Kent, OH – The School of Art is thrilled to announce the appointment of Dr. Pinyan Zhu as Assistant Professor of Art History, with a focus on Asian Art History. She will join the 鶹ѡfaculty in fall 2022.
"We are very excited to have her join us," said interim School of Art director Peter Christian Johnson.
Pinyan Zhu specializes in Chinese Buddhist visual culture. She received a doctorate in art history from the University of Kansas in 2022. Her dissertation “The Landscape of the Longmen Grottoes: Practices, Repentance, Jeweled Buddhas, and Burials under Emperor Wu Zhao (r. 690-705 CE)” examines the affective relationship between the cliff-carved cave-shrines and the medieval Buddhists in China during the reign of China’s only female monarch. Her research has been supported by Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation and the Metropolitan Center for Far Eastern Art Studies.
Pinyan’s article on the contemporary transformation of Baodingshan, a medieval site of cave-shrine in southwest China, appeared in the peer-reviewed journal Études chinoises. She also published on the reception of East Asian pewterware in Perspectives on a Legacy Collection: Sallie Casey Thayer’s Gift to the University of Kansas.
Pinyan has taught on East Asian visual culture, Buddhist art, and modern and contemporary Korean art. She received the Marilyn J. Stokstad Award for her teaching.
For more information about the School of Art, visit www.kent.edu/art
###
Media Contact:
Joni Koneval, jkoneval@kent.edu, 330-672-0116