2024 Conference Schedule

The Collective's 2024 Conference will facilitate conversations around the study of the relationship between gender, the environment, and visual material. Through four different thematic lenses - Regeneration, Soteriology, Agency, and Self-fashioning – presenters address these rich interrelationships in material ranging from Angkorian stone to Taiwanese painting, bringing into relief the timeless yet timely role of the natural environment in various articulations of gender expression and their manifestations in religious or social settings.

Please join us on April 6 and 7 virtually on Zoom for two days of panels and conversations. Relevant registration links can be found below:

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April 06, 2024

Panel 1: Regenerative Potential, 11am - 12:35pm EST

Panel Discussant: Carolyn Wargula, Assistant Professor of Art History, Bucknell University

  • Dessi Vendova (Buddhism Public Scholar, MFA Boston): "Touching the Earth: Calling the Earth to Witness Revisited"
  • Soumya James (Independent Art Historian): "Artful Ambiguities in Angkor’s Literary and Visual Culture: Locating Śrī in Inscriptions and Art" 
  • Jesse LeFebvre (Assistant Professor, University of Rochester): "Flourishing Femininity and the Embodiment of Reproductive Karma"

Panel 2: Soteriology & Funerary Practices, 2pm - 3:35pm EST

Panel Discussant: Wei-Cheng Lin, Associate Professor of Art History, University of Chicago

  • Zhu Pinyan (Assistant Professor, Kent State University): "Sacred Landscape for Women’s Salvation: Tang (618–907) Burial Practices at the Longmen Grottoes"
  • Tori Andrews (PhD Candidate, Harvard University): "Perpetual Roar: Early Simhamukha Imagery in Ladakh"
  • Isabel McWilliams (PhD Candidate, Harvard University): "Fragrant Flora: Gendered Aspirations and the Gui Tree in Medieval Chinese Art"

April 07, 2024

Panel 3: Authority & Agency, 11am - 12:35am EST

Panel Discussant: Rae Erin Dachille, Associate Professor of Religious Studies, University of Arizona

  • Mia Liu (Assistant Professor, Johns Hopkins University): "Her Murmurs Among Ruins: The Gendered Soundscape in Fei Mu's Spring in a Small Town (1948)"
  • Chinghsin Wu (Associate Teaching Professor, Rutgers University): "Nature and Gender: Women Artists Depicting Plants in Colonial Taiwan"
  • Anisha Saxena (Assistant Professor, SUNY Cortland): "Trees, Mountains, Rivers, and Rapes: Medieval Miniature Paintings and Scenes of Sexual Assault Amidst Natural Environments"

Panel 4: Self-fashioning, 2pm - 3:35pm EST

Panel Discussant: Fan Zhang, Assistant Professor Asian Art, Tulane University

  • Petya Andreeva (Assistant Professor, the New School): "Zoomorphism as Elitism in Nomadic Women’s Tombs: Constructing Female Agency on the Eurasian Steppe (700 BCE-200 BCE)"
  • Michael Norton (PhD Candidate, Harvard University): "'The highest excellence is like water:'  Fu Fei and Cosmology in Gu Kaizhi’s The Goddess of the Luo River"
  • Yuhang Li (Associate Professor, University of Wisconsin-Madison): “Wearing a Whole Tree: A New Way to Display Subjectivity?”