Kaia Johnson

Kaia Johnson's research focuses on gender and sexuality in Ming & Qing dynasty literature. Before coming to Harvard, she studied Chinese Language and Culture as well as Psychology at U.C. Berkeley, before earning her M.A. in Chinese literature at Stanford University. Her master’s thesis focused on sexual agency, objectification, and transactionality in the Ming dynasty novel Jinpingmei. Kaia is particularly interested in authorship, commentary, and reader response, and how they shape the interaction between didacticism and pleasure in Ming dynasty fiction. Her broader interests also include lyric and musicality, and the adaptation of literary stories in operatic form.