Shih-shan Susan Huang, Professor of Transnational Asian Studies, Rice University

Buddhist Book Roads: The Dynamic Spread of Buddhist Print Culture in China and Beyond

This lecture investigates the "Buddhist Book Roads," exploring the dynamic transnational spread of Buddhist print culture through a wealth of illustrated books discovered in archaeological sites, statues, and museums. Moving beyond viewing Buddhist woodcuts as static relics, this talk examines their holistic impact within multicultural contexts and as objects transmitted across vast networks both within and beyond Asia. Examples highlight this journey:

• The 868 Diamond Sutra from Dunhuang, the world's earliest dated printed book.
• Twelfth-to-fourteenth century Lotus Sutra art from Hangzhou, extensively circulated throughout Japan, Korea, and Central Asia.
• Printed fragments from Turfan, illuminating elite Uighur migration to Mongol-Yuan China.
• The popular 15th-century Beijing Dharani Sutra, sought by female donors for its protective and healing properties.

Moreover, the lecture will demonstrate how Buddhist woodblock images transcended Asian borders, reaching European audiences by the seventeenth century. Four copperplate etchings in a 1670 Dutch travel book, directly copied from Avatamsaka Sutra frontispieces, serve as a prime example. These illustrations mimicked traditional Chinese woodblock prints and calligraphic brushstrokes, shaping European perceptions of Chinese art, religion, and culture

Shih-shan Susan Huang is a Professor in Rice University’s recently established Department of Transnational Asian Studies. She holds a Ph.D. in History of Art from Yale University, specializing in Chinese painting.

Her first book, Picturing the True Form: Daoist Visual Culture in Traditional China (Harvard Asian Center, 2012; Chinese translation published by Zhejiang University Press, 2022), explores the historically overlooked visual culture of Daoism, China’s primary indigenous religion. Her second monograph, The Dynamic Spread of Buddhist Print Culture: Mapping Buddhist Book Roads in China and its Neighbors (Brill, 2024; paperback, 2025), is part of the Crossroads – History of Interaction across the Silk Routes series. This book examines Buddhist printed texts and images, not merely as static cultural relics, but as dynamic objects circulating within multicultural contexts and transregional networks, which she terms the “Buddhist Book Roads.

Among her other notable publications, she co-edited Visual and Material Cultures in Middle Period China (Brill, 2017) with Chinese historian Patricia Ebrey. 

More recently, Dr. Huang served as a guest editor alongside Buddhist scholar Stephen F. Teiser for the special issue Ritual and Materiality in Buddhism and Asian Religions, published in the Hualin International Journal of Buddhist Studies (2025). She is currently undertaking two projects: one focusing on representations of hells in later Chinese painting and print, and another on the reception and fabrication of Buddhist and Daoist images in 17th- to 19th-century European travel books.

This lecture is generously supported by the UVA East Asia Center.