Alicia Volk

Alicia Volk is a Professor of Japanese Art History at the University of Maryland, College Park, within the Department of Art History and Archaeology. She holds a Ph.D. from Yale University and has held fellowships at institutions such as Waseda University, the J. Paul Getty Foundation, and the Sainsbury Institute. Her research focuses on Japanese art from the 19th century to the present, emphasizing its global connections and intersections with gender, race, and modernism.

Key publications include In Pursuit of Universalism: Yorozu Tetsugorô and Japanese Modern Art (2010), awarded the Phillips Book Prize, and her upcoming In the Shadow of Empire: Art in Occupied Japan (2025), which re-examines post-WWII Japanese art under U.S. occupation. She has curated exhibitions like Made in Japan: The Postwar Creative Print Movement (2005) and authored extensively on topics such as the role of women artists in postwar democratization, the visual cultures of imperial Japan, and transnational art dialogues between Japan and Europe.

Her awards include grants from the Japan Foundation, Blakemore Foundation, and the Suntory Foundation, among others. Volk’s work challenges Eurocentric narratives, advocating for inclusive art histories that center Japanese artistic practices within global frameworks.