Shih-shan Susan Huang

This project studies the imagery of Buddhist and Daoist woodcuts produced in the first “Golden Age” of Chinese printmaking, from 850 to 1450. It will be the first English-language treatment of religious woodcuts by an art historian. The study takes a cross-cultural perspective, drawing on religious woodcuts from the Song, Yuan, and Ming China, and from the northern kingdoms ruled by non-Chinese people—the Liao, the Tangut Xi Xia, and the Jin—and compares them to pertinent Korean, Japanese, and Islamic images. It sets a new interdisciplinary model of inquiry in humanities studies by responding critically to the current discourses on material and visual culture, the history of the book and print culture, and global history.