Meets with HISTART 497.004

This course explores how water became a site and subject of aesthetic formation in Chinese art history. We will broadly discuss how living by water and the governance of waterways became central aspects of world-making throughout history, as well as how art-making and appreciation were entangled with these processes. Students are expected to hone their skills in analyzing various genres of Chinese paintings while also engaging in critical thinking about the broader issues at stake. Important topics in this course include the visuality and poetics of corporeal and political ecologies, posthumanist geography, disaster studies, and climate change. Students will also learn methods of close looking and relational thinking, and how to apply these methods to historiography and transhistorical phenomena.

HISTART Concentration Distributions: China, Asia, Early Modern, Transhistorical