Edited Volumes by Leslie Wallace
This book examines the significance of adornment to the shaping of identity in mortuary contexts ... more This book examines the significance of adornment to the shaping of identity in mortuary contexts within Asia, and brings these perspectives into dialogue with current scholarship in other worldwide regions. The mortuary contexts of focus in this volume represent unique sites and events where identity was visualized, and often manipulated and negotiated, through material objects and their placement on and about the deceased body. In both breadth and depth, it will be of interest to students and scholars interested in the archaeology, art, and history of Central and East Asia, as well as anyone interested in the general study of dress and adornment.
Behaving Badly in Early and Medieval China presents a rogues’ gallery of treacherous regicides, i... more Behaving Badly in Early and Medieval China presents a rogues’ gallery of treacherous regicides, impious monks, cutthroat underlings, ill-bred offspring, and disloyal officials. It plumbs the dark matter of the human condition, placing front and center transgressive individuals and groups traditionally demonized by Confucian annalists and largely shunned by modern scholars. The work endeavors to apprehend the actions and motivations of these men and women, whose conduct deviated from normative social, cultural, and religious expectations.
Early chapters examine how core Confucian bonds such as those between parents and children, and ruler and minister, were compromised, even severed. The living did not always reverently pay homage to the dead, children did not honor their parents with due filiality, a decorous distance was not necessarily observed between sons and stepmothers, and subjects often pursued their own interests before those of the ruler or the state. The elasticity of ritual and social norms is explored: Chapters on brazen Eastern Han (25–220) mourners and deviant calligraphers, audacious falconers, volatile Tang (618–907) Buddhist monks, and drunken Song (960–1279) literati reveal social norms treated not as universal truths but as debated questions of taste wherein political and social expedience both determined and highlighted individual roles within larger social structures and defined what was and was not aberrant.
A Confucian predilection to “valorize [the] civil and disparage the martial” and Buddhist proscriptions on killing led literati and monks alike to condemn the cruelty and chaos of war. The book scrutinizes cultural attitudes toward military action and warfare, including those surrounding the bloody and capricious world of the Zuozhuan (Chronicle of Zuo), the relentless violence of the Five Dynasties and Ten States periods (907–979), and the exploits of Tang warrior priests—a series of studies that complicates the rhetoric by situating it within the turbulent realities of the times. By the end of this volume, readers will come away with the understanding that behaving badly in early and medieval China was not about morality but perspective, politics, and power.
Book Chapters by Leslie Wallace
Disability and Art History from Antiquity to the Twenty-First Century, 2022
During the Tang dynasty (618-906), sculptures of attendants and animals were placed in elite tomb... more During the Tang dynasty (618-906), sculptures of attendants and animals were placed in elite tombs designed to replicate mansions and palaces to be populated by the spirit of the deceased. Among the retinue of human figures, which include somber officials, exotic foreigners, and beautiful court ladies, are sculptures of dwarfs, identifiable by their comparative size and the proportions of their bodies. This chapter will consider surviving representations of dwarfs during the Tang to recover the roles these sculptures played in the virtualization of elite postmortem existence and examine Tang elite conceptions of the social category of “dwarf” created and codified by these sculptures.
Raptor on the Fist--Falconry, Its Imagery and Similar Motifs throughout the Millennia on a Global Scale, 2020
This paper provides an overview of raptor and falconry imagery in China from the mid-10th century... more This paper provides an overview of raptor and falconry imagery in China from the mid-10th century BC to the early 8th century AD by focusing on four objects: a mid-10th century bronze vessel excavated from a hoard, a 2nd century AD carved relief originally part of an aboveground mortuary shrine, and a ceramic figurine and murals from the early 8th century AD tomb of a crown prince. Although these four examples offer only a glimpse of raptor and falconry imagery in China during this time, they are representative of the gradual shift from composite representations of raptors that were part of a larger repertoire of zoomorphic imagery to more naturalistic depictions of birds of prey embedded in larger narratives and/or pictorial and architectural programs.
Raptor and Human: Falconry and Bird Symbolism throughout the Millennia on a Global Scale, vol. 1.1-4, 2018
This paper outlines the early history of falconry in China beginning in the late first to early s... more This paper outlines the early history of falconry in China beginning in the late first to early second century AD, when the sport appears as a fully developed elite pastime across large areas of the empire ruled by the Eastern Han dynasty (25-220 AD). During the second to fifth centuries, the most detailed evidence for the use of raptors in the hunt can be seen in reliefs, murals, and painted bricks decorating low to mid-level elite tombs, which are the focus of this paper. These materials are supplemented by terse textual passages relating to the practice of falconry by the imperial family and the aristocracy. This paper also reviews the evidence for the origins of the sport prior to the second century and its “sudden” appearance during the Eastern Han, looking at possible points of transmission across Eurasia during the first millennium BC.
