Humanities Arts Cultural Stu 0133 - Body, Face and Relics

This course will explore the history of East Asian religious visual and material culture from ancient times to the early twentieth century, with an emphasis on the human body, face and relics and their visual representations as major agents in liturgical settings. The class explores the following topics; Buddhist relics, holy objects, reliquaries, and self-immolation practice; Confucian burial practice, ancestral worshipping, ancestral portraits; Taoist body-and-spirit cultivation and the practice of alchemy; and the cult of Mao Zedong during the Mao era (1949-1976). Readings will be drawn from art history, religion, critical theory, feminist theory and psychoanalysis. Although this course focuses on East Asian religious and visual traditions, Christian cults, saints, relics and reliquaries will be examined in comparison.

Culture, Humanities, and Languages Writing and Research Multiple Cultural Perspectives In this course, students are expected to spend 6-8 hours weekly on preparation and work outside of class time.