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Rethinking the Field of East Asian Art History

 
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Graduate Student Symposium at the Department of Art History, University of Chicago
May 6, 2006

Call For Papers:

In this graduate student conference we would like to offer a forum for graduate students of East Asian Art History from the US and abroad to exchange new and critical views on the state of the field as well as to reassess the history of the field. Following a century of Asian art-historical scholarship, we perceive the need to openly discuss concerns specific to the study of the visual traditions of East Asia. While every graduate student is engaged with historiographical and methodological concerns in approaching their individual topics, these issues are rarely taught in classes or discussed as broader concerns of the discipline. We seek papers focusing on methodological and historiographical concerns specific to the field of East Asian art history. Papers do not need to exclusively focus on theoretical issues; we highly encourage the presentation of more specific cases and materials that open up general questions or challenge traditional notions in this field.

Topics and issues addressed may include (but are not limited to):
  • How can dynastic, geographic, and media-based divisions in East Asian art be redefined?
  • What are and were the problems of studying East Asian art in a Western art historical context? What are the institutional and disciplinary relations to art history, area studies (e.g. Sinology), history etc.? And what are the specific issues of East Asian art history in this context?
  • Are methodological questions for East Asian visual and material culture different or how can we appropriate discourses from other fields (e.g. social history, cultural history, archaeology and anthropology, aesthetics)?
  • How has previous scholarship in East Asian art history been formulated? What are the historical circumstances in which the scholarship has been shaped? How can we benefit from traditional scholarship?

The symposium is supported by the Center for the Art of East Asia, the Center of East Asian Studies, and the Department of Art History of the University of Chicago.