Shih-shan Susan Huang's research focuses on the visual culture of Daoism and Buddhism, with particular emphasis on painting and print traditions across East Asia. Her current projects investigate later representations of hellscapes in Chinese art, as well as Buddhist and Daoist imagery in 17th- to 19th-century European travel books.
Her articles have appeared in peer-reviewed journals such as Artibus Asiae, Ars Orientalis, and the Journal of Daoist Studies, as well as in numerous edited volumes published in the U.S., the Netherlands, Taiwan, Hong Kong, China, and Japan. She is also a contributor to forthcoming volumes, including The Cambridge Companion to Song China, edited by Ellen Cong Zhang, and the Cleveland Museum of Art catalogue Ten Kings of Hell and the Afterlife in Medieval Korea, co-edited by Sooa McCormick and Yukio Lippit.
Dr. Huang is the author of two books. Her first, Picturing the True Form: Daoist Visual Culture in Traditional China (Harvard University Asia Center, 2012; paperback, 2015; Chinese translation, 2022), investigates the long-overlooked visual traditions of Daoism from the tenth through thirteenth centuries, mapping Daoist imagery across diverse media. The book has been reviewed in journals including the Journal of Asian Studies, Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, Journal of Chinese Religions, and the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society.
Her second monograph, The Dynamic Spread of Buddhist Print Culture: Mapping Buddhist Book Roads in China and Its Neighbors, was published by Brill in 2024 in both e-book and hardcover formats, with a paperback edition released in July 2025. Spanning over 1,000 pages and featuring more than 500 illustrations and a dozen custom maps, the study explores the transmission of Buddhist printed images and texts across East Asia. It approaches these materials not as static relics but as objects in motion, embedded in transnational and multicultural networks. Drawing on methods from art history, religious studies, and digital humanities, the book sheds new light on the complexity and reach of Buddhist print culture.
For more information, visit https://shihshansusanhuang.com.
BOOKS
The Dynamic Spread of Buddhist Print Culture: Mapping Buddhist Book Roads in China and its Neighbors (e-book and hardcover, Brill, 2024; paperback in two volumes, 2025)
Shih-shan Susan Huang
Picturing the True Form: Daoist Visual Culture in Traditional China (Harvard Asia Center, 2012; paperback, 2015)
Shih-shan Susan Huang
EDITED VOLUMES
Visual and Material Cultures in Middle Period China
Shih-shan Susan Huang and Patricia Ebrey (editors)