March 2017 Kim-Renaud East Asian Humanities Lecture Series

Tushu 圖書: The Complementarity of Words and Graphic Images in the Exposition of East Asian Thought and Religion

Speaker: Robert Gimello, Research Professor, Departments of Theology and East Asian Languages and Cultures, University of Notre Dame

Location: National Churchill Library and Center, Gelman Library, First Floor, George Washington University, 2130 H Street NW, Washington, DC 20052

This lecture explores a late 7th century Sino-Korean Buddhist text -- the 華厳一乗法界圖-- which has as its foundation the “seal-poem (pictured above).” Prof. Gimello will talk about this text, about its place in both Chinese and transcultural traditions of patterned poetry and word-mazes, and about the larger semiotic implications of wedding words to graphic images.