ASIA THROUGH MURAL IMAGES AND TEXT: EARL

This course is centered around a set of high-resolution digital images of murals photographed by Thomas Laird, author of the massive compilation Murals of Tibet (Taschen, 2018). Undergraduate and graduate students will research the historical, religious and artistic significance of the images and embedded captions. Students will explore the relation between text and image, material culture, and narrative in Tibetan, Himalayan, Chinese and other comparative contexts in a seminar-style class, supplemented by guest speakers and workshops. The recently developed "Edition Crafter" interface will provide the technology and platform for a small-scale pilot online presentation of findings from the Norbulingka murals. The course offers a model for engaging digital collections while serving to make material cultural objects accessible to broader audiences.

The following questions will provide theoretical lenses and themes as we explore the work of murals: How can we study murals as a visual medium? What purpose do murals serve? What narrative function do they perform? How can we study the engagement and reception of murals by spectators and worshippers? In what ways does a mural transform the physical space in which it is made? How do murals interact with other media, including poetry, prose, and prayer? What is the relationship between image and text? Who made the murals? Who were the painters? Murals in Tibetan and Himalayan contexts will also be discussed in a global framework, including analogous cases in Renaissance Italy, Nubian Egypt, Silk Road Buddhist cave paintings in India, China, and Central Asia, and Southeast Asian Buddhist murals.