Transformative Functionality of Art: Cultivating Aesthetic Experiences between South Asian and East Asian traditions

This panel furthers the functional turn in the study of art to recouple philosophical analyses of concepts with empirical research on material culture. Bringing together scholars who work on Brahmanical, Buddhist, and Confucian traditions, the panel explores how and why aesthetic experiences function to ameliorate the moral and soteriological cultivation of practitioners. To unpack such a transformative function of art, presenters in this panel examine theories proposed by thinkers across South Asian and East Asian traditions for an interregional, intercultural, and interdisciplinary conversation. Besides, they will tap into the efficacy of art in resolving various types of paradoxes in the cultivating process. Such a conversation lays the groundwork for reconsidering the possibility of closing the rift between theories and praxis in contemporary studies of art.