Women, Gender and Art in Asia, c. 1500?1900 brings women's engagements with art into a pan-Asian dialogue with essays that examine women as artists, commissioners, collectors, and subjects from India, Southeast Asia, Tibet, China, Korea, and Japan, from the sixteenth to the early twentieth century. The artistic media includes painting, sculpture, architecture, textiles, and photography. The book is broadly concerned with four salient questions: How unusual was it for women to engage directly with art? What factors precluded more women from doing so? In what ways did women's artwork or commissions differ from those of men? And, what were the range of meanings for woman as subject matter? The chapters deal with historic individuals about whom there is considerable biographical information. Beyond locating these uncommon women within their socio-cultural milieux, contributors consider the multiple strands that twined to comprise their complex identities, and how these impacted their works of art. In many cases, the woman's status-as wife, mother, widow, ruler, or concubine (and multiple combinations thereof), as well as her religion and lineage-determined the media, style, and content of her art. Women, Gender and Art in Asia, c. 1500?1900 adds to our understanding of works of art, their meanings, and functions.

In thirteen wide-ranging essays, scholars and students of Asian and women's studies will find a vivid exploration of how female roles and feminine identity have evolved over 350 years, from the Tokugawa era to the end of World War II. Starting from the premise that gender is not a biological given, but is socially constructed and culturally transmitted, the authors describe the forces of change in the construction of female gender and explore the gap between the ideal of womanhood and the reality of Japanese women's lives. Most of all, the contributors speak to the diversity that has characterized women's experience in Japan. This is an imaginative, pioneering work, offering an interdisciplinary approach that will encourage a reconsideration of the paradigms of women's history, hitherto rooted in the Western experience.

In early modern Japan, thousands of sexually explicit paintings, prints, and illustrated books with texts were produced, euphemistically called spring pictures (shunga). Frequently tender, funny and beautiful, shunga were mostly done within the popular school known as pictures of the floating world (ukiyo-e), by celebrated artists such as Utamaro and Hokusai. Erotic Japanese art was heavily suppressed in Japan from the 1870s, and as a result it has only been made possible to publish unexpurgated examples in Japan within the last 20 years. This publication presents this fascinating art in its historical and cultural context, drawing on the latest scholarship and featuring over 400 images of works from major public and private collections.

Women, Rites, and Ritual Objects in Premodern Japan, edited by Karen M. Gerhart, is a multidisciplinary examination of rituals featuring women, in which significant attention is paid to objects produced for and utilized in these rites as a lens through which larger cultural concerns, such as gender politics, the female body, and the materiality of the ritual objects, are explored. The ten chapters encounter women, rites, and ritual objects in many new and interactive ways and constitute a pioneering attempt to combine ritual and gendered analysis with the study of objects. Contributors include: Anna Andreeva, Monica Bethe, Patricia Fister, Sherry Fowler, Karen M. Gerhart, Hank Glassman, Naoko Gunji, Elizabeth Morrissey, Chari Pradel, Barbara Ruch, Elizabeth Self.

Guided by Stephen Addiss's grounding in art history scholarship and Mary Erickson's expertise in art education theory and practice, this volume approaches the issue of teaching art history from theoretical and philosophical as well as practical and political standpoints. In the first section, Addiss raises issues about the discipline of art history. In the second, Erickson examines proposals about how art history can be incorporated into the general education of children and offers some curriculum guides and lesson plans for art educators.

In pre-1900 Japan few women were encouraged to become professional artists and pursue art seriously. In some situations, male family members who recognized and supported the artistic talent of a female relative could arrange for her to receive further training. And some Buddhist nuns, freed from domestic duties, took up the brush. In a different social realm, courtesans at the highest levels were trained in the arts and attained recognition as poet-calligraphers. After the fall of the shogunate in the 1860s, women had more opportunities to practice art, albeit still limited by tradition. In Tradition and Triumph Andrew L. Maske showcases art created by Japanese women from the 1600s through the 1900s. Ranging from works on silk and paper to ceramics, the art of important women artists is represented along with pieces by male artists who trained and championed them. Assembled by John Fong and Colin Johnstone, who gifted the works to the Denver Art Museum, this collection is believed to be the largest group of works of this type outside of Japan.

Faith and Power in Japanese Buddhist Art explores the transformation of Buddhism from the premodern to the contemporary era in Japan and the central role its visual culture has played in this transformation. Although Buddhism is generally regarded as peripheral to modern Japanese society, this book demonstrates otherwise. Its chapters elucidate the thread of change over time in the practice of Buddhism as revealed in temple worship halls and other sites of devotion and in imagery representing the religion’s most popular deities and religious practices. It also introduces the work of modern and contemporary artists who are not generally associated with institutional Buddhism and its canonical visual requirements but whose faith inspires their art. The author makes a persuasive argument that the neglect of these materials by scholars results from erroneous presumptions about the aesthetic superiority of early Japanese Buddhist artifacts and an asserted decline in the institutional power of the religion after the sixteenth century. She demonstrates that recent works constitute a significant contribution to the history of Japanese art and architecture, providing evidence of Buddhism’s compelling presence at all levels of Japanese society and its evolution in response to the needs of new generations of supporters.