Kristopher Kersey

Terasaki Center For Japanese Studies

Established in 1991, the UCLA Terasaki Center has been a platform for research on Japan. Our distinguished faculty, students, postdoctoral fellows, visiting scholars, and the board of advisors have been contributing to the field of Japanese studies for over 20 years.

Faculty Board of Advisors Chair in US-Japan Relations Postdoctoral Fellows Alumni

Students Visitors Staff Supporters Dr. Paul I. Terasaki

The Terasaki Center sponsors a vast array of events throughout the year. With its colloquium series, the Center brings academics from diverse fields to UCLA each year. Special workshops and annual conferences bring leading scholars to discuss topics relating to Japan.

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The Center is proud to support our faculty, current and prospective students, and the local community through a variety of grants and fellowships.

Internal Funding
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External Funding
Funding sources in this section are not administered by the Center.

Center programs were established with strong support from the local community to promote research and instruction in Japanese studies, with a recent focus on the profound transformations unfolding in contemporary Japanese society.

UCLA Japanese Studies
Programs by Faculty and Students

Global Japan Initiative
Understanding Japan/Japanese culture within a global context.

The Terasaki Center is actively expanding support for faculty and graduate students, building relationships with other universities as well as Japan and Japanese Studies related organizations, and enhancing its role in the community.

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Global Hub
The Center is dedicated to connecting Japanese communities around the world with those engaged in the study of Japan and the Japanese.

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global japan initiative Understanding Japan/Japanese
culture within a global context

Kristopher Kersey

Assistant Professor, Art History
kersey@humnet.ucla.edu

Kristopher Kersey’s research explores the intersecting histories of Japanese art, material culture, and design. Much his work concerns Japan’s seminal Heian period (794–1192 CE), including its many afterlives and modern appropriations. His current book project, The Image of Japan, explores the understanding of vision as manifest in the pictorial manuscripts of the eleventh to thirteenth centuries. His second book project moves beyond the medieval to trace the globalization and appropriation of the Japanese folding fan from early modernity to the present. Topics of particular interest include pictorial handscrolls (emaki), Buddhist painting and sculpture, photography, gender performativity, and narrative theory. Issues of historiography and aesthetics also feature prominently in his research.

At present (2018-2023), he is a collaborator with Global Horizons in Pre-Modern Art, an international research initiative funded by a European Research Council Consolidator Grant through the University of Bern. Past fellowships include the Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship (predoctoral) at the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts (CASVA) as well as the Anne van Biema Fellowship (postdoctoral) at the Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery (Smithsonian Institution).