Chinghsin Wu

Associate Teaching Professor of Art History
Ph.D. University of California, Los Angeles

chinghsin.wu@rutgers.edu
(856) 225-6176
Fine Arts Building, Rm. 260

 

Biography

Chinghsin Wu received her Ph.D. in Art History from the University of California, Los Angeles, specializing in Asian and modern art with an emphasis on transnational and cross-cultural perspectives. She is the author of Parallel Modernism: Koga Harue and Avant-Garde Art in Modern Japan (University of California Press, 2019) and Truth through Immersion: A Biography of Painter Tsai Yun-yan [Ronghui Zhizhen Tsai Yun-yan] (Yishujia Chubanshe, 2018).

Her scholarship examines modern art in Japan and East Asia within broader imperial, global, and institutional contexts. She has published widely on topics including Western-style painting (yōga), Japanese-style painting (Nihonga), surrealism, visual culture, and colonial modernity. Her publications include “‘Southern Fragrance’ of the Japanese Empire: Visualizing Botany in Colonial Taiwan,” in The Routledge Companion to Art and the Formation of Empire(2025); “Constructing the Early Taiwanese Landscape: Acacia Trees and Water Buffalo,” in Taiwan Meishu Xuekan(2025); “Surrealism in Japan,” in The Routledge Companion to Surrealism (2023); “Colors of Empire: Watercolor in Meiji Japan,” in The Visual Culture of Meiji Japan (2022); and “Institutionalizing Impressionism: Kuroda Seiki and Plein-Air Painting in Japan,” in Mapping Impressionist Painting in Transnational Contexts (2021), among others.

Wu has also published review essays in academic journals, including the Journal of Japanese Studies and Taiwan Meishu Xuekan. In addition to her scholarly writing, she has contributed essays and entries to major exhibition catalogues, such as Surrealism Beyond Borders (The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Tate Modern, 2021), Yonekura Hisahito: Poetic Surrealist Painter (2022), and Modern Art at Official Exhibitions: Tokyo, Seoul, Taipei, Changchun (2014). She has authored encyclopedia entries for the Routledge Encyclopedia of Modernism and Grove Art.

Before joining Rutgers University, Camden, Wu was the Phillips Collection Postdoctoral Fellow (2015–2016) and has taught at Tufts University, Brown University, Brandeis University, and George Washington University. She has received fellowships for field research in Japan from the Ishibashi Foundation / Japan Foundation and The Metropolitan Center for Far Eastern Art Studies (2024-2025). Supported by the Rutgers University-Camden Chancellor’s Grant and the Rutgers University Research Council Award, she is currently conducting multidisciplinary research on the Ukiyo-e Japanese woodblock prints held at the Stedman Gallery, Rutgers University, Camden.