Susan Louise Mann (born 1943) is an American historian of China best known for her work on the Qing dynasty and the role of women and gender in Chinese history.
[4] Mann joined feminist scholars in the 1980s and 1990s, including Patricia Ebrey, Charlotte Furth, Dorothy Ko, Evelyn Rawski, Paul Ropp, Ann Waltner, and Ellen Widmer, who turned their attention to the roles of women in the late Ming dynasty and early and mid Manchu Qing dynasty, the 16th through early 19th centuries.
Economic growth and urbanization brought social mobility, while an expansion of printing and literacy gave voice to women.
The new work moved to correct misunderstandings about Confucian traditional society and the assumption that women were passive victims who helped to perpetuate their own victimhood because they were ignorant and powerless.
[3] The first, Precious Records, showed that upper-class women, although kept in the "inner quarters" and not allowed to participate in political life outside the home, were not mere victims of Confucian patriarchy.
Mann shows that the Chinese state played a generous role in regulating gender and sexuality, categories which in turn give historians materials that they can use in innovative ways.