Lara Blanchard
Lara C. W. BlanchardChair, Asian StudiesProfessor of Art and Architecture
Joined faculty in 2001
Ph.D., Art History, University of Michigan
M.A., Art History, University of Michigan
B.A., Art History and Mathematics, College of William & Mary
Contact Information
Scholarly Interest
Construction of gender in art
Women as artists and patrons
Text-image relationships
Chinese theories of representation
Teaching Experience
Lloyd Wright Professor in Conservative Studies (2018-2023).
Luce Professor of East Asian Art, Hobart & William Smith Colleges (2017- ).
Luce Associate Professor of East Asian Art, Hobart & William Smith Colleges (2008-17).
Henry Luce Assistant Professor of East Asian Art, Hobart & William Smith Colleges (2001-2008).
Instructor, University of Michigan at Ann Arbor (1998).
Courses Taught
Introduction to Asian Art (ARTH/ASN 103)
Chinese Pictures: 1000 Years (ARTH 209)
Women Artists in Europe and Asia, 1300-1750 (ARTH 210)
Arts of Modern China (ARTH 212)
Japanese Art & Culture (ARTH 252)
Buddhist Art & Architecture (ARTH 253)
Gender & Painting in China (ARTH 303/403)
Telling Tales: Narrative in Asian Art (ARTH 306/406)
Arts of the Landscape and the Garden in China and Japan (Landscapes and Gardens, ARTH 336/436)
Courtesan Culture in China & Japan (ASN 304)
Introduction to Women's Studies (WMST 100)
First-Year Seminar: From Comix to Graphix (FSEM 108)
Publications
Blanchard, Lara C. W. "Defining a Female Subjectivity: Gendered Gazes and Feminist Reinterpretations in the Art of Cui Xiuwen and Yu Hong." In "(En)gendering: Chinese Women's Art in the Making," edited by Shuqin Cui. Special issue, positions: asia critique 28, no. 1 (February 2020): 177-205.
Blanchard, Lara C. W. “Gender in Chinese Art.” Grove Art Online, edited by Sonya Lee, www.oxfordartonline.com/groveart. December 2019.
Wei Jiali 魏嘉麗 [Lara C. W. Blanchard]. “Huizong de xin yi—‘Dao lian tu’ zhong de yuwang yu yuyi 徽宗的新衣——《捣练图》中的欲望与寓义.” Translation of “Huizong’s New Clothes: Desire and Allegory in Court Ladies Preparing Newly Woven Silk.” For the Chinese National Academy of Arts, Haiwai Zhongguo yishushi yanjiu 海外中国艺术史研究, vol. 1, ed. Niu Kecheng 牛克诚 (Changsha: Hunan meishu chubanshe, 2018), 65–83.
Blanchard, Lara C. W. Song Dynasty Figures of Longing and Desire: Gender and Interiority in Chinese Painting and Poetry. Women and Gender in China Studies, no. 10. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2018. [Winner of the 2020 Joseph Levenson Pre-1900 Book Prize (China), The Association for Asian Studies.]
Chiem, Kristen L., and Lara C. W. Blanchard, eds. Gender, Continuity, and the Shaping of Modernity in the Arts of East Asia, 16th - 20th Centuries. Gendering the Trans-Pacific World, no. 2. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2017.
Chiem, Kristen L., and Lara C. W. Blanchard. "Introduction." In Gender, Continuity, and the Shaping of Modernity in the Arts of East Asia, 16th - 20th Centuries, 1-17. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2017.
Blanchard, Lara C. W. "Imagining Du Liniang in The Peony Pavilion: Female Painters, Self-Portraiture, and Paintings of Beautiful Women in Late Ming China." In Women, Gender and Art in Asia, c. 1500-1900, edited by Melia Belli Bose, 125-46. London and New York: Routledge, 2016.
Neave, Dorinda, Lara C. W. Blanchard, and Marika Sardar. Asian Art. Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Pearson, 2015. [Winner of the 2016 Franklin R. Buchanan Prize for Asia Curriculum Materials, The Association for Asian Studies.]
Blanchard, Lara C. W. "Mou Yi's Pounding Cloth: Painting, Play, Rhetoric, and Discourse in Song China." Artibus Asiae 73, no. 2 (2013): 295-341.
Blanchard, Lara C. W., and Kara J. Kenney. "Traces of Collaboration: Empress Yang's Captions for Xia Gui's Twelve Views of Landscape." Critical Matrix: The Princeton Journal of Women, Gender, and Culture 18 (Fall 2009): 6-33.
Blanchard, Lara C. W. "Huizong's New Clothes: Desire and Allegory in Court Ladies Preparing Newly Woven Silk." Ars Orientalis 36 (2006): 111-35.
Blanchard, Lara C. W. "A Scholar in the Company of Female Entertainers: Changing Notions of Integrity in Song to Ming Dynasty Painting. " NAN NÜ: Men, Women and Gender in China 9, no. 2 (2008): 189-246.
Blanchard, Lara C. W. "Lonely Women and the Absent Man: The Masculine Landscape as Metaphor in the Song Dynasty Painting of Women." In Gendered Landscapes: An Interdisciplinary Exploration of Past Place and Space, edited by Bonj Szczygiel, Josephine Carubia and Lorraine Dowler, 33-47. University Park, Pa.: The Center for Studies in Landscape History, The Pennsylvania State University, 2000.
PROFESSIONAL AFFILIATIONS
Member, Association for Chinese Art History
Member, Association for Asian Studies
Member, College Art Association
PERSONAL STATEMENT
My interdisciplinary research interests include gender and art in China, text-image relationships, and Chinese theories of representation. I focus on pictorial arts: paintings, woodblock prints, photography, and video. Since 1993 I have worked primarily on the arts of the Song dynasty (960-1279), but in recent years I have begun to write about arts of later periods through the contemporary era. Though much of my research examines how images themselves can be gendered and how artists participate in constructing idealized visions of Chinese masculinity and femininity, I also consider the contributions of women as artists and patrons.
I hope to show my students that art history is the perfect discipline for people who think visually, who have wide-ranging interests in the humanities and social sciences, and who love to travel and learn languages. Students in my classes can expect to read not only about art but also about literature, philosophy, history, religion, politics, and women's studies. I find coursework in art history to be a vital component of a program in Asian cultures, and learning about Asian art complements the study of European and American art (and vice versa of course). In my teaching, I strive to open the eyes of my students as my dedicated art history teachers in high school, college, and graduate school did for me.
SERVICE PROJECTS
Office Hours
Mondays 10:30am-12:00pm, Tuesdays 1:30-3:00pm, or by appointment, in person or via Zoom