This year the University of Michigan History of Art Department was well represented at the annual Association for Asian Studies conference in Honolulu. Six scholars who received their doctoral degree from this department delivered papers. Out of roughly 12 panels that touched on the topic of Chinese art at least in part, Wolverines were represented in five. Three of the U-M alumni, Wen-chien Cheng, Rosaly Hammers, and Bo Liu, had also organized their panels. Three of the five—Katherine Burnett, Rosalyn Hammers, and J. P. Park, currently have books in press.
U-M faculty also were visible at the conference. Professor Ellen Johnston Laing, an alumna of our department and faculty associate in the U-M Center for Chinese Studies, served as respondent for the panel on “Shaped Images.” Martin Powers participated in a roundtable organized around the Blackwell Companion to Chinese Art, which he and Dr. Katherine Tsiang, U Chicago, are co-editing.

Papers and panels:

Katherine Burnett: (MA '86, PhD '95) "Choosing Chinese Paintings for American Museums in the Early Twentieth Century"

Wen-chien Cheng (organizer) (PhD '03): "Shaped Images: Social and Artistic Responses to Pictorial Formats in Chinese Painting"

Rosalyn Hammers (organizer) (MA '88, PhD '02): "Picturing Labor and Technology in East Asian Art"

Tamara Bentley (PhD '92): "Reconsidering Originality: New Approaches in East Asian Art"

Bo Liu (organizer) (PhD '03): "Shaped Images: Social and Artistic Responses to Pictorial Formats in Chinese Painting"

J. P. Park (PhD '07): "Reconsidering Originality: New Approaches in East Asian Art"

Ellen Johnston Laing: "Shaped Images: Social and Artistic Responses to Pictorial Formats in Chinese Painting"

Martin Powers: Roundtable, "New Themes and Directions in Chinese Art History"