Prof. Elena Valussi is a senior Lecturer in the Department of History at Loyola University Chicago. She is visiting CUHK for four months under the ICS Visiting Fellowship Programme. The Institute was honoured to invite Prof. Valussi to deliver a public lecture on the topic “Hybridity, Flexibility and Accommodation in Sichuan Religious Spaces: Reflections on Past and Recent Fieldwork” on 7 November 2023 at the User Education Room of University Library. The lecture was conducted in English and attracted around 35 participants.

The lecture addressed parallel questions of hybridity and religious identity through the historical analysis of religious spaces which have or still are shifting between religious identities, or which have become secular spaces. Starting from her work on the Chunyang Guan 純陽觀 in Xinjin 新津, Prof. Valussi then expanded on hybrid religious sites encountered in her recent fieldwork in Sichuan. Examples of Daoist, Buddhist, three religions sites, as well as multivalent sites like native place associations (huiguan會館) were discussed, in order to shine a light on the continuous transformation of religious sites and the traces these shifts leave within the sites themselves.


Prof. Sabrina Rastelli – The Mechanics of Change: Ceramics and Their Aesthetics in the 10th and 11th Centuries

Prof. Sabrina Rastelli is Professor of Chinese Art and Archaeology at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, Italy. She is visiting CUHK for four months under the ICS Visiting Fellowship Programme. The Institute was honoured to invite Prof. Rastelli to deliver a public lecture on the topic “The Mechanics of Change: Ceramics and Their Aesthetics in the 10th and 11th Centuries” on 28 November 2023 at the User Education Room of University Library. The lecture was conducted in English and attracted around 30 participants. In the lecture, Prof. Rastelli introduced her latest thoughts on essential aspects that contributed to determining the development of Chinese ceramics at a crucial time, i.e., the 10th and 11th centuries. Several questions were addressed and answered during the presentation, such as “What did determine the change in style and production in ceramic making in the Northern Song period and the often overlooked Five Dynasties period?” “Was the traditional method of studying kiln centred individually and in succession still valid, or should we look at the development of Chinese ceramics from a more interconnected and interdisciplinary perspective?”