Dr. Paula R. Curtis

Paula R. Curtis is a historian of medieval Japan. She is presently Postdoctoral Fellow and Lecturer in History with the Terasaki Center for Japanese Studies at University of California, Los Angeles. Her current book project, The Casters of Kawachi: Artisans and the Production of Medieval Japan, focuses on metal caster organizations and their relationships with elite institutions from the twelfth to sixteenth centuries. She also works on the history of documentary forgery in premodern Japan and recently published “An Entrepreneurial Aristocrat: Matsugi Hisanao and the Forging of Imperial Service in Late Medieval Japan” with Monumenta Nipponica.

In addition to historical work on premodern Japan, Dr. Curtis collaborates in, leads, and produces numerous online projects. Most recently, she is working to develop Japan Past & Present, a new digital platform project sponsored by the Yanai Initiative for Globalizing Japanese Humanities at the University of California, Los Angeles and Waseda University. This project is a joint effort between UCLA and Waseda to promote the study of Japan globally, across disciplinary and geographic borders. Dr. Curtis is a collaborator with Digital Humanities Japan, an international and interdisciplinary community of scholars and professionals interested in utilizing digital methods, tools, and resources for Japanese Studies, and hosts the blog What can I do with a B.A. in Japanese Studies? In addition, she curates several online resources, such as job advertisement data and visualizations in East Asia Studies and a database of Digital Resources and Projects on East Asia. More information can be found on her website: http://prcurtis.com/