Sylvia Tongyan Qiu

    Presentations

    Sylvia Tongyan Qiu, art history PhD student, giving a talk at UCLA Center for 17th- and 18th- Century Studies, Los Angeles

    “Perimeters of Power: Palace Walls, City Walls, and the Great Walls of China in 17th– and 18th-Century European Accounts,” New England Association for Asian Studies Conference, Smith College, Northampton, November 2026.

    “Diplomatic Objects? Gem-Inlaid ‘Hindustan’ Jade and Agate Vessels between the Qing, Mughal, and Ottoman Courts, “Strange Synchronicities and Familiar Parallels in Asia, 1600-1800: Joseph Fletcher’s Plane Ride Revisited, Conference 3: Empires of Things,” UCLA Center for 17th– and 18th-Century Studies, Los Angeles, May 2026.

    “’Black Jade’ and Qing Material Understandings: An Obsidian Mirror at the Shunzhi Emperor’s Collection,”2025 Western Conference for the Association of Asian Studies, El Colegio de México, Mexico City, Mexico, November 2025.

    “Adam Johann von Krusenstern and Maritime Transimperial Diplomacy,” “Revisiting European Maritime Exploration in the Pacific Ocean (c. 1750-1850),” Estonian Maritime Museum, Tallinn, Estonia, November 2025.

    “L’image survivante: The ‘Chinese Tartary’ in 17th– and 18th-Century European Collections,” the 4th Conference of the European Association for Asian Art and Archaeology, Lisbon, Portugal, September 2025.

    “The Qing Language of Gems: Hat Finials and the (Un)Mapping of the Imperial Order,” the 13th Forum for East Asian Art History in German-Speaking Countries, Museum für Asiatische Kunst, Berlin, Germany, June 2025.

    “The Czar’s Embassies to Beijing and the Remapping of ‘Tartary,’ 1690-1770,” AAS-in-Asia 2025, Kathmandu, Nepal, June 2026.

    “Visualizing Russo-Qing Diplomacy: Illustrated Ambassadorial Fictions and the Representation of EurAsian Transimperial Encounters in 18th-Century Europe,” the 6th Conference of the New Diplomatic History Network, Sciences Po Aix, Aix-en-Provence, France, May 2025.

    “Thiers, De Guignes, and the Making of Images of/through Sino-European Diplomacy,” Être sinophile au XIXe siècle: Autour de la collection chinoise d’Adolphe Thiers,” in conjunction with the exhibition “Une passion chinoise,” Musée du Louvre, Paris, May 2025.

    “Empire and Simulacra: Zhi gong tu and the Encyclopedic Impulse of 18th-Century Qing Court,” the 55th Annual Meeting of the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, (Online), April 2025.

    “Ocean Floors, Mountain Peaks, and the Korallenberge from the Ambras Kunstkammer,” Early Modern Research Group Work-in-Progress Presentation, UCLA Center for 17th– and 18th– Century Studies, (Online), November 2024.

    “Between Mountains and Seas: Korallenberge from the Ambras Kunstkammer in the 16th Century”, Sixteenth Century Society Conference, Toronto, Canada, November 2024.

    “Palace Wall, City Walls, and the Great Wall of China: European Printed Books and the Structures of Trans-imperial Encounters in 17th-and 18th-Century EurAsia,” Research in Progress Presentation, Ricci Institute for Chinese-Western Cultural History, Boston, MA, October 2024.

    “Celestial Translations: The Transcultural Lives of a Pearl-Inlaid Celestial Globe (c. 1750) in EurAsian Histories of Science”, the 11th Conference for the European Society for the History of Science, “Science, Technology, Humanity, and the Earth,” Pompeu Fabra University, Barcelona, Spain, September 2024.

    “Unruly Gems in the Imperial Order: Hat Finials and the Mapping of Gemological Networks of the Qing Empire, 1636-1796”, the 25th Biennial Conference of the European Association for Chinese Studies, Tallinn University, Tallinn, Estonia, August 2024.

    “Extraordinary Beasts for Eastern Princes: Animals and the Construction of Imperial Imaginaries on James Cox’s Clocks,” “Animals Studies in British Art Graduate Student Symposium,” Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, CT, May 2024.

    “Imaging Diplomacy: The Meridian Gate and the Making of European Perspectives on China (1655-1795),” Kenneth Karmiole Fellowship Lecture, UCLA Center for 17th– and 18th– Century Studies, (Online), March 2024.

    “Out of the Water, Into the Sky: A Pearl-Inlaid Celestial Globe and the Limits of the Qing Cosmos,” “Converting Natural Resources: Representations, Performances, Narratives,” UCLA Center for 17th– and 18th– Century Studies, Los Angeles, CA, December 2023.

    “A Starry Globe: Luminescence, Pearls, and the Worldly Space & Time of the Qing Court,” École de Printemps, “Arte e scienza. Medialità e materialità,” University of Trento, Trento, Italy, June 2023.

    “A Starry Globe: Luminescence, Pearls, and the Worldly Space & Time of the Qing,” Harvard Visual China Graduate Symposium, “Luminosity in Chinese Art and Culture,” Harvard University, Boston, MA, March 2023.

    Organized Panels

    “Disobedient Objects between Qing China and the Americas,” 2025 Western Conference for the Association of Asian Studies,  El Colegio de México, Mexico City, Mexico, November 2025.

    “Transimperial Agents and the Cultural Production of the Global Qing,” AAS-in-Asia 2025, Chair: Andrea Goldman, Kathmandu, Nepal, June 2025.

    Workshop

    Chinese Object Study Workshop, “On Jewelness: Buddhist Materiality in Sino-Himalayan Art, 1400-1800s,” Asian Art Museum, San Francisco, August 2025.