The exceptionally powerful Chinese women leaders of the late seventh and early eighth centuries--including Wu Zhao, the Taiping and Anle princesses, Empress Wei, and Shangguan Wan'er--though quite prominent in the Chinese cultural tradition, remain elusive and often misunderstood or essentialized throughout history. Transgressive Typologies utilizes a new, multidisciplinary approach to understand how these figures' historical identities are constructed in the mainstream secular literary-historical tradition and to analyze the points of view that inform these...