During Middle Period China, eastern Asia and environs constituted a group of neighboring polities that through tribute and commerce participated in cultural and artistic interactions. Paintings and related practices including writing about art and understanding the ways to regard art also circulated within Asia. This course introduces culturally important works of art and texts associated with them in order to consider ways to interpret the imagery in its original historical environment. The course seeks to reclaim the complexities of the meanings the paintings evoked while considering the roles of inherited and imported artistic practices.