Professor Eiren Shea will discuss “From Beijing to Venice: The Arts of the Mongol Empire” at the next Bucket Course.
The course will be held from 10:00 to 11:30 a.m. on Wednesday September 20, 2023, in the Caulkins Community Room of the Drake Community Library.
Bucket Courses are open to everyone in the community; no preregistration or fee required. Donations toward refreshments are welcome.
The Mongol Empire, extending from the Korean peninsula to present-day Hungary, covered a huge portion of the known world in the 13th and 14th centuries. In her talk, Eiren Shea will introduce the diverse arts of this period and explore cultural connections across Eurasia.
Eiren Shea is Associate Professor of Art History at Grinnell College, where she offers classes on the arts of pre-modern Asia. Her principal fields of research include arts of the Mongol period, the Silk Road, China, Central Asia, and Persia, with a special focus on textiles.
Shea’s book, Mongol Court Dress, Identity Formation, and Global Exchange (Routledge, 2020) focuses on
textiles and dress of the Mongol Empire in the thirteenth and fourteenth century and investigates how this newly-confederated group from the Steppe conquered the most sophisticated societies in existence and impacted the arts of China, West Asia, and even Europe.
Bucket Courses are sponsored by Grinnell’s Community Education Cooperative whose members include
UnityPoint Health Grinnell, Grinnell College, Drake Community Library, Grinnell-Newburg Community
School District, Grinnell Area Arts Council, Mayflower Community, Grinnell Education Partnership, Read to Lead, and Iowa Valley Community College. Videos of previous Bucket Courses are available on the
YouTube channel Grinnell Community Education Cooperative.
