Sean McPherson
Assistant Professor of Art History
Office: 141 Watson Fine Arts Building
Office Hours: Spring 2009: TuTh 3:30-4:30 and by appointment
Phone: (508) 286-3572
Email: mcpherson_sean@wheatonma.edu
Degrees
Ph.D., University of California at Berkeley
M. Arch., University of California at Berkeley
B.A., Williams College
Main Interests
I am most interested in visual and material culture that pushes the canonical boundaries of "Asian Art."
I am particularly fascinated by popular visual and material culture in early modern and modern East Asia, including Japanese woodblock prints, and vernacular and popular religious architecture in China, Japan and Korea. Despite the geographical, temporal and cultural boundaries implied by my course titles, I emphasize the fundamental cultural hybridity and complex patterns of intellectual and artistic exchange both within and among different populations engaged in the production of art and architecture.
Research Interests
My dissertation examined the popular religious architecture and sculptural iconography of Japanese festival floats of the early modern and modern period. This interdisciplinary project involved detailed examination of Japanese popular religious architecture and sculpure, as well as consideration of the multiple and changing meanings of visual and material culture. I have a particular interest in the ways that "traditional" and "folk" material culture and practices have been contested and redefined in modern contexts.
Since finishing my doctoral dissertation, I have begun to pursue research on Japanese-American religious architecture in the western United States. This research integrates my interest in architecture, modernity and cultural hybridity in a global context.
Teaching Interests
I enjoy teaching introductory courses in Asian visual and material culture, but have a particular passion for vernacular and popular art and architecture. Trained as an architect, I am particularly fascinated by both the material, spatial and structural qualities of timber-frame architecture in East Asia, and alternative and vernacular expressions of modernity in architecture. My study of visual culture is informed by the interplay between works of art and their shifting architectural, ritual and display contexts.
Courses Taught:
ARTH 105 Art in East Asia I
ARTH 106 Art in East Asia II
ARTH 112 Arts of Africa, Asia and the Americas
ARTH 218/318 Print Cultures in Early Modern Japan
ARTH 221 Arts of India
ARTH 224 Chinese Art and Culture
ARTH 225 Status, Gender, and Identity in Japanese Visual Culture
ARTH 288 Buddhist Art and Architecture
ARTH 333 Architecture and Identity in Modern Japan
FYS Arts of the Festival in Cross-Cultural Perspective
ARTH 401 Senior Seminar: Folk Art in Modern Japan
Other Interests
I devote regrettably little time to my passions of woodworking using Japanese hand tools, cooking, cycling (road, mountain and tandem), and gardening.
As a parent, I am an avid fan of (and chauffeur for) youth basketball and soccer in the New England area.
Student Projects
The Late-Modern Middle Way: Mandarin and Inner Cultivation of the Self in a Materialistic World, Independent Senior Asian Studies Thesis by Tai Mesches, '08. Reader.
Alternative Bodies: Palette, Performance and Portraiture, Senior Art History Honors Thesis by Julia Alexandra Livi, '06. Reader.
Vernacular Architecture in Beijing, Independent Study with Kyle Innes, '05.
Space Sandwich: Liminality and Louis Kahn's Elm Street Dining Hall at Phillips Exeter Academy, Senior Honors Thesis by William Richards, '04. Reader.
Selected Publications, Creative Work or Performances
Review of Jan Mrázek and Morgan Pitelka, eds., What's the use of art? Asian Visual and Material Culture in Context (Honolulu: University of Hawai'I Press, 2008), in CHOICE, November 2008.
Cultural Landscapes of Japanese-American Religiosity in the Central Valley, paper presented at the Pacific Worlds and the American West conference at the American West Center of the University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah, February 8-9, 2008.
Hybrid Nativism and Regional Internationalism: The Architecture of Japanese-American Buddhist Churches in the Central Valley, paper presented at the Vernacular Architecture Forum annual meeting in Fresno, California, May 7-10, 2008.
Transcending the Folk: Festival Architecture, Sculpture and Ritual Process in Meiji and Taisho Japan, paper presented at the 2006 Annual Meeting of the Association for Asian Studies, San Francisco, California, April 6-9, 2006.
Local Festival Culture, National Cultural Identity, and the Politics of Commodification in the Chita Region of Japan, 1880-1980, paper presented at the 2004 Conference of the International Visual Sociology Association, San Francisco, California, August 11-13, 2004.
Modernity, Nativism, and Empire: Festival Architecture, Sculpture and Ritual process on the Chita Peninsula, 1868-1945,™h paper presented at the 2004 Association of Asian Studies annual meeting in San Diego, California, March 4-7, 2004.