ASSISTANT PROFESSOR FOR JAPANESE ART HISTORY / HEICO MANAGER KATHARINA S. RODE-KAYA

Katharina Rode-Kaya’s research interests coalesce around artists as historical personae, combining the reconstruction of their oeuvre with collecting and patronage networks, the relationships with their peers, and their relative position in the art world of their time. She is currently turning her PhD research on the role of pictorial models and creative adaptation in Meiji period nihonga painting on the example of the art school professor and Maruyama School Kawabata Gyokushō (1842-1913) into her first monograph. The study combines aspects of art education, model book publications, and painting practice with Gyokushō’s achievements and his relationship to the founder of the Maruyama school, Maruyama Ōkyo (1733-1795). 

At the same time, Katharina is working with Dr. Jens Bartel on the first English-language edited volume on the networks of Maruyama and Shijō painters. Her chapter contribution here focuses on the significance of the local for Gyokushō's work, as he maintained close ties to his hometown of Kyoto throughout his life. 

A major article project deals with painting fashions and theories of the late 18th century, with a focus on the Akita-Ranga group of painters. Part of this project is the significance of pictorial models for artists and the politics of art production for different stylistic groups.

2025 Visiting lecturer at Kyoto University as part of the Join Degree MA Program in Transcultural Studies offered by the Heidelberg Center for Transcultural Studies, Heidelberg University, and Kyoto University.

Since 2019 Assistant Professor for Japanese Art History, Institute of East Asian Art History, Heidelberg University 

2021 Ph.D. (defended) in East Asian Art Histories Studies, Institute of East Asian Art History, Heidelberg University 

2015-2016 Doctoral Research Fellow at Gakushūin University, Japan.

2013 Magister in East Asian Art History / Japanese Studies, Institute of East Asian Art History/ Institute for Japanese Studies, Heidelberg University

“Negotiating Realism: Kawabata Gyokushō’s Strive for Modern Japanese Painting.” In The Visual Culture of Meiji Japan: Negotiating the Transition to Modernity. Edited by Ayelet Zohar and Alison Miller. Routledge Research in Art History Ser. Milton: Taylor & Francis Group, 2022.

“Genealogy over Ideology? A Closer Look at Kawabata Gyokushō’s Group of Monkeys.” In Zōkei no poetika: Nihonbijutsushi wo meguru arata na chihei: Nihonbijutsushi wo meguru arata na chihei. Edited by Editorial Society for the Collected Volume in Honor of Professor Sano Midori’s Retirement (Sano Midori-sensei goki kinen ronshū kankō kai) [The Poetics of Form: New Horizons in Japanese Art History]. Tokyo: Seikansha, 2021.

 

Japan Foundation Japanese Studies Short-term Fellowship for fieldwork, 2025.

Kajima Foundation of the Arts project grant for fieldwork, 2024.

Support Grant for Arts and Culture from the Korea Foundation for the workshop “Korean Art Histories and Materialities”, 2023.

Geschwister Supp Foundation, PhD Finishing Grant, 2018-2019.

PhD Scholarship, Graduate Program for Transcultural Studies (GPTS) at the Cluster of Excellence ‘Asia and Europe in a Global Context’ (now Heidelberg Center for Transcultural Studies (HCTS)), including several additional, internal traveling grants, 2014-2018.

MEXT Scholarship from the Japanese Ministry of Education for one year of study as a research fellow at Gakushūin University, Tokyo, 2015-2016.

JASSO Scholarship from the Japanese Ministry of Education for one year as an ISEP exchange student at Tokyo Gakugei University, 2009-2010.

Introduction  “Propädeutikum III: Materials and Techniques” (mit Dr. Monica Klasing Chen), WS 2025-26

Paxis seminar/seminar: Medien und Politik im Kontext der Kunst der Meiji Era (Media and politics in Meiji era art), WS 2025/26.

Introduction  “Propädeutikum II: Stil and Form” (mit Dr. Monica Klasing Chen), SS 2025

Hilfsmittelkurs/Seminar: Lokalität und die Entdeckung der Landschaft in der Japanischen Kunst (Locality and the discovery of the landscape in Japanese art), WS 2024/25.

Introduction  “Propädeutikum IV: Methods and Theories” (mit Dr. Monica Klasing Chen), SS 2024.

Paxis seminar/seminar: Identity Construction in Japanese Contemporary Art, WS 2023/24.

Seminar „ Methods and Tools for Meiji Art Research” winter term 2022.

Academic lecture: “An Exclusive Fashion? Reconsidering the Socio-historical Background of Akita Ranga Painting”, Universität Edinburgh (Jan 16, 2025). 

Main-organizer of the hybrid symposium Narrating Japanese Art Histories: Past, Present, and Future (Jun 28-30, 2024) in cooperation with, and supported by the Ishibashi Foundation, and Japan Foundation (with Eugenia Bogdanova-Kummer, Anton Schweizer and Lianming Wang).

Organizer of the Forum East Asian Art History (May 10-11, 2024) (with Monica Klasing Chen and the organizing team in Berlin, Zurich and Vienna).

Main-organizer of the hybrid Special Workshop: Korean Art Histories and Materialities (Dec 2, 2023) in cooperation with the Korea Foundation.

Academic lecture: “Auf Strohsandalen durch die Lande: Reisende Japaner und die Kunst” [On straw sandals across the countryside: Traveling Japanese and the arts], Städtische Galerie Villingen- Schwenningen (June 23, 2022), accompanying the exhibition “Auf nach Japan! Künstlerreisen zwischen Sehnsucht und Realität” [Off to Japan! Artist travel between longing and reality] (Jun - Aug, 2022).

Academic lecture: “Sophistication on Commission: Collection Building and Exhibition Culture in the 1890s”, Satsuma-Konishi Lecture Leuven University, (May 11, 2022).

PR/outreach coordinator for student and orientation information days, CATS student info market.

Initiator and manager of the IKO Instagram account @iko.heidelberg (together with Susann Henker).