Over the last twenty years, material culture studies have occupied a growing place in the social sciences. How does this growing interest in objects and material culture reveal itself in Chinese studies? Choosing from different disciplines and different periods, this AFEC workshop aims to examine how to approach objects in the humanities and social sciences—from everyday objects to natural objects, consumer goods, technical or scientific instruments, objects of study or devotion, or ritual objects and works of art. By bringing together specialists from different fields (history, art history, archaeology, technology, anthropology, literature, sociology, etc.), the workshop explores the life, trajectory and the possible metamorphoses of the value, status and function of objects, as well as the relationships these artefacts have with individuals—raising in addition questions of their social uses—by focusing on their religious, symbolic, political, economic, emotional or memorial dimensions.

Presentation

Over the last twenty years, material culture studies have occupied a growing place in the social sciences. How does this growing interest in objects and material culture reveal itself in Chinese studies? Choosing from different disciplines and different periods, this AFEC workshop aims to examine how to approach objects in the humanities and social sciences—from everyday objects to natural objects, consumer goods, technical or scientific instruments, objects of study or devotion, or ritual objects and works of art. By bringing together specialists from different fields (history, art history, archaeology, technology, anthropology, literature, sociology, etc.), the workshop explores the life, trajectory and the possible metamorphoses of the value, status and function of objects, as well as the relationships these artefacts have with individuals—raising in addition questions of their social uses—by focusing on their religious, symbolic, political, economic, emotional or memorial dimensions.

Programme

Friday, June 15

8:45  Welcome -  Introductory remarks, Valérie LAVOIX, President of the AFEC

MORNING SESSION (9:30–12:50) - AMPHI 2, Inalco

Objects of Memory and Memory of the Object (1) 

Chair: Gilles GUIHEUX

• 9:30   AMAR Nathanel The Lives of Dakouin China: From Waste to Nostalgia
• 10:00  FLATH James Unmanufacturing Modern China: Industrial Ruins and Post-Industrial Society
• 10:30 LU Yi Sinological Garbology: Archives and History in Modern China

Objects of Memory and Memory of the Object (2) 

Chair: Pierre-Emmanuel ROUX

• 11:20  HAMMOND Kenneth J. A Broadsheet Image of Sixteenth Century Beijing
• 11:50 LI Geng “Old House Can Tell”: Chinese Lineage Group Re-Activation and Female Agency around Built Heritage
• 12:20  HOU Song  Historicizing, Poeticizing and Dwelling: The Remembrance and Meaning Negotiation of Trees as Cultural Sites in Late Imperial China

June 15 - MORNING SESSION (9:30–12:50) - AMPHI 3, Inalco

Circulating Objects (1) 

Chair: John FINLAY

•  9:30   WANG Lianming Materialized Identities: Kingfisher Feather and Qing Material Culture
• 10:00   EBEN V. RACKNITZ Ines  Chinese Zodiac: The Social Life of the Yuanming Yuan’s Circle of Animals
• 10:30    MONNET Nathalie The Crucial Influence of Books in the Development of Chinese Studies in France

Circulating Objects (2) 

Chair: Michaela PEJCOCHOVA

• 11:20   LI Xiaoxuan Bronzes Commodified and the Rise of Commercialization in Eastern Zhou
• 11:50 LOTZE Johannes Multilingual Objects: Material Culture as Evidence of Ming China’s Global Engagement (1368-1644)
• 12:20 YU Yusen Chinese Painting as Object: Collecting and (Re)mounting Chinese Painting in Persian Albums, 15th–16th Centuries

June 15 - AFTERNOON SESSIONS (2:00–6:00), AMPHI 2, Inalco

Social life of Objects: Human-Object Interactions (1) 

Chair: Francesca DAL LAGO

• 2:00   LEE Wing Ki The Social Lives of Porcelain Photo as Commemorative Portrait in the 20th Century Chinese Context
• 2:30   HUANG I-fen From Boudoir to Antique shop to Modern Museum: The Social Life of Han Ximeng’s Embroidered Album
• 3:00   WRIGHT Suzanne E.Jiupai: Performance and Play

