• Skip to main content
  • Skip to footer

  • ABOUT
    • Greetings from the Department Chair
    • Department History
    • News
    • Affiliates
    • Support
    • Contact EALAC
  • PEOPLE
    • Faculty
    • Administration
    • Graduate Students
    • Recent Alumni
  • PROGRAMS
    • Undergraduate
    • Graduate
    • Language Programs
    • Academic Year 2025-2026 Courses
  • EVENTS
  • SUPPORT

Japan

Matthew McKelway

mckelwayMatthew McKelway

TAKEO AND ITSUKO ATSUMI PROFESSOR OF JAPANESE ART HISTORY

Office: 919 Schermerhorn Hall
Phone: (212) 854-3182
Email: mpm8@columbia.edu

Educational Background

PhD: Columbia University (’99)

Classes Taught

HUMA OC1121 Masterpieces of Western Art
AHIS GR8609 Calligraphy in East Asia
AHIS GR8128 Edo Period Painting

Research Interests

Japanese Art History, Urban Representation, Materiality of Painting

Matthew McKelway specializes in the history of Japanese painting. His research has focused on urban representation in rakuchū rakugai zu (screen paintings of Kyoto), the development of genre painting in early modern Japan, Kano school painting, and individualist painters in 18th century Kyoto. Interests in the materiality and techniques of Japanese painting and the early Kano workshop have led to recent articles and a current book project on fan paintings as media for social intercourse and pictorial experimentation. In addition to his research on fan paintings, he is conducting an ongoing study of the painter Nagasawa Rosetsu.

The courses McKelway offers include surveys of Japanese art and more specialized undergraduate courses on painting and Buddhist art. Topics of graduate seminars and lectures have ranged from narrative handscrolls and Muromachi ink painting to the Kano school, Rimpa, and Edo-period painting. To graduate students in Japanese art history and other disciplines he also offers instruction in reading early Japanese scripts (hentaigana/kuzushiji). Current doctoral students have received research fellowships from the Fulbright commission, the Japan Foundation, the Japanese Ministry of Education, and the Shinchō Foundation.

Professor McKelway has been the Ishibashi Gastprofessur at the University of Heidelberg, and has also held visiting professorships at the Free University of Berlin and Waseda University. His Department of Art History & Archaeology page can be found here.

Selected Publications

Silver Wind: The Arts of Sakai Hōitsu (1761-1828) (Japan Society/Yale University Press, 2012)

Capitalscapes: Folding Screens and Political Imagination in Late Medieval Kyoto (University of Hawaii, 2006)

Traditions Unbound: Groundbreaking Painters from Eighteenth-Century Kyoto (San Francisco Asian Art Museum, 2005)

Kyoko Matsui Loetscher

Kyoko Matsui Loetscher

Senior Lecturer in Japanese, Director of the Japanese Language Program

Office: 514 Kent Hall
Office Hours: TR 4:00-5:00
Phone: (212) 854-3523
Email: kml2168@columbia.edu

Educational Background

MA: Second Language Acquisition, Ohio State University
BA: English Literature, Aoyama Gakuin University

Classes Taught

JPNS UN1101 First Year Japanese I
JPNS UN1102 First Year Japanese II
JPNS UN3005 Third Year Japanese I
JPNS UN3006 Third Year Japanese II

Research Interests

Second Language Acquisition
Content-Based Instruction

Kyoko Matsui Loetscher joined Columbia University in 2010. Before joining Columbia, she taught at Princeton University for 8 years including Princeton Summer Program in Ishikawa. She developed curriculum and teaching materials for 4th and 5th year Japanese course based on Content-Based Instruction while teaching at Princeton. She is currently working on creating new teaching materials for Third Year Japanese.

Publications

Shokyuu Nihongo no moji purojekuto [Japanese Orthography Project] (with Shinji Sato and Yuri Kumagai; 2016)

David Lurie

lurieDavid Lurie

Wm. Theodore and Fanny Brett de Bary and Class of 1941 Collegiate Professor of Asian Humanities and Associate Professor of Japanese History and Literature

Office: 622 Kent Hall

Phone: (212) 854-5316

Educational Background

BA: Harvard University (’93)
MA: Columbia University (’96)
PhD: Columbia University (’01)

Classes Taught

JPNS GU4519 Introduction to Kanbun
EAAS UN2342 Mythology of East Asia
CPLS 3900 Introduction to Comparative Literature and Society
JPNS GR8040 Graduate Seminar in Premodern Japanese Literature

Research Interests

Japanese History and Literature, Technology of Language in Premodern Japan

In addition to the history of writing systems and literacy, David Lurie’s research interests include: the literary and cultural history of premodern Japan; the Japanese reception of Chinese literary, historical, and technical writings; the development of Japanese dictionaries and encyclopedias; the history of linguistic thought; Japanese mythology; and world philology. Professor Lurie’s first book investigated the development of writing systems in Japan through the Heian period. Entitled Realms of Literacy: Early Japan and the History of Writing, it received the Lionel Trilling Award in 2012. Along with Haruo Shirane and Tomi Suzuki, he was co-editor of the Cambridge History of Japanese Literature (2015), to which he contributed chapters on myths, histories, gazetteers, and early literature in general. He is completing a new scholarly monograph, tentatively entitled The Emperor’s Dreams: Reading Japanese Mythology.

Please see his website for a complete list of publications and contributions.

Selected Publications

“Japanese Lexicography from ca. 1800 to the Present,” in The Cambridge World History of Lexicography, ed. John Considine, Cambridge University Press, 2019

“Parables of Inscription: Some Notes on Narratives of the Origin of Writing,” History and Theory 56, December 2018

Realms of Literacy: Early Japan and the History of Writing (Harvard University Asia Center, 2011)

“The Development of Japanese Writing,” in The Shape of Script: How and Why Writing Systems Change (SAR Press, 2012)

  • « Go to Previous Page
  • Go to page 1
  • Interim pages omitted …
  • Go to page 3
  • Go to page 4
  • Go to page 5
  • Go to page 6
  • Go to Next Page »

Before Footer

EALAC – Columbia University
407 Kent Hall 1140 Amsterdam Ave.
MC 3907  New York, NY 10027
tel:212.854.5027

Footer

  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Twitter
  • ABOUT
  • PEOPLE
  • PROGRAMS
  • EVENTS
  • SUPPORT

Copyright © 2025 · Columbia University Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures

Copyright © 2025 · EALAC on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in