To me, fall is wading through perfectly crisp leaves that crunch underfoot. Fall is pressing the hot cup of apple cider against my cold cheeks and sneezing from the spice of freshly grated cinnamon. Fall is feeding wood to a glowing fireplace and cooking with as much pumpkin and apple and nutmeg and cloves and ginger as possible. And so, I returned to the Berkshires, in far western Massachusetts, for the fall vacation.
Each fall the Bryn Mawr Asian Student Association (ASA) hosts a fully student-organized and student-led show to showcase talent in the community. As I understand, it’s a lengthy process for which planning begins at the close of the previous year’s concert. Therefore, the two-hour show in Goodhart Hall is the meticulously organized pride of ASA, from the dancers to the guest performers to the lights and, not least of all, the food. The show is always a success. This year was no exception, which the size of the audience, as well as the decibel level of their appreciation, could attest to. This show also marks the first time Bryn Mawr and Haverford’s Asian Students Associations combined forces to create the splendid, amply attended ASA x HASA Culture Show 2018: Celebration. ASA president Jessie Chen was the ringleader of this year’s show and, along with the ASA e-board, carried the night with a professional balance of grace, enthusiasm, and wit.
Two Ways of Thinking about the Family: Chinese and Aztec
On Thursday afternoon, September 27, Bryn Mawr hosted three simultaneous lectures on a bevy of topics: Modeling the Hand Gesture in the Age of the Silk Roads; The Medieval Now: White Nationalism, Medieval Studies, and Race; and the one I ultimately attended: Two Ways of Thinking about the Family: Chinese and Aztec.
Codex Mendoza [Codex]. (1541-1542). Bodleian Library, Oxford.
The section of the Codex Mendoza in question illustrated the separate trajectories and child-rearing techniques for a boy and girl up to marriage age. Waltner first helped us read the images. How to interpret the little painted circles above the boy and the girl in the codex? Each circle signified a year of their life. At fourteen circles, the boy had learned how to navigate a canoe on Lake Texcoco, where there could have been two hundred thousand canoes at the same time! The girl, under the guidance of her mother, had learned how to weave at a loom and cook. Yet while each had clearly defined gender roles, neither the mother nor the father was depicted as more important in raising the young. The codex suggested that responsibilities fell equally for making the children into adults. We also explored the role of family in the Portrait of Wang Shimin. The prominent painter Wang Shimin and members of his family were painted by Gu in their home, surrounded by a lush array of flowers and trees. Waltner remarked that family portraits were not typical of this period in China, yet what is even more curious is the woman (her role in the family is unknown) who regards the viewer with an unflinching gaze. Another woman is veiled behind a screen, her face obscured from the viewer.
Gu, J. (17th Century). Portrait of Wang Shimin [Painting]. Minneapolis Institute of Art, Minneapolis.
-PC: Professor Yonglin Jiang
The 360 program is an interdisciplinary semester-long experience. There are a few 360s each semester, each comprising three courses from different departments yet whose juxtaposition allows for a study of each topic from a different perspective. The 360 cluster that invited Professor Waltner is called “Empires” and includes Introduction of Health Studies; Language and Empire in Mesoamerica; and Chinese Empires: Yuan, Ming, and Qing Dynasties. Check out some of the past 360 course clusters here.
*A codex is a book of handwritten text.