Yating Li

Yating Li is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures with a minor in Gender and Women's Studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Her research intersects the history of medicine, gender history, and modern Chinese history. Her dissertation, "Pathologizing the Womb: Medical knowledge, the Female Body, and Mirage of Health in China (1900s-1940s)," explores the epistemic pluralism surrounding uterine diseases and the construction of femininity in early twentieth-century China. 

Her scholarly work has been supported by prestigious fellowships and awards, including the Illinois Distinguished Fellowship, the Humanities Research Institute (HRI) Graduate Student Fellowship, the Illinois Global Institute (IGI) Graduate Summer Research Fellowship, and the Ralph Tyler Best Digital Scholarship Research/Teaching Award. Externally, she has received the East and Inner Asia Council Small Grant from the Association for Asian Studies (AAS). Li has presented her research widely at multiple conferences, including annual meetings of the American Historical Association (AHA), the Association for Asian Studies (AAS), the American Association for the History of Medicine (AAHM), the National Women's Studies Association (NWSA), and the Midwest Conference on Asian Affairs (MCAA). In 2026, she has organized panels at the AHA, AAS, and the Asian Center for Women's Studies at Ewha Women University.