Timon Screech (born 28 September 1961 in

Birmingham Birmingham ( ) is a city and metropolitan borough in the metropolitan county of West Midlands in England. It is the second-largest city in the United Kingdom with a population of 1.145 million in the city proper, 2.92 million in the West ...

) was professor of the

history of art The history of art focuses on objects made by humans for any number of spiritual, narrative, philosophical, symbolic, conceptual, documentary, decorative, and even functional and other purposes, but with a primary emphasis on its aesthetic vis ...

at the

School of Oriental and African Studies SOAS University of London (; the School of Oriental and African Studies) is a public research university in London, England, and a member institution of the federal University of London. Founded in 1916, SOAS is located in the Bloomsbury ar ...

(SOAS),

University of London The University of London (UoL; abbreviated as Lond or more rarely Londin in post-nominals) is a federal public research university located in London, England, United Kingdom. The university was established by royal charter in 1836 as a degree ...

from 1991 - 2021, when he left the UK in protest over Brexit. He is now a professor at the International Research Center for Japanese Studies (Nichibunken) in Kyoto. Screech is a specialist in the art and culture of early modern

Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...

. In 1985, Screech received a BA in Oriental Studies (Japanese) at the

University of Oxford , mottoeng = The Lord is my light , established = , endowment = £6.1 billion (including colleges) (2019) , budget = £2.145 billion (2019–20) , chancellor ...

. In 1991, he completed his PhD in art history at

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...

. As well as his permanent posts, he has been visiting professor at the

University of Chicago The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, U of C, or UChi) is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its main campus is located in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood. The University of Chicago is consistently ranked among the b ...

, Heidelberg University, and Tokyo University of Foreign Studies and guest researcher at

Gakushuin University is a private university in Mejiro, Toshima Ward, Tokyo. It was re-established after World War II as an affiliate of the Gakushūin School Corporation. The privatized successor to the original Gakushūin University (or "Peers School") was estab ...

and

Waseda University , abbreviated as , is a private university, private research university in Shinjuku, Tokyo. Founded in 1882 as the ''Tōkyō Senmon Gakkō'' by Ōkuma Shigenobu, the school was formally renamed Waseda University in 1902. The university has numerou ...

in Japan, and at Yale, Berkeley and UCLA in the USA. His main current research project is related to the deification of the first Tokugawa shogun, Ieyasu, in 1616-17, and his cult as the Great Avatar. In July 2018 Screech was elected a Fellow of the

British Academy The British Academy is the United Kingdom's national academy for the humanities and the social sciences. It was established in 1902 and received its royal charter in the same year. It is now a fellowship of more than 1,000 leading scholars span ...

(FBA). Screech’s work had been translated into Chinese (Taiwan and PRC), French, German, Japanese, Korean, Polish and Romanian. His leisure interests are aleurophilia, learning Burmese, and cultivating plants in the former Kingdom of the Ryukyus. In 2022 he received both th
Fukuoka Prize
Academic Prize, and the Yamagata Bantō Prize

Published work includes

* 2020: The Shogun's Silver Telescope: God, Art & Money in the English Quest for Japan (Oxford: Oxford University Press) * 2020: Tokyo before Tokyo: Power and Magic in the Shogun's City of Edo (London: Reaktion Books & Chicago: Chicago University Press) * 2011: Obtaining Images: Art Production and Display in Edo Japan ondon: Reaktion Books & Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press* 2007: ''Oranda ga true: Ningen kōryū no edo bijutsushi'' he Dutch Are Passing: Edo art and the exchange of persons Tokyo: niversity of Tokyo Press * 2006
''Secret Memoirs of the Shoguns: Isaac Titsingh and Japan, 1779–1822''.
London:

RoutledgeCurzon Routledge () is a British multinational publisher. It was founded in 1836 by George Routledge, and specialises in providing academic books, journals and online resources in the fields of the humanities, behavioural science, education, law, and ...

.
OCLC 65177072
* 2006: ''Edo no igirisu netsu'' ritain in the Edo Period Tokyo:

Kodansha is a Japanese privately-held publishing company headquartered in Bunkyō, Tokyo. Kodansha is the largest Japanese publishing company, and it produces the manga magazines ''Nakayoshi'', ''Afternoon'', ''Evening'', ''Weekly Shōnen Magazine'' an ...

. * 2005: "Pictures, the Most Part Bawdy: The Anglo-Japanese Painting Trade in the Early 1600s", ''Art Bulletin''. Vol. 87, No. 1, pp. 50–72. * 2005: "Introduction", ''Japan Extolled and Decried: Park Oeter Thunberg and the Shogun's Realm''. London:

. * 2005: ''Japan Extolled and Decried: Carl Peter Thunberg and Japan''. London:

. (cloth); (electronic) * 2003: ''Sex and Consumerism in Edo Japan. In: Consuming Bodies: Sex and Consumerism in Japanese Contemporary Art''. London:

Reaktion Books Reaktion Books is an independent book publisher based in Islington, London, England. It was founded in 1985 in Edinburgh, Scotland, and moved to London in 1987. Reaktion originally focused on the fields of art, architecture, and design. In recen ...

. * 2002: "Dressing Samuel Pepys: Japanese Garments and International Diplomacy in the Edo Period", ''Orientations''. Vol. 2, pp. 50–57. * 2002: "Erotyczne obrazy japonskie 1700–1820". ''Universitas'' Kraków. * 2002: "The Edo Pleasure Districts as 'Pornotopia'", ''Orientations'', Vol. 2, pp. 36–42. * 2001:"The Birth of the Anatomical Body", ''Births and Rebirths in Japanese Art''. Leiden: Hotei Press. * 2001: "The visual legacy of Dodonaeus in botanical and Human Categorisation", ''Dodonaeus in Japan: Translation and the Scientific Mind in Tokugawa Japan''. Leuven:

Leuven University Press Leuven University Press ( nl, Universitaire Pers Leuven) is a university press located in Leuven, Belgium. It was established in 1971 in association with KU Leuven KU Leuven (or Katholieke Universiteit Leuven) is a Catholic research univ ...

. * 2000: ''The Shogun's Painted Culture: Fear and Creativity in the Japanese States, 1760–1829''. London:

. (London). . * 1998: ''Sex and the Floating World: Erotic Imagery in Japan, 1720–1810''. London:

. . * 1997: ''Edo no karada o hiraku'' pening the Edo Body Tokyo: Sakuhinsha. . * 1996: ''The Western Scientific Gaze and Popular Imagery in Later Edo Japan''. Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press Cambridge University Press is the university press of the University of Cambridge. Granted letters patent by Henry VIII of England, King Henry VIII in 1534, it is the oldest university press A university press is an academic publishing hou ...

. .

References

External links

Staff homepage at SOAS, Department of Art & Archaeology

Sainsbury Institute

Stanford University: "Visualizing Knowledge" (link to streaming audio of Prof. Screech's lecture)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Screech, Timon Living people Harvard University alumni Academics of SOAS University of London Alumni of the University of Oxford British art historians Historians of Japan 1961 births Fellows of the British Academy

Published work includes

See also

References

External links