{"id":5265,"date":"2015-07-28T11:42:57","date_gmt":"2015-07-28T15:42:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/haa\/?post_type=profile&p=5265"},"modified":"2026-06-02T12:27:12","modified_gmt":"2026-06-02T16:27:12","slug":"alice-tseng","status":"publish","type":"profile","link":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/haa\/profile\/alice-tseng\/","title":{"rendered":"Alice Y. Tseng"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n\n
Email<\/th>\nFall 2026 Office Hours<\/th>\n<\/tr>\n
aytseng@bu.edu<\/a><\/td>\nTBA<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n
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Book an Appointment<\/a><\/p>\n

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Alice Y. Tseng is a Professor of Japanese Art and Architecture in the Department of History of Art and Architecture at Boston University. From 2016 to 2021, Tseng chaired the department. An active contributor to the fields of architectural history, art history, and Japan studies, she has been a member of the editorial boards of Japan Architectural Review,<\/em>\u00a0Journal of Japanese Studies<\/em>, and\u00a0ArchitectureBoston<\/em>; she was also elected to the Northeast Asia Council (NEAC) of the Association for Asian Studies. Tseng served as the editor in chief of the\u00a0<\/span>Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians<\/i>\u00a0(JSAH) in 2024 and 2025.<\/span><\/p>\n

Tseng 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; historic cities and urban identities; and the visual and spatial representations of Japan\u2019s modern monarchy.<\/p>\n

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, American Council of Learned Societies, Hoover Institution (Stanford University), Metropolitan Center for Far Eastern Art Studies, and Center for the Humanities (Boston University).\u00a0<\/span>She is the author of The Imperial Museums of Meiji Japan: Architecture and the Art of the Nation<\/em>\u00a0(2008),\u00a0Kyoto Visual Culture in the Early Edo and Meiji Periods: The Arts of Reinvention<\/em>\u00a0(co-edited with M. Pitelka, 2016), and\u00a0Modern Kyoto: Building for Ceremony and Commemoration<\/em>, 1868-1940 (2018). Her research has appeared in major disciplinary journals, including the\u00a0Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians<\/em>, the\u00a0Art Bulletin<\/em>, the\u00a0Review of Japanese Culture and Society<\/em>, and the\u00a0Journal of Japanese Studies<\/em>. For her publications, Tseng has received the Society of Architectural Historians Founder\u2019s Award (2006) and the inaugural Kenneth B. Pyle Prize for the Best Article in the Journal of Japanese Studies (2021).<\/p>\n

She is a co-curator of the online exhibition\u00a0Asia at the World\u2019s Fairs<\/em><\/a>.<\/em>\u00a0A current book project, tentatively titled \u201cJapan in St. Louis: Transnational Exhibition and Architecture at the 1904 World\u2019s Fair<\/em>,\u201d investigates the building of Japanese-American cultural relations at the turn of the new century, focusing on the political, artistic, and racial frictions driving the representations of Japan at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition of 1904. Another ongoing project explores the twinned concepts of emperor and empire and their manifestations in built environments.<\/p>\n

Curriculum Vitae<\/a><\/p>\n

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Selected Publications<\/h3>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
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Roundtable \u201cAsian American and Pacific Islander Architectural Histories.\u201d<\/span><\/b><\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians<\/span><\/i>\u00a0(March 2024): 6-28.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/td>\n“Imperial Portraiture and Popular Print Media in Early Twentieth-Century Japan.\u201d<\/strong>
\nJournal of Japanese Studies (summer 2020): 305-344.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
\"\"<\/a><\/td>\nModern Kyoto: Building for Ceremony and Commemoration, 1868-1940<\/strong><\/em>.
\n<\/strong>University of Hawaii Press, 2018.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
\"\"<\/a><\/td>\nThe <\/strong><\/em>Kyoto Visual Culture in the Early Edo and Meiji Periods: The Arts of Reinvention.
\n<\/strong><\/em>co-edited with M. Pitelka. Routledge, 2016<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
\"\"<\/a><\/td>\nImperial Museums of Meiji Japan: Architecture and the Art of the Nation.
\n<\/strong><\/em>University of Washington Press, 2008.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"author":2318,"template":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/haa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/profile\/5265"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/haa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/profile"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/haa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/profile"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/haa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2318"}],"version-history":[{"count":50,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/haa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/profile\/5265\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18165,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/haa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/profile\/5265\/revisions\/18165"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/haa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5265"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}