Memory and Agency in Ancient China: Shaping the Life History of Objects, 2018
In Behaving Badly in Early and Medieval China, edited by N. Harry Rothschild and Leslie V. Wallac... more In Behaving Badly in Early and Medieval China, edited by N. Harry Rothschild and Leslie V. Wallace (University of Hawai'i Press, 2017).
Papers by Leslie Wallace
Arts, 2023
Wild and fantastical animals climb, fly, scamper, and prance across pictorial stone carvings deco... more Wild and fantastical animals climb, fly, scamper, and prance across pictorial stone carvings decorating Eastern Han tomb doors in northern Shaanxi. Alongside dragons and other mythical animals, bears felicitously dance, tigers grin opening their mouths to roar, and other wild animals frolic in swirling cloudscapes. While the same animals can be found in Eastern Han tomb reliefs and mortuary art in other regions, their frequency, emphasis on plasticity and movement, and combination with the yunqi 雲氣 motif are unique to the region. Originating in a hybrid style of art that was created during the Mid‑Western Han Dynasty (206 BCE–9 CE), their significance was dependent not so much on any individual creature but on their display as an assemblage of shared forms, behaviors, and habitats. This paper explores how Eastern Han patrons and artists in Shanbei reinvigorated such imagery. It argues that on tomb doors through the region, these same wild and fantastical animals have become a key element of compositions meant to pacify the potentially dangerous realms that awaited the deceased in their postmortem ascension to Heaven (tian 天).
Asian Studies, 2019
Murals decorating an Eastern Han tomb excavated in Jingbian, Shaanxi include two large-scale repr... more Murals decorating an Eastern Han tomb excavated in Jingbian, Shaanxi include two large-scale representations of the deceased who appears in a processional scene on the left front wall of the tomb wearing typical Han elite dress, and then again on the rear wall in a regional version of a spirit seat (lingwei) composition, clean-shaven and donning a hairstyle uncommon in Han mortuary art. This paper considers these depictions in terms of Han pictorial conventions and argues that they are dual portraits of the deceased in which different attributes of his political, social, and cultural identity are stressed.
Immortals (xian 仙) are depicted as feathered sprite-like or dragon- or snake-tailed figures climb... more Immortals (xian 仙) are depicted as feathered sprite-like or dragon- or snake-tailed figures climbing stylized mountains or floating in swirling cloudscapes on tomb reliefs from the Eastern Han dynasty (25–220 ce). Possessing iconographic uniformity in a time of growing regionalism, these images represent immortals as transient figures moving through an intermediate realm where they are often joined by deer, tigers, dragons, birds, heavenly horses (tianma 天馬), and other animals. Such imagery is based upon and expands Western Han (206 BCE–8 CE) prototypes and suggests an important association between these figures and the afterlife that is not discussed in textual sources. This paper analyzes the physical hybridity of immortals, their transitory existence, and their role as shaman-like intermediaries, demonstrating that Eastern Han representations of immortals repeatedly emphasize their liminal nature and close connection to the animal world. Their position betwixt and between physical forms and realms of existence was the basis of their spiritual power, enabling them to assist the deceased in their transcendent journey to paradise.
Falconry has been practiced in China for nearly two thousand years, but its early history is obsc... more Falconry has been practiced in China for nearly two thousand years, but its early history is obscured by a lack of visual, textual, and archaeological materials. Falconry first appears in visual and textual records dating to the Eastern Han dynasty (A.D. 25-220). Although the standard histories offer few details about the practice of falconry at this time, a growing number of excavated tomb reliefs provide information regarding the possible genesis of the sport. I first discovered this imagery when looking for representations of activities associated with foreigners in hunting scenes depicted in Eastern Han tombs from Shaanxi and Shanxi. In scenes of the hunt from this region, mounted falconers are depicted alongside mounted archers, figures that are connected in Han visual and textual sources with Northern nomadic pastoralists. This imagery immediately prompted a number of questions: when the practice began, who practiced falconry, and whether or not it was associated with foreigners at this time. This article is an outgrowth of research based on these initial questions. Focusing on Eastern Han depictions of falconry, I first examine where and how falconry was practiced in ancient China and what types of birds were used. I will then argue that the sport was originally learned by the Chinese from nomadic pastoralists living to the north of Han China. Finally, I will examine Han attitudes towards the sport, suggesting that although it may have originally been associated with nomadic pastoralists, in Eastern Han texts, falconry was connected with activities char- acteristic of a misspent youth.
