Geographic Area: East & Inner Asia
Lucien Sun (he/him/his)
Art History
University of Chicago, United States
Benjamin Ridgway
Swarthmore College, United States
Xiaoshan Yang
University of Notre Dame, United States
Lucien Sun (he/him/his)
Art History
University of Chicago, United States
Elizabeth Kindall
University of St. Thomas, United States
Cong Zhang
University of Virginia, United States
Recent developments in indigenous studies have reminded us of people’s complex and often intimate connections to the land. Similarly, scholarship on art and literature of the Song–Yuan dynasties has moved beyond viewing landscape as merely a neutral background, revealing instead diverse and nuanced ways individuals engaged bodily with terrain during this period. Framing devices such as the “Eight Views” started to inspire new ways of conceptualizing, aestheticizing, and representing local and regional landscape across regimes in both the north and the south. Amid political upheaval and natural disasters, the material and ecological realities of inhabiting a place came under sharper scrutiny due to resource constraints. Travel—whether real or imagined—became a complex narrative act, often layered with emotions of loss, memory, and longing, especially when movement was restricted by warfare or border control. No longer merely an obstacle to travel, the sea was increasingly seen as a captivating yet perilous extension of land, stirring deeper artistic and poetic fascination. Encounters with sacred landscapes likewise prompted transformative responses, resulting in fantastic accounts and vivid portrayals of spiritual sites and pilgrimage routes. This period also saw deep resonances between literary and visual approaches to land, as texts and images jointly contributed to evolving modes of spatial experience. Bringing together scholars of literature, history, art history, and religious studies, this panel explores the interdisciplinary dimensions of how land and landscape were perceived, mediated, and received through various embodied actions in the Middle Period China.
Presenting Author: Xiaoshan Yang – University of Notre Dame
Presenting Author: Lucien Sun (he/him/his) – University of Chicago
Presenting Author: Elizabeth Kindall – University of St. Thomas
