Kristopher Kersey’s first book honored by Medieval Academy of America

With his first book, UCLA art historian Kristopher Kersey invites readers to rethink traditional divides — those between premodern and modern art, and between Western and non-Western art.

In “Facing Images: Medieval Japanese Art and the Problem of Modernity,” Kersey explores artifacts from 12th-century Japan with characteristics that are generally associated with modern art, and demonstrates that the period is more expansive in style and form than how it has traditionally been defined by Eurocentric art history.

For his work, Kersey has been honored by the Medieval Academy of America with the 2025 Monica H. Green Prize, which recognizes projects demonstrating the value of medieval studies in the present day. In its award citation, the academy praises “Facing Images” for provoking readers to “recognize moments in the human archive when a person of the distant past had a similar emotion, used a similar artistic strategy or saw something in a manner that is consonant with the present viewer.”

Kersey, a UCLA faculty member since 2018, said he was gratified to be acknowledged for a text that he hoped would encourage scholars to form new connections across disciplines.

“I wanted to build bridges between different communities of scholarship,” he said. “Everything that’s ‘Western’ and ‘non-Western’ or ‘modern’ and ‘pre-modern’ is sometimes treated as if it were distinct and disconnected. These two binary ways of thinking have been really problematic; I wanted to deconstruct those binaries.

“People who study the medieval period should understand the relevance of modernity to their work and vice-versa. We can’t stay in our subfields; we can think more capaciously about the temporal boundaries of our work.”

Read more on the UCLA Humanities website. 

With his first book, UCLA art historian Kristopher Kersey invites readers to rethink traditional divides — those between premodern and modern art, and between Western and non-Western art.

In “Facing Images: Medieval Japanese Art and the Problem of Modernity,” Kersey explores artifacts from 12th-century Japan with characteristics that are generally associated with modern art, and demonstrates that the period is more expansive in style and form than how it has traditionally been defined by Eurocentric art history.

For his work, Kersey has been honored by the Medieval Academy of America with the 2025 Monica H. Green Prize, which recognizes projects demonstrating the value of medieval studies in the present day. In its award citation, the academy praises “Facing Images” for provoking readers to “recognize moments in the human archive when a person of the distant past had a similar emotion, used a similar artistic strategy or saw something in a manner that is consonant with the present viewer.”

Kersey, a UCLA faculty member since 2018, said he was gratified to be acknowledged for a text that he hoped would encourage scholars to form new connections across disciplines.

“I wanted to build bridges between different communities of scholarship,” he said. “Everything that’s ‘Western’ and ‘non-Western’ or ‘modern’ and ‘pre-modern’ is sometimes treated as if it were distinct and disconnected. These two binary ways of thinking have been really problematic; I wanted to deconstruct those binaries.

“People who study the medieval period should understand the relevance of modernity to their work and vice-versa. We can’t stay in our subfields; we can think more capaciously about the temporal boundaries of our work.”

Read more on the UCLA Humanities website.