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The University of Winnipeg

Dr. Yongshan He

Yongshan He Title: Assistant Professor
Office: 4M42B
Email: y.he@uwinnipeg.ca

Biography:

Dr. Yongshan He (PhD, University of Toronto, 2024) is a scholar of medieval Chinese religions. A central strand of her research investigates the intersection of religion, art, and emotion. She is currently preparing her first monograph based upon her dissertation, “Making Faces for Buddha: Affect, Statue, and State in Early Medieval China (400–600),” which utilizes an interdisciplinary approach to reveal how Buddhist images constructed shared feelings and shaped new forms of social and political imagination. She also leads a SSHRC-funded project examining the monumental Yuan dynasty Daoist murals at the Royal Ontario Museum. By combining historical reconstruction with museum studies, she is developing interpretive strategies designed to reconnect decontextualized artifacts with their affective power.

Another strand of her research explores the relationship between Buddhism and the state through the lens of economic history, analyzing the role of Buddhism within the state's fiscal governance in early medieval China.

Alongside her historical research, she engages with pedagogical innovation and the digital humanities to bridge religious history and visual culture with contemporary concerns in education, museum practice, and technology.

Teaching Areas:

Buddhism; Chinese religions; East Asian Cultures; Chinese language.

Areas of Graduate Supervision:

Buddhism; Chinese Religions; Religion and Visual Culture; Affect and Emotion in Religion; Religion and State in East Asia.

Courses:

  • Buddhist Traditions in East Asia (REL/EALC-2718)
  • Chinese Religions (REL/EALC-2707)
  • Topics in Asian Religions and Culture (REL/EALC-3/4970)
  • East Asian Cultural Foundations (EALC-1004)
  • Intermediate Chinese (EALC-2200)

Research Interests:

Affect and Emotion in Chinese Religions; Religious Image-making in Early Medieval and Medieval China; Economic and Institutional History of Buddhism in China; Mind and Body in East Asian Traditions; Museum Studies and Decolonial Curatorial Practices; Pedagogy for East Asian Religions and Cultures.

Publications:

The cover of a book titled Painting on Wall.Edited Book

He, Yongshan and Chen Shen, eds. Painting on Wall: Yuan Dynasty Temple Murals from Southern Shanxi at the Royal Ontario Museum in Canada. National Library of China Publishing House, 2025. (Bi-lingual English and Chinese)

 

Journal Articles

He, Yongshan and Claire Deng. "State, great families, and Buddhism: Monasticism as Calculation in the Fiscal Governance of Early Medieval China." Qualitative Research in Accounting & Management, ahead-of-print, April 10, 2026. https://doi.org/10.1108/QRAM-08-2025-0201.

He, Yongshan. "Commoditization of the Sacred: Production and Transaction of Buddhist Statues in Fifth-to tenth-century China." Studies in Chinese Religions 5, no. 2 (2019): 105-121.