Bing Wang, PhD candidate in global photography 1839-1939, focused on East, South, and Southeast Asia, presented “From The China Magazine to The Far East: An Early Evolution of Photographs Independent from Texts in East Asian Periodicals.” Her talk is based on research conducted for an upcoming exhibition, Power and Perspective: Early Photography in China. Bing is currently a Catalog and Research Assistant at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, MA.

Lauryn Smith, PhD candidate in early modern Dutch and Flemish painting and European decorative arts, presented her fellowship project, “Beyond ‘Exceptional’ Women: Unearthing Women’s Agency in the 17th Century Dutch Art Market with Network Analysis.” This project, funded by the Frick Collection and Art Reference Library in New York, applies network analysis to the Montias Database of 17th Century Art Inventories to uncover women’s active participation in the cultural sphere of 17th century Amsterdam and interrogate the perceived gendered societal norms of the early modern period.