Becoming Guanyin: Artistic Devotion of Buddhist Women in Late Imperial China | Agenda Bookshop Skip to content
LAST CHANCE! Order items marked '10-20 working days' TODAY to get them in time for Christmas!
LAST CHANCE! Order items marked '10-20 working days' TODAY to get them in time for Christmas!
A01=Yuhang Li
Age Group_Uncategorized
Age Group_Uncategorized
Author_Yuhang Li
automatic-update
Category1=Non-Fiction
Category=ACBP
Category=HBJF
Category=HRE
Category=JFSJ1
COP=United States
Delivery_Delivery within 10-20 working days
Language_English
PA=Available
Price_€20 to €50
PS=Active
softlaunch

Becoming Guanyin: Artistic Devotion of Buddhist Women in Late Imperial China

English

By (author): Yuhang Li

Winner, 2024 Geiss-Hsu Book Prize for Best First Book, Society for Ming Studies

The goddess Guanyin began in India as the bodhisattva Avalokitevara, originally a male deity. He gradually became indigenized as a female deity in China over the span of nearly a millennium. By the Ming (13581644) and Qing (16441911) periods, Guanyin had become the most popular female deity in China. In Becoming Guanyin, Yuhang Li examines how lay Buddhist women in late imperial China forged a connection with the subject of their devotion, arguing that women used their own bodies to echo that of Guanyin.

Li focuses on the power of material things to enable women to access religious experience and transcendence. In particular, she examines how secular Buddhist women expressed mimetic devotion and pursued religious salvation through creative depictions of Guanyin in different media such as painting and embroidery and through bodily portrayals of the deity using jewelry and dance. These material displays expressed a worldview that differed from yet fit within the Confucian patriarchal system. Attending to the fabrication and use of womens things by secular women, Li offers new insight into the relationships between worshipped and worshipper in Buddhist practice. Combining empirical research with theoretical insights from both art history and Buddhist studies, Becoming Guanyin is a field-changing analysis that reveals the interplay between material culture, religion, and their gendered transformations. See more
Current price €40.49
Original price €44.99
Save 10%
A01=Yuhang LiAge Group_UncategorizedAuthor_Yuhang Liautomatic-updateCategory1=Non-FictionCategory=ACBPCategory=HBJFCategory=HRECategory=JFSJ1COP=United StatesDelivery_Delivery within 10-20 working daysLanguage_EnglishPA=AvailablePrice_€20 to €50PS=Activesoftlaunch
Delivery/Collection within 10-20 working days
Product Details
  • Dimensions: 156 x 235mm
  • Publication Date: 03 May 2022
  • Publisher: Columbia University Press
  • Publication City/Country: United States
  • Language: English
  • ISBN13: 9780231190138

About Yuhang Li

Yuhang Li is an associate professor of Chinese art in the Department of Art History at the University of WisconsinMadison. She cocurated with Judith Zeitlin the exhibition Performing Images: Opera in Chinese Visual Culture and coedited the resulting catalog based on the exhibition.

Customer Reviews

Be the first to write a review
0%
(0)
0%
(0)
0%
(0)
0%
(0)
0%
(0)
We use cookies to ensure that we give you the best experience on our website. If you continue we'll assume that you are understand this. Learn more
Accept