4:30pm at CWAC 156.
Title: A Garden Painting during the Bloody Donglin Purge ca. 1625-1627
Abstract: Significant research in recent decades illuminates how officials in Ming imperial China (1368–1664) climbed the social ladder through collegial garden festivities, and how garden paintings, as commemorative byproducts of these gatherings, integrate natural beauty and political harmony. This paper expands upon existing scholarship by exploring a different type of garden painting, one that portrays properties constructed during the imperial massacre of 1625–1627. In an era scarred by blood, factional struggles, and eunuch persecutions against Donglin Academy members, gardens owned and named by Donglin sympathizers covertly broadcast camouflaged political messages. This paper uses the garden painting for Chen Jiru as a case study to show that some late-Ming gardens served as private refuges from political murders, as well as protests against imperial violence targeting Donglin scholars.
Persons with concerns regarding accessibility please contact Dongshan Zhang at dongshan@uchicago.edu
(This event is sponsored by the Center for East Asian Studies of University of Chicago)
Best Regards,
Dongshan
