Arts of Asia

From sacrificial cauldrons to sunflower seeds, and Roman Buddhas to five-toed dragons, this course introduces the incredible diversity of traditions that collectively constitute the arts of Asia. Organized around a series of case studies of exemplary objects, the course explores the temporal, geographic, material, and thematic range of Asian art through the life stories of individual things. Tracing histories of human ingenuity and value, we will examine the ways these things changed the people who saw them and were themselves changed in the process of being seen. And we will come to know them through the ways they change us.