This course introduces arts of China from the Paleolithic period to the present. It provides a general understanding of the various roles of artifacts in shaping physical and social environments through a selection of objects, monuments, and artworks. We will discuss those artifacts in terms of their visual and formal attributes, ritual and everyday uses, social and environmental forces, intellectual and ideological implications, cultural and religious encounters, and processes of geo-historical transformations. We will also critically think about the politics of preservation and display relative to heritage sites and museum practices worldwide. Throughout the course, students are expected to master skills of visual and material analyses and to articulate art objects in verbal and written forms. Students will learn how to look at, and think with, artifacts in various media and forms of representation. Students will also master critical methods concerning how to examine culture, society, and religion through historical lenses and, in turn, how histories tell us about these dimensions of human world and environment in the present.

HISTART Concentration Distributions: Transhistorical, Asia

Image: Terracotta Army, buried in 210-209 BCE, near the tomb of Qin emperor Shi Huangdi (259-210 BCE). Lishan Mausoleum in Lintong, Xi'an, China.