case from the Yuan dianzhang (Statues and Precedents of the Yuan dynasty).

This event is sponsored by Asian Studies, International Affairs, Women's Studies, and History.