Joyce Yusi Zhou

Joyce Yusi Zhou is a PhD candidate in the History of Art at Yale University. Her research examines the visual and material culture of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Jakarta, Indonesia—formerly known as Batavia under Dutch colonial rule. Her dissertation, “In the Company of Her Things: Women, Art, and Material Culture in Early Modern Batavia,” explores the craft, collecting, and creative expressions of Batavia’s female residents, particularly non-European and enslaved women. Centered around the material dialogues between women and their things, her dissertation asks how women mobilized the visual and material world around them to invent, manipulate, and negotiate their positions in society. Joyce holds an M.A. in Decorative Arts, Design History, and Material Culture from the Bard Graduate Center, and a B.A. in Art History and the Interdisciplinary Project in the Humanities (IPH) from Washington University in St. Louis.