Tracy Miller

Tracy Miller 梅晨曦

Associate Professor, History of Art and Architecture
Associate Professor, Asian Studies
Affiliated Faculty of the Graduate Department of Religion
Vanderbilt University

Office: Cohen Memorial Hall 136
email: tracy.g.miller@vanderbilt.edu

Tracy Miller (Ph.D. University of Pennsylvania) is a specialist in the history of Asian art and architecture, especially the ritual architecture of imperial China. Her research focuses on the impact of belief in divinity on the production of art, architecture, and spaces for spiritual encounters. She is author of The Divine Nature of Power: Chinese Ritual Architecture at the Sacred Site of Jinci (Harvard University Asia Center, 2007). She is currently writing a monograph on the use of Indic and Inner Eurasian design strategies in the Buddhist temple architecture of Early Medieval and Medieval China as well as developing  architecturasinica.org, a research website for the study of Traditional Chinese Architecture.

Recently Published

• “Rethinking Creativity: Generative Design and the Architecture of the Songyue Monastery Pagoda.” Artibus Asiae 81.1 (2021): 25-77.
• “Fojiao yuzhouguan zai Zhongguo miaoyu jianzhu zhong de bentuhua: yi Yi ci hui shizhu wei li 佛教宇宙观在中国庙宇建筑中的本土化： 以义慈惠石柱为例” (an invited translation of my 2013 book chapter: “Naturalizing Buddhist Cosmology in the Temple Architecture of China: The Case of the Yicihui Pillar,”), translated by Gu Xinyi. Jianzhu xuebao 12 (2019): 48-54.
• “几何学， 宇宙论以及中国早期佛教建筑的设计： 从嵩岳寺塔的平面谈起 (Geometry, Cosmology and the Design of Early Buddhist Architecture in China: The Plan of the Songyuesi Pagoda). Translated by Zuo Lala 左拉拉. In Essence and Applications of Building Archaeology in China and Europe 建筑考古学的体与用, edited by Xu Yitao 徐怡涛 with Thomas Coomans 高曼士 and Zhang Jianwei 张剑葳, 51-61. Beijing: Zhongguo jianzhu gongye chubanshe, 2019. geometry cosmology
• “Translating the ta: Pagoda, Tumulus, and Ritualized Mahāyāna in Seventh-Century China,” Tang Studies (2018): 82-120.
• “Invoking Higher Authorities: Song Taizong’s Quest for Imperial Legitimacy and its Architectural Legacy.” In State Power in China: 900-1325, edited by Patricia Buckley Ebrey and Paul Jakov Smith, 29-61. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2016.
• “Of Palaces and Pagodas: Palatial Symbolism in the Buddhist Architecture of Early Medieval China.”Frontiers of History in China 10.2 (2015): 222-263. Of Palaces and Pagodas

• “Architecture During the Reign of the Yongle Emperor.” In Royal Taste: The Art of Princely Courts in Fifteenth-Century China, edited by Fan J. Zhang, 27-33. New York: Scala Art Publishers and The John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art, 2015.
• “Perfecting the Mountain: On the Morphology of Towering Temples in East Asia,” Journal of Chinese Architecture History 10 (2014): 419-449. Perfecting the Mountain2

• “The Architecture of the Three Teachings during the Tenth-Thirteenth Centuries.” In Modern Chinese Religion: Value Systems in Transformation. Edited by John Lagerway, 721-798.  Leiden: E.J. Brill, 2014. [New edition recently released in paperback!]
• “Naturalizing Buddhist Cosmology in the Temple Architecture of China: The Case of the Yicihui Pillar.” In The University of Chicago Oriental Institute Seminars, No. 9. Edited by Deena Ragavan, 17-39. Chicago: University of Chicago, 2013. Naturalizing Buddhist Cosmology

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