Description: The past decades have seen increasing studies on material culture and literary writing in both Chinese and Western literary traditions. Revisiting the division between objects and the meanings of objects, panelists consider both things and words as modes of expression and representation and explore how things and words enabled and conditioned each other in premodern China. The participants also discuss theoretical bridges that can link works done in different traditions.

Presider

Guojun Wang, Vanderbilt U

Speakers

Guojun Wang, Vanderbilt U

Robert I. Lublin, U of Massachusetts, Boston

Tina Lu, Yale U

Thomas Kelly, U of Michigan, Ann Arbor

Kaijun Chen, Brown U