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Brown Bag Biography with Kate A. Lingley

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The patrons of early medieval Chinese Buddhism commissioned thousands of votive images and monuments, many including inscriptions justifying their gift and even donor figures depicting them in the act of offering worship. In doing so, they also provided a material record of the lives of individuals who were of no interest to official history. The medieval Chinese historical record is voluminous and richly detailed, but one of its greatest absences is the accounts of women, who appear only occasionally and usually as adjuncts to a male relative’s story. By contrast, there was no notional restriction on who could be a Buddhist art patron at the time, so long as they could muster the resources to sponsor an image or monument. Such monuments were usually installed in public view in monasteries, temples, and other public places. The view they provide into the lives and activities of their patrons is invaluable, specifically because of this public nature; the donor figures and inscriptions constitute a form of public self-representation on the part of their patrons, and thus are fundamentally autobiographical. My work focuses on the lives of medieval women as seen through the monuments and inscriptions they left behind. Kate A. Lingley is Associate Professor of Art History at the University of HawaiÊ»i at ²ÑÄå²Ô´Ç²¹. Her research focuses on Buddhist votive sculpture of the Northern and Southern Dynasties period, with a particular interest in the social history of religious art in medieval China. Her articles in this area have been published in Asia Major, Ars Orientalis, Early Medieval China, and Archives of Asian Art, among others. She is currently working on a book manuscript on the lives of Buddhist women in medieval China, as seen through the votive monuments they dedicated, and an edited collection on the epigraphic evidence for women’s role in early Buddhism across Asia.

Event Sponsor
Center for Biographical Research, Mānoa Campus

More Information
Laura M. Dunn, 8089563774, biograph@hawaii.edu