Internationally renowned Chinese art historian Dr. Eugene Wang of Harvard University will give the keynote lecture, “Has the Moon Ever Driven the Chinese Mad?” at Word and Image, the first annual University of St. Thomas Graduate Student Research Symposium.
The lecture will be presented at 6 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 4, in the Great Room (Room 100), McNeely Hall, on the University of St. Thomas’ St. Paul campus.
Dr. Eugene Wang
In his lecture, Wang will discuss textual and pictorial depictions of the moon throughout China’s history and the orb’s long-standing association with sparking madness in humans. A reception for Wang will follow the lecture.
Eight graduate students from colleges and universities across the United States will present their research on the second day of the symposium from 9 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. Friday, Nov. 5. A schedule of the morning and afternoon sessions for the student presentations can be viewed here.
Dr. Elizabeth Kindall, a professor in St. Thomas’ Art History Department who helped bring Wang to the symposium, chose Wang “because he is committed to undergraduate and graduate teaching and because his teaching and numerous publications are serving to shape the field of Chinese art history.”
Wang’s lecture also is the second of four lectures in the St. Thomas Art History Department’s “Narrative and the History of Art” lecture series.
Wang has taught art history at Harvard University, where he is the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Professor of Asian Art, since 1997. Prior to joining Harvard, he was the Ittleson Fellow at the Center for Advanced Studies in Visual Art at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., and a member of the art history faculty at the University of Chicago. His essays have appeared in numerous publications, including the New York Times and the Art Bulletin. Wang holds a B.A. and an M.A. from Fudan University in Shanghai, and an A.M. and Ph.D. from Harvard University.
Wang’s lecture and the graduate-student presentations are free and open to the public. For more information, contact St. Thomas’ Art History Department, (651) 962-5855.
