Dorothy Y. Ko

Dorothy Ko (Chinese 高彦頤) is a Professor of History and Women's Studies at the Barnard College of Columbia University. She is a historian of early modern China, known for her multi-disciplinary and multi-dimensional research. As a historian of early modern China, she has endeavored to engage with the field of modern China studies; as a China scholar, she has always positioned herself within the study of women and gender and applied feminist approaches in her work; as a historian, she has ventured across disciplinary boundaries, into fields that include literature, visual and material culture, science and technology, as well as studies of fashion, the body and sexuality.
Prior to joining the faculty of Barnard and Columbia, Ko has taught at the University of California, San Diego and at Rutgers University. She is the author of several books:,
“Teachers of the Inner Chambers: Women and Culture in Seventeenth-Century China” (Stanford University Press, 1994);
“Every Step a Lotus: Shoes for Bound Feet (University of California Press, 2001) and
”Cinderella’s Sisters: A Revisionist History of Footbinding” (University of California Press, 2005). This book is awarded the Joan Kelley Memorial prize from the American Historical Association for the best book on women's history or feminist theory published in the year.
Another book, with the title “Women and Confucian cultures in pre-modern China, Korea, and Japan," is co-edited by Dorothy Ko, JaHyun Kim Haboush, and Joan R. Piggott (University of California Press, 2003)
Ko's research has been supported by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation and the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, among others.

Ko received secondary education at the Queen Elizabeth School, Hong Kong. She pursued university and doctoral education at Stanford University, where she received the B.A., M.A., and PhD degrees.