Professional and Biographical Information

Degrees

Ph.D., Harvard University (1985)
A.B., Harvard College (1978)
A.M. (honorary), Amherst College (1995)

Teaching Interests

My courses in both my departments focus on the visual arts of Japan and pre-modern China.  As a specialist in Japanese Buddhist art my approach is necessarily both interdisciplinary and highly contextual.  I offer semester-long surveys on the arts of Japan and the arts of China in addition to more specialized classes on the religious arts of Japan, Japanese art of the early modern and modern period, and Chinese painting.  I teach seminars on religious art and its ritual context, the Japanese tea ceremony and museum studies.  Frequently I offer a First-year Seminar on Japan team taught with members of the Department of Asian Languages and Civilizations. 

Awards and Honors

Mitsubishi Foundation Fellowship, 2006-2007

Numata Foundation Fellowship, 1996-1997

American Council for Learned Societies Fellowship, 1990-1991

Japan Foundation Fellowship, 1981-1982

Scholarly and Professional Activities

I serve as Consulting Curator for Japanese Art at the Smith College Museum of Art where I have curated exhibitions on the arts of the Japanese tea ceremony and on contemporary Japanese art.  In addition, I have organized exhibitions on Kitagawa Utamaro for the Mead Art Museum (2006),  on the art of Allen Say at the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art (2007), and on Japanese Buddhist art and ritual for the Katonah Museum of Art and Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (1996-1997).  For six years I was chairman of the Board of Directors for the Clark Center for Japanese Art in Hanford, California.   I have been a visiting researcher at the Tokyo National Research Institute of Culture Properties and a visiting professor at Yale University.