April 19-20, 2013

This symposium invites a reconsideration of the place and meaning of the “material text” in East and South Asia.  Some of the questions that will be addressed in the presentations and study sessions include:  How do we evaluate sutras, manuscripts, printed books, magazines, and even fakes as “material texts”?  How did these materials bear meaning in their contexts, and what can they reveal to us today, in form, content and reception?   What can we learn about reading and representation through these material texts?  How has the history of the material text in Asia been written and what place does the text have, in the pre-modern, modern and contemporary world?  What methods are useful for our engagement (and what may be less so)?  By asking these questions and others, the symposium aims to bring forward new approaches to the history of the material text in Asia.

The program will feature presentations as well as opportunities for viewing material texts selected from the Penn Museum and the University of Pennsylvania Libraries.  The symposium is open to the public, but due to space availability, the number of participants is limited and advance registration is required:  http://asianmaterialtexts.eventbrite.com/

Sponsored by the Center for East Asian Studies, the Reading Asian Manuscripts Faculty Working Group, and the Department of the History of Art

Program:

Friday, April 19  12:30 pm. Registration

David Rittenhouse Laboratory Bldg., A7

Coffee and cookies

1:00 p.m.  Opening Remarks:  Julie Davis, University of Pennsylvania

Panel I:  Materials and Materiality  1:05-2:50 p.m.

Panel Chair:  Ramya Sreenivasan, University of Pennsylvania

Justin McDaniel, University of Pennsylvania:  “Manuscripts and Material Culture in Southeast Asia: Examples from the Penn Collection and Beyond”

Adam Smith, University of Pennsylvania:  “Text production and Reproduction in Early China”

Max Moerman, Barnard College:  “Materializing Mount Sumeru: Manuscripts, Maps, and Machines”

Viewing Session I — 3:00-5:00 p.m.

For registered workshop participants:  Penn Museum, Classroom II

Keynote Lecture:  5:30 p.m. in DRL A7

Cynthia Brokaw, Brown University:  “’The Scent of Books’: Print Technology and the Material Book in Late Imperial China”

Saturday, April 20

Coffee:  9:30 a.m.

Panel II:  Inscriptions and the Object  10:00-11:45 a.m. in DRL A7

Panel Chair:  Linda Chance, University of Pennsylvania

Jinping Wang, University of Pennsylvania:  “Steles as a Medium for Social Power in Medieval China”

Tomoko Sakomura, Swarthmore College:  “The Place of Poetry in the Inscription Culture of Late-Sixteenth-Century Japan”

Felice Fischer, Philadelphia Museum of Art: “Ike Taiga: Word and Image”

Lunch Break:  11:45 a.m.-1:00 p.m.

Panel III:  Trade and Texts  1:00-2:45 p.m. in DRL A7

Panel Chair:  Julie Davis, University of Pennsylvania

Brian Vivier, University of Pennsylvania:  “Carrying Books across Borders in Northeast Asia, 960-1276″

Ann Sherif, Oberlin College:  “Print Matters and Journals in Japan”

Projit Mukharji, University of Pennsylvania:  “Finding Fakes: Manuscript Markets, Forgeries and Truth Technologies in South Asia”

Viewing Session II — 3:00-5:00 p.m.

For registered workshop participants:  Fine Arts Library, Davis Seminar Room

Closing remarks and reception:  5:00 p.m.  All participants welcome

Special Collections, Van Pelt Library 6th Floor