Yukina Z. Zhang

Dissertation

I graduated from Mount Holyoke College with a BA in Art History and a minor in Italian Studies and Classics. During my MA in Decorative Arts, Design History, and Material Culture at the Bard Graduate Center, I studied the visual and material culture of cross-cultural exchange between Eurasia and early imperial China. My MA thesis examines the unique Eurasian design of hybrid animals with contorted body on horse frontlets in Western Han (206 B.C.-A.D.220) China, devoting particular focus to issues including the transmission of knowledge, and its transformation in the Western Han funerary context. Prior to my doctoral work at ISAW, I worked as a research associate in the Department of Asian Art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art for the special exhibition Age of Empires: Chinese Art of the Qin and Han Dynasties (221 B.C.-A.D. 220) on view in 2017.


My work at ISAW focuses on the art and culture of the Tang Empire (A.D. 618-907) and Central Asia. In ISAW, I will explore issues of cross-cultural exchange, gender, and urban culture in the study of both art history and the ancient world. My dissertation will take interdisciplinary approaches to examine the visual and material expressions from husband-and-wife joint burials around Chang'an, the cosmopolitan capital city of the Tang Empire, with a framework centered on gender, power and art production.