Emily Wilcox

Dr. Emily Wilcox 魏美玲 is Margaret Hamilton Professor of Modern Languages & Literatures/Chinese Studies at William & Mary and a 2024 Guggenheim Fellow in Dance Studies. Wilcox is core faculty in the Program in Asian and Middle Eastern Studies and affiliate faculty in the Program in Asian and Pacific Islander American Studies and the Program in Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies. Wilcox is also a Center Associate of the Lieberthal-Rogel Center for Chinese Studies at the University of Michigan, where she was previously tenured Associate Professor of Modern Chinese Studies before joining William & Mary in January 2021.

Wilcox earned her undergraduate degree from Harvard University, her MPhil from the University of Cambridge, and her PhD from the University of California, Berkeley. Wilcox has been a visiting graduate student and Fulbright Scholar at the Beijing Dance Academy, an international postdoctoral research fellow at the Shanghai Theatre Academy, and visiting graduate faculty at Minzu University of China. She received grants from the Blakemore Foundation, University of California Pacific Rim Research Program, American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS), Social Science Research Council (SSRC), Wilson Center, National Committee on US-China Relations Public Intellectuals Program, Chiang Ching-Kuo Foundation, Erasmus Mundus Visiting Scholar Program, and the School of Historical Studies at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. At Michigan, Wilcox directed the PhD program in Asian studies and was Associate Chair of the Department of Asian Languages and Cultures. At William & Mary, Wilcox served as Interim Chair of the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures and Director of the Chinese Studies Program.

Wilcox is an award-winning scholar of modern and contemporary China with a focus on performing arts, media, and cultural history. Wilcox has authored, co-edited, or translated six books: Revolutionary Bodies: Chinese Dance and the Socialist Legacy (University of California Press, 2018; Winner of the 2019 de la Torre Bueno Prize® from the Dance Studies Association); Corporeal Politics: Dancing East Asia (co-edited with Katherine Mezur, University of Michigan Press, 2020); 革命的身体：重新认识当代中国舞蹈文化 (Li Hongmei, trans., Fudan University Press, 2023); Inter-Asia in Motion: Dance as Method (co-edited with Soo Ryon Yoon, Routledge, 2023); and Teaching Film from the People's Republic of China (co-edited with Zhuoyi Wang and Hongmei Yu, Modern Language Association, 2024) and Creating with Roots: Contemporary Chinese National Folk Dance Choreography (authored by Rui Xu; Emily Wilcox, trans.). Professor Wilcox is co-creator with Liangyu Fu of the University of Michigan Chinese Dance Collection and author of more than thirty articles and book chapters in English and Chinese. She is currently writing a book about international dance exchanges and South-South solidarity in China during the Cold War. A complete list of Wilcox’s publications can be found here.

Wilcox teaches courses and advises undergraduate and graduate research in Chinese studies, Asian and Asian diaspora studies, and dance and performance studies at William & Mary and around the globe. For more information, see Emily Wilcox’s C.V.