Art of Global Asia

Catalog description

This course surveys flows of ideas, images, and objects across, within, and beyond Asia. It considers how the art of Asia is and has been global from antiquity through the present, and introduces 'Asia,' 'globality,' and 'art' as key terms and concepts that shift over time and place. Artistic traditions are presented within broader historical, cultural, social, and economic frameworks, with attention to their local and regional significance. Trade, exchange, and interaction between cultures and groups, including but not limited to artists, pilgrims, merchants, warriors, and rulers, and the transmission of concepts through languages, religions, and philosophies, will be highlighted throughout. We shall address problems of iconophilia and iconoclasm, narrative and temporality, archeology and historiography, ritual and religion, sovereignty and kingship, gender and sexuality, colonialism and nationalism, diasporas and migration as they pertain to the images, objects, and sites of our study. We shall make use of local resources at the Penn Museum and Penn Libraries, as well as other sites, to show how objects retain and inflect these ideas. The course builds out from a central focus on the arts of South Asia or the arts of East Asia, depending upon the specialty of the faculty member teaching the course, with additional faculty offering guest lectures as available. Students with a background in art history, studio art, architecture, history, religion, literature, anthropology, and/or South or East Asian Studies are especially welcome.