It is a particular pleasure to report that Wenyi Qian successfully defended her dissertation on June 22nd, 2026.
Wenyi’s dissertation, “Empire Writ Small: The Art of Inlaid Tables in Early Modern Italy, 1550s-1660s,” offers the first critical, interdisciplinary and synthetic account of this early modern object genre. Rigorously connecting multiple biographical phases of these objects with the overall condition of European imperial and colonial expansion, it demonstrates the making and reception of inlaid tables in Papal Rome and Grand Ducal Tuscany as deeply entangled with the imperial and colonial enterprises of Iberia and England. Wenyi creatively reworks the methods of visual analysis to reconstruct the experience of early modern “table-viewing” as predicated on aerial visuality, movement, visual and positional vantage, and social and scalar hierarchy and as profoundly implicated in the formation of imperial visual subjects and an embodied orientation towards nature, territory and empire among their elite owners. Thematically structured around four operations of hardstone inlay—abrasion, design transfer, refraction, and assemblage—it combines an interest in artisanal process, material labour and critical histories of empire, slavery, and race-making with an original assessment of the nature of inlaid image-making via the archaeologically inspired framework of inter- and transmateriality. In her evaluation, the external examiner, Professor Paula Findlen from Stanford University, applauded the thesis as an original contribution to “the material history of art” and a committed “archeology of materials and makers.”
Wenyi was advised by Professor Philip Sohm and committee members Professors Giancarla Periti, Carl Knappett and Adrien Zakar. Professor Kajri Jain served as the internal-external examiner.
Starting this fall, Wenyi will begin a prestigious appointment as Lecturer in Art and Visual Cultures, c. 1300 -1700 at the Department of History of Art, University College London. This happy conclusion was not the only possibility for Wenyi. She was also offered two post-docs at Cornell University and University of Hong Kong but (wisely) chose a permanent position at a stellar university.
Please join us in congratulating Wenyi and wishing her every success in this exciting next chapter of her scholarly career.