Rachel Saunders
Profile
Rachel Saunders' research interests span a wide variety of mediums and periods (medieval to contemporary) and include Buddhist materiality, arboreal arts, and science and the practice of art history. Her most recent project examines more-than-human being in the ecology of bird-and-flower painting in early modern Japan. She is currently at work on a monograph titled Making Sacred Matter: Xuanzang and Buddhist Materialities in Medieval Japan, which examines alternate ontologies manifest in Buddhist objects. In her recent position at Harvard Art Museums, Saunders curated a number of shows, including the special exhibition Painting Edo (2020), and Prince Shōtoku: The Secrets Within (2019). She has held teaching appointments at Harvard University and Boston University. Her research has been supported by the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts (CASVA), The University of Tokyo (Institute for Advanced Studies on Asia, 2011–2014), the Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies, the Japan Foundation, the Kajima Foundation, and the Met Center for Eastern Art Studies.
Education
B.A. University of Oxford
M.A. University of London (SOAS)
Ph.D. Havard University, 2015
Selected Publications
Hābādo Daigaku Bijutsukan Sejuikku Korekushon Namubutsu Taishi zō to zōnai nōnyūhin kenkyū shiryōshū [Interpreting the Harvard Art Museums’ Prince Shōtoku at Age Two and his Relics] (Tokyo: Chūō Kōronsha, 2023).
“Seinaru emaki o tsukuru: Genjō Sanzō-e ni okeru e to kotoba’”[The Making of a Sacred Scroll: Explicit Intertextuality in the Illustrated Life of Xuanzang] (Chikamoto et al., Tokyo: Bensei Shuppan, 2021).
“Birds, Flowers, and Botany in Sakai Hōitsu’s Pure Land Garden,” Painting Edo (Saunders and Lippit, Yale, 2020), and Catalogue of the Feinberg Collection of Japanese Art (Yale, 2021).