Thursday, September 26th, 2024 at 6:30 pm EST
Prof. Eugene Wang
Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Professor of Asian Art at Harvard University
on the topic of
What Do Teeth Have to Do With Drumming? Dental Therapy in Ancient China
The Evening’s Agenda:
1. Social hour at 6:30 pm
2. Business meeting at 7:00 pm
3. Dinner and presentation at 7:15 pm
Parking:
What Do Teeth Have to Do With Drumming? Dental Therapy in Ancient China
Eugene Wang
While many of us delight in the rhythms of drumming, a visit to the dentist is often met with reluctance. Yet, in ancient China, these two seemingly disparate practices—dental care and drumming—occupied the same wavelength. At once a therapeutic practice and a leap of faith, “teeth-drumming” was imagined to take place both in the oral cavity and high up in space. How was that possible?
Professor Wang’s lecture will unpack this mystery, unveiling “orbisiconography,” an ancient Chinese framework that systematically maps the interplay between energetic processes and the integration of bodily and cosmological systems. He will explore how this holistic approach underpinned traditional dental therapies and its relevance in the broader scope of Chinese medicine. The recent resurgence of systems thinking and systems biology has led to the rediscovery of the holism of traditional Chinese medicine, long dismissed as “unscientific.” In sync with this wave of interest, the case of “teeth-drumming” opens up a new horizon of medical humanities. A fundamental question could thus be tackled: why did teeth carry so much weight in ancient times?
About the speaker
Eugene Wang is the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Professor of Asian Art at Harvard University. A Guggenheim Fellow, he is the art history editor of Encyclopedia of Buddhism. He is also the author of Shaping the Lotus Sutra: Buddhist Visual Culture in Medieval China, which received the Academic Achievement Award from Japan. His current research on biocentric art and medical humanities explores the intersection of biological systems, cosmology, and artmaking. He is the founding director of Harvard CAMLab that explores the synergy between cognitive study, aesthetics, and media technology.
