17th Enemy Encounters Webinar “Ambivalent Discourses on Women’s Enmity in the Qing Empire”2026.6.14 {en}

Please see below for information about the seventeenth session of the 2025-2026 Enemy Encounters in East Asia webinar series of the Research Training Group „Ambivalent Enmity: Dynamics of Antagonism in Asia, Europe, and the Middle East” at Heidelberg University and the Heidelberg University of Jewish Studies, Germany.

“Victims or Villains: Ambivalent Discourses on Women’s Enmity in the 18th and 19th Century Qing Empire”
James Bonk
(Visiting Assistant Professor, The College of Wooster)

• June 18, 2026, 4:00 PM (Heidelberg, CEST) via ZOOM.
• The webinar will be recorded, but not the question time.
• If you would like to attend the webinars, please contact barend.noordam[at]hcts.uni-heidelberg.de.

In this session, James Bonk (Visiting Assistant Professor, The College of Wooster) will share his thoughts on women’s experiences of war and the discourse shaping it during the Qing dynasty:

Scholarship on women’s experiences of war in the Qing period has focused on the perspective of elite women. This presentation is part of an effort to provide a broader understanding of women’s experiences of war and discourses that shaped these experiences. The first part of the presentation examines official efforts to define and determine women’s enmity during the widespread rebellions of the late Qing. I suggest that determinations of enmity were often inconsistent, shaped by a range of factors: the challenge of applying status-based collective responsibility, the value of captive women in the marketplace, a spatial-moral logic that cast suspicion on women out of place, and a variety of strategic considerations. The second part of the presentation shifts to ambivalent representations of women enemies in non-official writings, particularly highlighting the tension between moral condemnation and a fascination with martial women.

BACKGROUND

For more information about the Research Training Group „Ambivalent Enmity: Dynamics of Antagonism in Asia, Europe, and the Middle East”, please go to our website https://www.ambivalentenmity.uni-heidelberg.de/en.

The RTG also produces the podcast series Enemy Encounters which features interviews and in-depth discussions conducted by members of the RTG with scholars, researchers and journalists about various cases of ambivalent enmity in Eurasia as a whole. It can be accessed here: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/enemy-encounters/id1783137716.

Previous recorded webinar sessions can be watched on the YouTube channel of Heidelberg University here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xw0s5rDZZ0c&list=PLuRaSnb3n4kSI9PBuEf3WECUVZ6V_k9mB.

Further information at https://www.ambivalentenmity.uni-heidelberg.de/en.

Source: 17th Enemy Encounters Webinar “Ambivalent Discourses on Women’s Enmity in the Qing Empire”, H-Net: Humanities & Social Sciences Online, licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 US.