Madeleine Y. Dong is a professor of history at the University of Washington in Seattle. Her research concerns the social and cultural history of modern China, focusing on the mid-19th century to the early twentieth century in particular. After her first book, Republican Beijing: The City and Its Histories (University of California Press, 2003), she has published two co-edited volumes, Everyday Modernity in China (University of Washington Press, 2006), and The Modern Girl Around the World (Duke University Press, 2009). She is currently writing a book on the various historical narratives of China's last dynasty, the Qing Dynasty, and she also plans to write a biography of an ordinary Chinese woman whose life experience provides a unique perspective on the drastic changes of modern China.