IATH NEWS
Cultural Crossings Workshop
January 1, 2010
IATH Fellow Dorothy Wong, Associate Professor of Art History, has announced an upcoming international conference, "Cultural Crossings," to be held March 11-13, 2010, in Campbell Hall at the University of Virginia. Participants will investigate exchanges between China and neighboring cultures during the medieval period (third–tenth centuries) from cross-cultural and interdisciplinary perspectives.
Prof. Wong and her co-organizers, Gustav Heldt (Japanese Literature) and Eric Ramìrez-Weaver (Medieval Art History), intend to open new avenues of research into the complex and far-reaching exchanges along the Silk Road by breaking down traditional national and disciplinary boundaries. By bringing together specialists of the period who are engaged in research in such diverse areas as Silk Road studies, history, literature, gender, art, and religion of the region, and putting them into productive dialogue with one another, they hope to reveal areas of common interest that can foster new approaches.
In conjunction with the conference, Prof. Wong is organizing a half-day workshop on March 13, hosted by IATH and focused on collaborative scholarship that has the potential to enhance existing related digital projects in Asian art and humanities. Speakers include the Ven. Huimin, Rector of Dharma Drum Buddhist College, Taipei, and Susan Whitfield from the International Dunhuang Project.
The conference coincides with "Treasures Rediscovered: Chinese Stone Sculptures from the Sackler Collections at Columbia University," an exhibition to be held at the University of Virginia Art Museum January 15–March 14, 2010 (see http://www.virginia.edu/artmuseum/on_view/exhibitions/Treasures_Rediscovered.php for more information). For a complete schedule, abstracts, and list of speakers, see the conference web site at http://www.virginia.edu/artmuseum/culturalcrossings/index.html.
Funding for the conference and workshop has been provided from within the University of Virginia, by Buckner W. Clay Endowment for the Humanities Grant, East Asia Center, Medieval Studies Program, Page-Barbour Interdisciplinary Initiative Grant, University of Virginia Art Museum, and Ellen Bayard Weedon Foundation Grant. Additional generous support has been provided by the Dharma Drum Buddhist College, Taipei.
