This seminar will focus on the problems—visual, linguistic and philosophical—that art historians face when working across or between cultures. We will focus on the late imperial period and specifically on the appropriations and translations of visual schemes and technologies of art between China and Japan, Central and South Asia (with emphasis on Buddhist art), Europe, and the Americas. More broadly, we will read and discuss studies by art historians and others that present imaginative ways of addressing the movement of ideas and forms across cultures. Graduate students and qualified undergraduates from all fields are welcome and final paper projects may address the visual aspects of cultural interaction between regions beyond China.