Kathryn Moore

Leonardo Da Vinci and the Fractal Tree of Life

Kathryn Moore (Assistant Professor, Art and Art History, UConn)

with a response by Meina Cai (Political Science, UConn)

Wednesday, February 23, 2022, 4:00pm, HBL 4-209

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The event will also be livestreamed with automated captioning.

This paper will explore the relationship between Leonardo da Vinci’s theories of the geometry of dynamic systems in nature and his artistic output, from c. 1497 until his death in 1519. Working in various media, from his frescoes depicting an artificial garden in the Sala delle Asse and related knot engravings, to his various drawings of geometry and anatomy in his notebooks, Leonardo visualized aspects of complexity beyond verbal description. In these various contexts, the fractal tree of life emerged as a primary model for natural systems that grow over time, from the microcosm of an individual human organ to the macrocosm of the earth.

Kathryn Blair Moore, Assistant Professor of Art History at the University of Connecticut, researches in the medieval and Renaissance periods in Europe and the Mediterranean region. Her book, The Architecture of the Christian Holy Land: Reception from Late Antiquity through the Renaissance (Cambridge University Press, 2017), focused upon the architectural legacy of Jerusalem and the Holy Land more generally. With Hasan-Uddin Khan, she is co-editor of The Religious Architecture of Islam (Brepols, 2021 and 2022). Her second monograph focuses upon arabesques in a European context. She has been a fellow of Harvard University’s Villa I Tatti and the American Academy in Rome.

Meina Cai is an Assistant Professor of Political Science and Asian/Asian American Studies Institute at UConn. Her research focuses on the political economy of development and institutions. She is currently working on land property rights, urbanization, and rural governance in China. She is a UCHI fellow in 2021–2022.

Access note

If you require accommodation to attend this event, please contact us at uchi@uconn.edu or by phone (860) 486-9057. We can request ASL interpretation, computer-assisted real time transcription, and other accommodations offered by the Center for Students with Disabilities.

The Art of Negotiations: Legal Discrimination, Contention Pyramid, and Land Rights Development in China

Meina Cai (Assistant Professor, Political Science & Asian and Asian American Studies, UConn)

with a response by Kathryn Moore (Art and Art History, UConn)

Wednesday, January 26, 2022, 4:00pm.

Live • Online • Registration required

How and how much do land-dispossessed villagers protect their property rights in a context where the legal framework discriminates against them? Contradictory to the existing research that pays much attention to protests, this research identifies negotiations as a strategy of the dispossessed to engage with local governments and improve their compensation arrangement. Negotiations, together with petitions, protests, and violence, form a pyramid-shaped structure of contention. More importantly, these negotiations focus on local specific considerations that are not specified in formal compensation policy—which I call “non-programmatic compensation” (NPC). NPC negotiations create a fragmented compensation regime that combines low, stagnant, and less locally diversified formal compensation standards with dynamic and locality-specific informal NPC negotiation deals. The arguments are developed using extensive field research, an original dataset of local land compensation policies, and surveys of rural households, rural cadres, and local government officials. It helps explain the puzzle why formal compensation policy standards remain low despite an increasing number of protests against land takings.

Kathryn Blair Moore received her PhD in art history from the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, and has previously taught at Texas State University, the University of Hong Kong, the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of Pittsburgh. Her research and teaching span the medieval and Renaissance periods in Europe and the Mediterranean region, with a particular focus on cross-cultural exchange between Christian and Islamic cultures. Her first book, The Architecture of the Christian Holy Land: Reception from Late Antiquity through the Renaissance (Cambridge University Press, 2017), received a Prose award in art history / criticism and the Medieval Institute’s Otto Gründler Book Prize. She is currently writing a book on the emergence and development of the concept of the arabesque in a European context. Her research has been supported by grants and fellowships from Harvard University’s Villa I Tatti, the American Academy in Rome, the American Philosophical Society, and the American Council of Learned Societies.

Access note

This event will be presented with automated captioning. If you require accommodation to attend this event, please contact us at uchi@uconn.edu or by phone (860) 486-9057. We can request ASL interpreting, computer-assisted real time transcription, and other accommodations offered by the Center for Students with Disabilities.