His first book Facing Images: Medieval Japanese Art and the Problem of Modernity (Penn State University Press, 2024) highlights the enduring relevance of nonwestern, premodern objects to present scholarly debates. The book was awarded the 2025 Monica H. Green Prize for Distinguished Medieval Research from the Medieval Academy of America. Shorter essays address a wide array of topics: the encounter with Europe ca. 1600 CE, the modern trope of impermanence, death and Buddhist manuscript culture ca. 1200 CE, theory and historiography, and the archival anxieties of the Anthropocene. At present, he is at work on a monograph tentatively titled “Art as Metabolism: Fragmentation, Decay, and Assemblage in Japan,” which centers on the themes of creativity, cultural heritage, and archival survival. 

Speaker bio:

Kristopher W. Kersey is Associate Professor of Art History at the University of California, Los Angeles where he researches the intersecting histories of Japanese art, design, and aesthetics.

Sponsored by the Rudelson Family Fund in the Department of Asian Societies, Cultures, and Languages at Dartmouth College