History of Art
The intersection of art, science, and diplomacy at Kyoto and Nagasaki in the time of Japanese, Portuguese, Spanish, and Dutch cultural and mercantile interaction in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, with attention to the entangled political relations linking the shogun Toyotomi Hideyoshi, Philip II of Spain, Jesuit missionaries such as Alessandro Valignano, and the Christian daimyō of Kyushu and the Inland Sea. Focus on Japanese castle architecture, nanban screens, world maps, arte sacra, and tea ceremony practices as related to the importation of European arte sacra, prints and...
This course combines the methods of history with those of linguistics and translation studies to promote an innovative interdisciplinary analysis of the processes of cultural (mis)communication and (mis)translation among communities across the Iberian Empires and Royal Patronages between 1500 and 1700. This course has three main objectives: 1) mapping the emergence of multilingual communities in early modernity involving cultures and languages that were previously unknown in Europe; (2) drawing up a comprehensive typological catalogue of overlooked, dispersed metalinguistic and multilingual...
This seminar uses the visual and material cultures of China to examine the notion of “modernity” and the relations among the “medieval,” “early modern,” and “modern” periods. By comparing these concepts with the historiographical frameworks of “Song-Yuan-Ming transition” and “late imperial China,” we will become familiar with the methodological concerns and contradictions that complicate these relativized temporal frameworks. Works by Craig Clunas, Jonathan Hay, and Wu Hung, along with the insights from historians, inform our discussions of Chinese prints, paintings, ceramics, and other...
An introduction to the legal systems of the Roman and post-Roman states and Han- and Tang-dynasty China. Emphasis on developing collaborative partnerships that foster comparative history research. Readings in surviving law codes (in the original or English translation) and secondary studies on topics including slavery, trade, crime, and family.
This introductory course explores the art of India, China, Japan, and Korea from prehistory to the present. We consider major works and monuments from all four regions. Themes include the representation of nature and the body, the intersection of art with spirituality and politics, and everything from elite to consumer culture. All students welcome, including those who have no previous experience with either art history or the study of Asian art. This class makes frequent visits to Yale University Art Gallery.
Arts and theory of the Japanese garden with emphasis on the role of the anthropogenic landscape from aesthetics to environmental precarity, including the concept of refugium. Case studies of influential Kyoto gardens from the 11th through 15th centuries, and their significance as cultural productions with ecological implications.
Survey of major monuments in the visual arts of ancient and early medieval Japan with attention to the conditions and thought worlds of cultural production. Emphasis on the arts practices and philosophies of Buddhism and Shintō in juxtaposition with the courtly arts from narrative handscrolls to integrations of poetry and painting in landscape screens and picture albums.
This course is an introduction to the art and culture of contemporary China, covering the period from 1960s to the present day. It focuses on art objects, performances, propaganda, and exhibitions produced by the government, the business sector, curators, and avant-garde artists in Mainland China. We also look at China’s Olympic stadiums, the Three Gorges Dam, and skyscrapers (including those in Hong Kong and Taiwan). Class meetings discuss the required readings and investigate artworks, films, and events that speak to China’s political ideologies, society, and economy, as well as its role in...
This course focuses on important works of Chinese painting and major painters from the fourth century CE to the twentieth century. Through close readings of the pictorial contents and production contexts of such works of art, this course investigates the works’ formats, meanings, and innovations from social, historical, and art-historical perspectives. In this course, students become familiar with the traditional Chinese world and acquire the knowledge necessary to be an informed viewer of Chinese painting. Discussions of religion, folkloric beliefs, literature, relationships between men and...
This course offers a visual history of the art objects and other material goods that people set in motion, physically and imaginatively, across the Silk Roads regions of Eurasia from antiquity through the beginnings of the medieval era. It ranges across a variety of cultural productions and sites encompassing the agrarian and nomadic zones of Eurasia from the Bronze Age through the 7th-century rise of the first Caliphates in the west and the efflorescence of the Sui-Tang cosmopolis in the east.
