East, Meet West: Asia Encounters Europe

3 units

This seminar, which is grounded in cross-cultural aesthetics, examines East Asian visual responses to European art and science from the 16th through 19th centuries.The same Western ideas and works that were first introduced by Jesuit missionaries, that were continued by merchants, and that culminated with colonial enterprises left very different impressions on China and Japan. An introduction to cross-cultural aesthetics from both Western and East Asian perspectives lays the theoretical foundation to engage these works of art before the course proceeds thematically through time to cover painting, cartography, woodblock prints, ceramics, and photography within transregional and transcultural contexts. One upper-level course in Art History is recommended but not required before taking this course.