This fall’s biennial U-M History of Art Graduate Student Symposium: Expansive Realities: A Longer History of the “Virtual” in Art, Architecture, and Visual Culture aims to foster discussions of the theoretical, social, and cultural nature of this phenomenon. While often linked to the digital age, the virtual implies imagined and immersive spaces that despite their defiance of material and physical boundaries impact these nonetheless. Ten graduate students in art history and related fields from the University of Michigan and other institutions will present papers that collectively address the impact of the virtual on the mind, body, and the construction or cementation of boundaries.

Expansive Realities is further delighted to host Kristina Kleutghen, David. W. Mesker Associate Professor of Art History and Archaeology, Chinese Art and Architecture, Washington University in St. Louis as the keynote for this event.

This program is co-sponsored by UMMA, the Confucius Institute, the Center for Chinese Studies, American Culture, the Department for Classical Studies, Slavic Languages and Literatures, Medieval and Early Modern Studies, the Interdepartmental Program in Classical Art and Archaeology, the Museum Studies Program, the College of Literature, Science and the Arts, and Rackham Graduate Studies.

This program is free and open to the public. Seating is first come, first served.


SCHEDULE

Breakfast
9:00 a.m. – 10:00 a.m.

Keynote Address
10:00 a.m. – 11:00 a.m.

Virtual Reality in Elite and Popular Early Modern Chinese Art
Dr. Kristina Kleutghen, David W. Mesker Associate Professor of Art History and Archaeology at Washington University in St. Louis

Panel I: Mindscapes
11:15 a.m. – 12:45 p.m.

Imaging Dreams: Efficacious Dream-Image of the Demon-Queller on a Ceramic Pillow
Kim Young, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Coloring the Mind: Illustrating and Imagining the Fantastic in Early 20th-Century Pulp Fiction
James Denison, University of Michigan

Spiritual Life in a Fantasy Land: Theosophy, Art, and Community at Point Loma, 1900 – 1929
Grace Converse, University of Southern California

Under the Disguise of Landscapes: The Special Representation of the Human Body in Daoist Illustration Nei Jing Tu
Yue Dai, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

Lunch Reception
University of Michigan Museum of Art Commons
12:45 p.m. – 2:00 p.m.

Panel II: Colonization and Boundaries
2:00 p.m. – 3:00 p.m.

Visualizing a Changing Shanghai: Early Urbanization and Mapmaking, 1840s – 1920s
Xi Zhang, University of Chicago

The Indian Market in Santa Fe
Sophia Salsbery, The New School

Afternoon Coffee Break
3:00 p.m. – 3:30 p.m.

Panel III: Public Memory
3:30 p.m. – 4:45 p.m.

David Claerbout’s Olympia: A Simulated Digital Decay
Nicky Ni, The School of the Art Institute of Chicago

A Virtual Architecture: The Tenth-Century Cliff Landscape at Dunhuang, China
Zhenru Zhou, University of Chicago

Machine-Made World: A Fordist Utopia in the Detroit Industry Murals of Diego Rivera
Megan Flattley, Tulane University