Kevin Carr

Kevin Carr teaches all aspects of the history of Japanese art and archaeology, but his research focuses on the visual cultures of broad-based religious cults of medieval Japan (especially 13th-15th century). His work engages issues of visual narrative, hagiography, and the construction of history and national consciousness through art. He has also worked on cultural exchanges between Japan and Europe in the seventeenth century and the nineteenth century, the epistemological foundations of medieval art, and the interpretation of material culture in the absence of textual evidence. His current project focuses on communal identities as manifest in images of temple origin stories (engi-e) in fourteenth-century Japan.

Kevin is also a member of the Decentering Japanese Art History team, which is producing an online educational resource to support the study of marginalized art and cultures from the Japanese archipelago.  Initially, the project focuses on the visual and material cultures of the Ainu and the Ryukyu Islands/Okinawa.

Affiliation

• Center for Japanese Studies

Fields of Study

• East Asian religious art
• Visual and material cultures of the Japanese archipelago
• Calligraphy in East Asia