Berg, DariaDariaBerg2023-04-132023-04-132016https://www.alexandria.unisg.ch/handle/20.500.14171/10488010.1163/15685322-9913P0005This article focuses on female editorship and sexual politics in late Ming and early Qing China, using Hua suo shi, an anthology edited by the courtesan poet Xue Susu, as a case study. It traces textual production and transmission, and reconstructs the literary and cultural contexts of this work to explore the courtesan’s editorial gaze and representation of gender through a close reading of it. The analysis of its two main themes—women as commodities, and women as agents—shows how the courtesan editor re-imagined China’s cultural landscape from her point of view. New examples of female agency are discovered in analyzing the cultural process of editing as a “web of discourses,” providing a window on the emergence of a new female editorial voice in early modern China’s cultural discourse.enjournal article