Faculty Profile
Wei Ren
Assistant Professor of Art and Art History; The Tamar and Emil '53 Weiss Chair in Asian Art (2015)
Contact Information
Weiss Center for the Arts Room 227
Bio
Professor Ren is a specialist in East Asian art. In addition to survey courses on East Asian art, she also teaches courses on the Japanese woodblock print, ink painting, modern Chinese art, and Chinese funerary art. Her research interests focus primarily on 19th-20th century Chinese art, with a special emphasis on how the concept of design emerged and developed in Japan and China in relation to both fine arts and industry in a broad cross-cultural nexus. She is currently working on her book manuscript entitled "Converging in Design: Modern Art and Books in China."
Education
- B.A., Williams College, 2007
- Ph.D., Harvard University, 2015
2024-2025 Academic Year
Fall 2024
ARTH 205 Japanese Architecture
Cross-listed with EASN 205-02. This course is intended to introduce students to the scholarly study of Japanese architecture and urbanism, covering both the premodern and modern eras. Each session will be devoted to the examination of one significant Japanese architectural site, coupled with an important concept or methodological concern in the study of the Japanese built environment. The sites and issues chosen for study are intended to provide students with a broad knowledge base with which to pursue further studies in architectural history, design history, environmental history, and East Asian history. Participants will be introduced to each of the major typologies of Japanese architecture: shrines, temples, imperial villas, castles, tea houses, merchant houses (machiya), and farm houses (minka), as well as the two of the most historically significant city forms in the archipelago, the imperial grid city and the castle town. In addition, the nature and culture of advanced timber-frame architecture will be studied from the vantage point of design, engineering, source materials and process, as well as the sustainability issues inherent to the materials. More general themes that inform the course throughout include the relationship of architecture to the natural landscape, historical and contemporary issues of sustainability, the concept and design of the city, and the significance of the body.
EASN 205 Japanese Architecture
Cross-listed with ARTH 205-02. This course is intended to introduce students to the scholarly study of Japanese architecture and urbanism, covering both the premodern and modern eras. Each session will be devoted to the examination of one significant Japanese architectural site, coupled with an important concept or methodological concern in the study of the Japanese built environment. The sites and issues chosen for study are intended to provide students with a broad knowledge base with which to pursue further studies in architectural history, design history, environmental history, and East Asian history. Participants will be introduced to each of the major typologies of Japanese architecture: shrines, temples, imperial villas, castles, tea houses, merchant houses (machiya), and farm houses (minka), as well as the two of the most historically significant city forms in the archipelago, the imperial grid city and the castle town. In addition, the nature and culture of advanced timber-frame architecture will be studied from the vantage point of design, engineering, source materials and process, as well as the sustainability issues inherent to the materials. More general themes that inform the course throughout include the relationship of architecture to the natural landscape, historical and contemporary issues of sustainability, the concept and design of the city, and the significance of the body.
ARTH 209 The Japanese Woodblock Print
Cross-listed with EASN 209-01.
EASN 209 The Japanese Woodblock Print
Cross-listed with ARTH 209-01.