The Institute for Dance Scholarship, Department of Dance and Boyer College of Music and Dance, with co-sponsorship from the Center for the Humanities at Temple, present Nan Ma, associate professor of East Asian studies at Dickinson College. Her talk, "Traveling 'Princess' and Dancing 'Diplomat': Yu Rongling, Corporeal Modernity, and Isadora Duncan in the Early 1900s China," is based on the first chapter of her book, When Words Are Inadequate: Modern Dance and Transnationalism in China (Oxford University Press, 2023).

Ma received her PhD in Chinese studies from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She conducts research on modern Chinese literature, film, visual culture, and dance and performance studies and is the author of When Words Are Inadequate: Modern Dance and Transnationalism in China (Oxford University Press, 2023). Her articles on Chinese modern dance, ballet and film appeared in Modern Chinese Literature and Culture (MCLC), China Perspectives, and the Journal of Beijing Dance Academy.