Social life of Objects : Human-Object Interactions (2) 

Chair: Marie LAUREILLARD

• 3:50   WANG Wenxin “The Decaying Brushstrokes Inscribed Are Where Your Divine Spirits Rest”: The Creation of Painting Inscriptions as Controlling the Past, Present, and Future
• 4:20  LAURENT Cédric Revaluating Landscape Iconography: Painting and Poetry of Meditation during the 15th & 16th Centuries
• 4:50 CHAN Pedith Visual Travelogue of Scenic Mountains:Yu Jianhua’s Travel Albums
• 5:20  KELLY Thomas The Poetry of Ink in Late Imperial China

June 15 - AFTERNOON SESSIONS (2:00–6:00), AMPHI 3, Inalco

Object Trajectories: Changes in Meaning or in Value 

Chair: Ping FOONG

2:00 CHENG Bonnie Meaning and Value in Underground Tombs

• 2:30 KHAYUTINA Maria He zun zhuan何尊傳: From an Agent in the Early Chinese Polity Formation to the Treasure of the State
• 3:00 ZHU Pinyan Avalokiteśvara in Gold: The Transformation of a Devotional Image at Dazu Grottoes

Religious and Secular Objects 

Chair: Vincent DURAND-DASTÈS

• 3:50 PEJCOCHOVA Michaela From Ritual to Colonial Fantasies: Chinese Ritual Objects as Part of Western Collections of Chinese Art in the Inter-War Period
• 4:20 XU Lufeng  Usual, disciplined, violent: Buddhist Monks’ Knives in the Shaolin Temple
• 4:50 CHAMBON Michel Producing and Consuming the Blood of Christ among Chinese Protestants Today
• 5:20 LEI Yang Creation and Reconstruction of a Soundscape: The Great Buddhist Bell of the Yongle Era in the Local Literature of Peking, 1600-1900

6:00  Presentation by Olivier de BERNON (EFEO) of the future Museum of Chinese Folk Art

Saturday June 16

June 16 - MORNING SESSION (9:30–12:50), AMPHI 6, Inalco

Collecting Neglected Objects 

Chair: Delphine SPICQ

•  9:30  LEFEVBRE Romain A Decade of Auctions: What Place for Tangut Objects within the Cultural and Historical Legacy of China?
• 10:00 GRASSKAMP Anna Maritime Matters: Oceans, Objects and Collecting in Early Modern China
• 10:30  SHAN Fred Dust of the Song Dynasty: Huang Pilie (1763-1825) and His Collection of Song Editions

Verbal Representation of Objects 

Chair: Valérie LAVOIX

• 11:20  CHEN Guangcheng A Name Searching for its Object: The Life of Jia 斝and the Contestation of Authenticity
• 11:50   KIRKOVA Zornica Facets of the Mountain Censer in Early Medieval Chinese Poetry
• 12:20  PIRAZZOLI Melinda Lu Xun’s Sense of Objects: Exchange, Consumption and Commodity Fetishism in Lu Xun’s “Medicine” (1919) and “Soaps

June 16 - MORNING SESSION (9:30–12:50), AMPHI 7, Inalco

What Do Objects Tell Us (1)? 

Chair: Alain THOTE

• 9:30 FOONG Ping A Dunhuang Imaginary: The case of mistaken identity in the biography of a Tang dynasty votive tablet
• 10:00 KIM Moonsil Lee The Capacity of Ancient Vessels: Vessel Volumes in the Catalogues from the Song to the Qing Periods, and Now
• 10:30  ZHANG Jinghong Chinese Tea Serving Pitcher and the Debate Over Its Multiple Cultural Origins

What Do Objects Tell Us (2)? 

Chair: Daniela CAMPO

• 11:20  SAM-SIN Fresco  From Clan to Empire: The Manchu Shaman’s Changing Toolkit
• 11:50  YANG Ya-ting Qipao: femininity and modern China