On March 14th to 17th, both Manuel Sassmann and Lia Wei attended the Association of Asian Studies conference in Seattle, respectively in a roundtable devoted to digital humanities projects in Asian Studies and a panel organized by Eugenia Bogdanova-Kummer and commented upon by Aida Wong – “Calligraphy Modernization in East Asia: Cross-Regional Approach“, with contributions from Zhu Yanfei and Seo Yoonjung.

The panel on calligraphy modernization was the occasion to acknowledge the importance of travelling scholars, exhibits or the circulation of rubbings between China and Japan and the shared – yet slightly different take on – antiquarian aesthetic in China, Korea and Japan. Both Lia and Yanfei‘s papers mentioned the figures of Yang Shoujing 楊守敬 (1839-1915) and Kusakabe Meikaku 日下部鳴鶴 (1938-1922) when looking closer at the diffusion of landmark works such as the Stele of Zheng Wengong 鄭文公碑.

While we were discussing the Japanese reception and various editions of rubbings, outline copies or collotypes that constructed an audience for Northern dynasties epigraphy, inspired the calligraphy avant-garde and prepared the ground for the generations of calligraphy amateurs that would flock to the sites starting in the 1980s, our intern Kento Ashikari, who has been working on these issues in the last month, was liaising with Sakata Gensho 坂田玄翔 in order to plan an interview.

It was great to reconvene with Xue Lei, calligraphy specialist and 石緣 fellow met last year in Daegu. Xue Lei authored a monograph on Yiheming, the Eulogy for Burying a Crane, where he investigates this 6th century moya of uncertain authorship and unravels its many layers of reception. His study allows the kind of dialogue we hope to build between Zheng Daozhao’s four mountains and other comparable endeavors.

This was also the occasion to join the Association for Chinese Art History, meet fellow art historians and learn more about initiatives in the fields. Roaming the convention centre moquette, we could also start an informal discussion on Taoist epigraphy and religious topography with current projects in this field by Gil Raz and Jonathan Pettit. We are looking forward to continuing these exchanges in the fall of 2024, in Paris, at the occasion of our first public conference!

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