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COURSES FALL 2007

Histart 230

GRADUATE SEMINAR: CHINESE ART (4 UNITS) Thursdays 4:00-7:00 308B Doe, CCN 05666 Patricia Berger

The Lives of Buddhist Images

The instability of images-their ability to move across time and space and simultaneously to absorb and reflect wide ranges of meaning-is the subject of this seminar on Buddhist art, which draws its inspiration from Richard Davis' ground-breaking book, The Lives of Indian Images. We will concentrate on China's position as a receiver and translator of the images and objects of Buddhist material culture that came from India, Central and Southeast Asia. The seminar will explore a number of fundamental issues in the study of religious objects and their diffusion: the business of the description of exotic things (especially "authentic" things), their reception and recreation from written texts, inscriptions written to and about them, pious copies and outright reinventions of them. We will read primary materials describing famous images and will also consider contemporary theoretical writing to help us structure our thinking about the complex "lives of images." For purposes of the final paper, the ability to work effectively in any of the major languages of Buddhism will be extremely useful, but is not required.

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