Animated Things in Premodern China

Undergraduate / Graduate

This course explores how material objects from premodern China became animated, responsive, and efficacious through their design, manufacture, use, and transformation across media. By closely examining a wide range of objects-from bronze vessels and tomb figurines to fashion accessories and everyday utensils-we ask how matter came to possess vitality, affect, and the capacity to act in the world. Rather than treating objects as passive, the course foregrounds their roles in shaping perception, practice, belief, and emotion. The course emphasizes close looking and object-based analysis. Through lectures, discussions, museum visits, and readings drawn from art history and related fields, it aims to develop students' interpretive skills that connect material and visual qualities to meaning, and equip them with the tools to situate material things within broader social, cultural, and intellectual contexts.