Talks by Leslie Wallace
WORKSHOP - SAVE THE DATE - 19-21 April 2021
(note: link for registration and additional details ... more WORKSHOP - SAVE THE DATE - 19-21 April 2021
(note: link for registration and additional details will be circulated around mid-March)
Recent years have seen a surge in the number of scholarly debates dedicated to the history of disability, which aim to reposition the modern understanding of disability by placing the concept in cultural-historical, political, and social contexts. The guiding contention of such studies is that disability is not merely an individual ailment but a social construct, which in turn sheds light on the cultural values of a given society. On the Sinological sphere, several important studies were published which focus on specific bodily or cognitive impairments; yet so far, no effort has been made to juxtapose the different findings and understand what, at large, constitutes ‘disability’ in early China. This workshop will bring together academics to discuss this question and examine topics relating to disability and bodily impairment in early and medieval Chinese history, with an eye on their socio-political implications.
Uploads
Edited Volumes by Leslie Wallace
Early chapters examine how core Confucian bonds such as those between parents and children, and ruler and minister, were compromised, even severed. The living did not always reverently pay homage to the dead, children did not honor their parents with due filiality, a decorous distance was not necessarily observed between sons and stepmothers, and subjects often pursued their own interests before those of the ruler or the state. The elasticity of ritual and social norms is explored: Chapters on brazen Eastern Han (25–220) mourners and deviant calligraphers, audacious falconers, volatile Tang (618–907) Buddhist monks, and drunken Song (960–1279) literati reveal social norms treated not as universal truths but as debated questions of taste wherein political and social expedience both determined and highlighted individual roles within larger social structures and defined what was and was not aberrant.
A Confucian predilection to “valorize [the] civil and disparage the martial” and Buddhist proscriptions on killing led literati and monks alike to condemn the cruelty and chaos of war. The book scrutinizes cultural attitudes toward military action and warfare, including those surrounding the bloody and capricious world of the Zuozhuan (Chronicle of Zuo), the relentless violence of the Five Dynasties and Ten States periods (907–979), and the exploits of Tang warrior priests—a series of studies that complicates the rhetoric by situating it within the turbulent realities of the times. By the end of this volume, readers will come away with the understanding that behaving badly in early and medieval China was not about morality but perspective, politics, and power.
Book Chapters by Leslie Wallace
Papers by Leslie Wallace
Talks by Leslie Wallace
(note: link for registration and additional details will be circulated around mid-March)
Recent years have seen a surge in the number of scholarly debates dedicated to the history of disability, which aim to reposition the modern understanding of disability by placing the concept in cultural-historical, political, and social contexts. The guiding contention of such studies is that disability is not merely an individual ailment but a social construct, which in turn sheds light on the cultural values of a given society. On the Sinological sphere, several important studies were published which focus on specific bodily or cognitive impairments; yet so far, no effort has been made to juxtapose the different findings and understand what, at large, constitutes ‘disability’ in early China. This workshop will bring together academics to discuss this question and examine topics relating to disability and bodily impairment in early and medieval Chinese history, with an eye on their socio-political implications.
Early chapters examine how core Confucian bonds such as those between parents and children, and ruler and minister, were compromised, even severed. The living did not always reverently pay homage to the dead, children did not honor their parents with due filiality, a decorous distance was not necessarily observed between sons and stepmothers, and subjects often pursued their own interests before those of the ruler or the state. The elasticity of ritual and social norms is explored: Chapters on brazen Eastern Han (25–220) mourners and deviant calligraphers, audacious falconers, volatile Tang (618–907) Buddhist monks, and drunken Song (960–1279) literati reveal social norms treated not as universal truths but as debated questions of taste wherein political and social expedience both determined and highlighted individual roles within larger social structures and defined what was and was not aberrant.
A Confucian predilection to “valorize [the] civil and disparage the martial” and Buddhist proscriptions on killing led literati and monks alike to condemn the cruelty and chaos of war. The book scrutinizes cultural attitudes toward military action and warfare, including those surrounding the bloody and capricious world of the Zuozhuan (Chronicle of Zuo), the relentless violence of the Five Dynasties and Ten States periods (907–979), and the exploits of Tang warrior priests—a series of studies that complicates the rhetoric by situating it within the turbulent realities of the times. By the end of this volume, readers will come away with the understanding that behaving badly in early and medieval China was not about morality but perspective, politics, and power.
(note: link for registration and additional details will be circulated around mid-March)
Recent years have seen a surge in the number of scholarly debates dedicated to the history of disability, which aim to reposition the modern understanding of disability by placing the concept in cultural-historical, political, and social contexts. The guiding contention of such studies is that disability is not merely an individual ailment but a social construct, which in turn sheds light on the cultural values of a given society. On the Sinological sphere, several important studies were published which focus on specific bodily or cognitive impairments; yet so far, no effort has been made to juxtapose the different findings and understand what, at large, constitutes ‘disability’ in early China. This workshop will bring together academics to discuss this question and examine topics relating to disability and bodily impairment in early and medieval Chinese history, with an eye on their socio-political implications.