Martin J. Powers
Field of Expertise
 Warring States through Song Dynasty Chinese Art
Degree
 Ph.D., University of Chicago
Martin Powers is Sally Michelson Davidson Professor of Chinese Arts and Cultures at the University of Michigan, as well as Director of the Center for Chinese Studies. In 1991 his Art and Political Expression in Early China received the Association of Asian Studies Levenson Prize for the best book in pre-twentieth century Chinese Studies. His research focuses on the role of the arts in the history of human relations in China, with an emphasis on issues of political expression, personhood, and social justice. Most recently he has turned to questions of cultural exchange between China and Europe in the early modern era. His current manuscript, Pattern and Person: ornament and social thought in classical China, will be published by the Harvard University Press East Asian Series.
Selected Publications:


Books:

  • Art and Political Expression in Early China. Yale University Press, 1991.
  • Pattern and Person: ornament and social thought in classical China, Harvard University Press East Asian Series.

Articles:

  • "Martin Powers," in Discovering Chinese Painting: Dialogues with American
    Art Historians, ed., Jason Kuo (Dubuque, 2001), 119-130.
  • "When is a Landscape like a Body?" Landscape, Culture, and Power, ed., Yeh
    Xin Liu. Center for Chinese Studies, (Berkeley, 1998), 1-21.
  • "Garden Rocks, Fractals and Freedom: Tao Yuanming Comes Home," Oriental Art, v. XLIV (Winter, 1998), 28-38.
  • "Questioning Orthodoxy," Orientations 28, no. 10 (November, 1997), 73-4.
  • "Art and History: Exploring the Counterchange Condition," Art Bulletin, v.LXXVII (1996), pp. 382-87.
contact by email
Telephone
 764-5402