Jin Xu

(Jane and Leopold Swergold Associate Professor of Chinese Art History, Columbia University)

Faces of Glory on Roof Tiles: Imperial Architecture of the Western Xia Kingdom (1038–1227)

Friday, October 17, 4:10 PM – 6:10 PM

951 Schermerhorn Extension

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Abstract

The Western Xia kingdom (1038–1227), a multiethnic state established by the Tangut people in Northwest China, played a significant role in both Chinese and world history. Its resistance to the Mongol conquest contributed to the death of Genghis Khan, while its promotion of Tibetan Buddhism shaped the religious policies of the Mongol empire and subsequent Chinese dynasties. In July 2025, the Western Xia imperial mausoleums near Yinchuan, Ningxia, were listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Focusing on bestial-face decorations on roof tile ends excavated from the mausoleums and nearby temples, this talk will demonstrate some distinctive features of Western Xia architecture in comparison with its Song, Liao, and Jin neighbors. It will also explore the cultural, religious, and ecological conditions that informed the emergence of Tangut architectural forms.

Bio

Jin Xu specializes in pre-modern Chinese art history, with a particular interest in art and architecture during the imperial period (221 BCE–1911 CE). His research focuses on the artistic expressions of migrants and their communities, including both non-Chinese immigrants in China and Chinese emigrants in border regions. He seeks to understand how the experience of migration shaped perceptions of art and how art, in turn, helped individuals make sense of their migratory lives and heritage. In his research, he also emphasizes the significance of material properties and technical processes in influencing the ways of seeing.

Over the years, he has been examining stone coffins and funerary couches from the Northern Dynasties (439–581), which saw an influx of Central Asian immigrants, notably the Iranian-speaking Sogdians from present-day Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. His first book project is titled Beyond Boundaries: Sogdian Sarcophagi and the Art of an Immigrant Community in Sixth-Century China. It demonstrates the various ways (material, pictorial, and architectural) in which Sogdian immigrant leaders and their families expressed their multifaceted life experiences through mortuary stones.

He is currently working on a subsequent book, Miraculous Transformation: Pictorial Narratives in the Northern Wei Dynasty (386–534). This book centers on figural representations under the rule of the first major dynasty founded by nomadic immigrants in Chinese history. It covers a variety of artistic mediums—commissioned by people from diverse ethnic and cultural backgrounds—and addresses some critical issues in Chinese art history, such as the aesthetics of natural stone, images of the deceased, the emergence of landscape paintings, women’s roles as patrons and viewers, and the interaction between Buddhist and indigenous Chinese artistic practices.

His teaching covers a wide range of topics, including inter-regional artistic exchanges within East Asia, religious and funerary art, the art of the Silk Road, artistic materials and techniques, objects study, images and texts, rubbings and prints, and architecture and gardens. Before joining Columbia, he taught in the Art Department at Vassar College.

Prospective PhD applicants are welcome to reach out and share their application materials. However, due to the high volume of inquiries, I may not be able to respond to every email, especially if your research interests do not closely match mine.

Sarah Tarlow

(Professor Emerita of Historical Archaeology at the University of Leicester, UK)

“Archaeology, Life Writing and Radical Honesty”

Friday, November 7, 4:10 PM – 6:10 PM

951 Schermerhorn Extension

Abstract

Like many people in the academic world, I have been experimenting with ways of writing that are quite different from the usual texts we produce. Doing other kinds of writing means paying attention to other aspects of how and what we communicate. In the case of memoir/ life writing, that might mean that we give up the guarantee of authenticity and authority that comes from citing extensive references and using a specialised register, and depend more on emotional and experiential points of connection, and the creative use of language to evoke whatever you want to convey.

Combining life writing with academic expertise is a rare occasion where a writer can be their full self, integrating professional and personal stories and views.

In this talk I will argue that what distinguishes the best life writing is radical honesty. Furthermore, the principles of radical honesty applied back to our academic writing and, indeed, to our other endeavours, result in more innovative, exciting, critical and transformative work. Radical honesty requires the writer to interrogate the self deeply, to evaluate assumptions, and root out platitudes and clichés, even when to do so invites criticism, ridicule, or impediments to career progression.

I will discuss and read from my own memoir, The Archaeology of Loss, which combines my expertise as an archaeologist specialising in the archaeology of death and burial, with my personal experience of being a long-term carer for my ill husband, and my responses to his decision to end his own life. Writing this book changed my perspective on myself, on archaeological writing and on what it might mean to be a public anthropologist.

Bio

Sarah Tarlow is Professor Emerita of Historical Archaeology at the University of Leicester, UK. She has published more than 10 academic books on topics including the archaeology of death, historical archaeology in Britain and Ireland, the archaeology of the body and archaeological ethics. In 2023, her memoir The Archaeology of Loss received the Royal Anthropological Institute’s Public Anthropology award.