Gregory Levine

A historian of the art and architecture of Japan and Buddhist visual cultures, Gregory Levine is at work on a trilogy that examines modern-contemporary Buddhist visual cultures: Long Strange Journey: On Modern Zen, Zen Art, and Other Predicaments (2017); Buddha Heads: Fragments and Landscapes; and Other Buddhas: Race, War, and Buddhist Visual Culture. A concurrent project, titled “Tree-buddhas” explores the possibilities of eco art history. He is an editorial board member of Artibus Asiae and the Journal of Art Historiography and has reviewed manuscripts for the University of Washington Press, University of Hawai’i Press, The Art Bulletin, and Artibus Asiae. A member of the Groups in Buddhist Studies and Asian Studies at Berkeley, his recent graduate seminars have examined the Zen monastery Daitokuji; cultures of display and exhibition in Japan; the formation of art history in modern Japan; art forgery and authenticity; the fragment in art; the visual cultures of Buddhist modernism; and eco art history. His lecture courses examine the arts and architectures of Japan; Buddhist temples and icons in Japan; painting in Japan; and global Buddhist visual cultures. Undergraduate seminars have focused on Zen painting and calligraphy; collecting Japanese art in the West; plunder, iconoclasm, and forgery; and artists responding to Japan’s 3/11 disasters.