Fourth Annual Workshop: On Commemorative Inscriptions
Thursday, May 17–Saturday, May 19, 2018
Performing Arts Building, Reed College
This workshop is co-organized by Jessey Choo, Alexei Ditter, and LU Yang, with the generous support of the Tang Research Foundation, with additional assistance provided by the Office of the Dean of Faculty and the Chinese Department, Reed College.
This fourth meeting will focus on commemorative inscriptions produced between the 5th through 10th centuries from a diverse range of perspectives—artistic, economic, historical, literary and religious. Key issues to be discussed include:
- Production of texts and inscribed object: How does consideration of the context (material, economic, political, social, religious, etc.) within which these texts and objects were produced change how we understand them? For example, how does consideration of a text’s material aspects change our perspective and understanding of that text? What differences might be identified between commemorative texts and objects produced by people with different social relationships to their subjects? How might the relative social status of authors, calligraphers, inscribers, and subjects positively or negatively impact the anticipated perception of the subject?
- Environment: How does consideration of a text within its physical environment change our perspective and understanding of those texts? How does our understanding of muzhiming or other commemorative inscriptions change when they are viewed as one among many objects (for example, buried in the tomb or collected in a temple)?
- Consumption of texts and inscribed objects: How were these texts and inscribed objects consumed by the contemporary or near-contemporary audiences they nominally might address? In addition to consumption in anticipated ways by those audiences, in what ways were texts and materials consumed for other purposes, or even “re-purposed” to serve new ends?