Asian Pre-Modern Court Cultures and Visuality

The Leisure and Social Change across Asia project, funded by the Boston University Humanities Foundation and sponsored by BUCSA, is moving into its third year of activities. This spring, three speakers enriched the research group’s event calendar, focusing on pre-modern Asia.

In late February, Jeroen Duindam, Professor of Modern History at Leiden University, and author of Myths of Power: Norbert Elias and the Early Modern European Court (Amsterdam 1995), and Vienna and Versailles: The Courts of Europe’s Dynastic Rivals 1550-1780 (Cambridge 2003), met BU’s Asian pre-modern specialists for a small seminar, and then delivered a well-attended lecture  at the Castle,  on the topic “Courtly ‘Leisure’ in Europe and Asia: Social Routines, Consumption and Distinction under Dynastic Rule.” The following day, in co-sponsorship with the Leisure Project and BUCSA, he presented at the Fairbank Center at Harvard the international comparative project on early modern courts he is launching with specialists of Ottoman and Chinese studies.

In early March, Ebba Koch,  Professor at the Institute of Art History in Vienna, and senior researcher at the Austrian Academy of Sciences, delivered a fascinating presentation entitled  “The Symbolic Possession of the World: European Cartography in Mughal Allegory.” The talk showed how artistic and scientific pursuits at the Mughal court in early modern India were both leisurely aristocratic activities and politically charged propaganda strategies. Koch is a leading authority on Mughal architecture, and the only Western architectural advisor to the Taj Mahal Conservation Collaborative.

Finally, in mid-April, Sarah Thompson, Curator of Japanese Prints at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, gave a presentation on the Japanese Print Access and Documentation Project (JPADP) that she coordinates, and discussed the effects of digitization on our current understanding, use, and appreciation of prints depicting leisure. Beneath the superficial playfulness of woodblock prints, very serious political and social matters are being touched on and often subverted through this medium.