This advanced seminar explores an eco-critical approach to studying art history. It concerns historiography of art as well as studies of specific art genres, especially paintings of landscapes, habitats, plants, rocks, and animals in the Chinese tradition. Responding to relevant discussions in the history of science and technology, philosophy, and psychology of perception, the course aims to bring to the fore an expanded field of art history that generates new ways of understanding artworks’ relationalities and possibilities. By shedding light on the agencies of the inert, the mystic, the disadvantaged, and the wasted, this course provides thinking tools that can be used to assess the complexities, contradictions, and limitations of human creativity in the ecological process of the living world. At the end of the course, students should be able to have a purview of some current theories and thoughts related to ecology, art, and historiography. Students should also be able to understand how ecological issues correlate to studies of global art history. In addition, students will gain skills of analyzing the material and formal aspects of Chinese paintings and learn how to formulate research topics based on materials of specific contexts.