Alice Y. Tseng is a Professor in the Department of History of Art & Architecture and Associate Dean of the Faculty for the Humanities. She specializes in the art and architecture of Japan, with particular focus on the 19th and 20th centuries. Specific topics of research interest are the history of institutional buildings, collections, and exhibitions; transnational and transcultural connections between Japan and Euro-America; the role of the visual arts in cultural transformation, invention, and revival; and the visual and spatial representations of Japan’s modern monarchy.

Tseng has received fellowships from numerous institutions and foundations, including the Fulbright Foundation, Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts (National Gallery of Art), J. Paul Getty Foundation, Metropolitan Center for Far Eastern Art Studies, American Council of Learned Societies, and Boston University Center for the Humanities. She is the author of The Imperial Museums of Meiji Japan: Architecture and the Art of the Nation (2008), Kyoto Visual Culture in the Early Edo and Meiji Periods: The Arts of Reinvention (co-edited with M. Pitelka, 2016), and Modern Kyoto: Building for Ceremony and Commemoration, 1868-1940 (2018). Her research has appeared in major disciplinary journals, including the Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, the Art Bulletin, the Review of Japanese Culture and Society, and the Journal of Japanese Studies. For her publications, Tseng has received the Society of Architectural Historians Founder’s Award (2006) and the inaugural Kenneth B. Pyle Prize for the Best Article in the Journal of Japanese Studies (2021).

From 2016 to 2021, Tseng chaired the Department of History of Art & Architecture. An active contributor to the fields of Japanese studies, architectural history, and art history, she has been a member of the editorial boards of Japan Architectural Review, Journal of Japanese Studies, and ArchitectureBoston; she also serves on the Northeast Asia Council (NEAC) of the Association for Asian Studies. Currently holding the post of Associate Editor of the Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians (JSAH), Tseng will lead the journal as Editor in 2024.

She is a co-curator of the online exhibition Asia at the World’s Fairs. A current book project, tentatively titled “Designing for World’s View: Japan at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition of 1904,” examines the production of Japanese national displays through ensembles of specialized pavilions, gardens, tableaux, models, and maps at the international exposition. Another ongoing project explores the twinned concepts of emperor and empire and their manifestations in built environments.

Curriculum Vitae