Gail Chin received her PhD from UCLA in 1995, focusing her dissertation on paintings of the descent of the Buddha at the point of death (raigôzu). Presently, she is Associate Professor of Art History at the University of Regina in Saskatchewan, Canada. She specializes in Japanese painting of the Heian and Kamakura periods (11th-13th centuries) with particular interest in the arts of Pure Land Buddhism. Current interests include Japanese representations of the body with reference to the “Notes on Illness” (Yamai no sôshi) and images of the nine stages of the decay of the female body (kusôzu). She is also interested in Asian Canadian art and history and contemporary Japanese art.

Selected Works

Book Chapter

"On Being Joyful about Dying: The Painting of The Descent of Amid and His Holy Multitude of Mount Koya," Jacqueline Stone and Mariko Walter Namba, eds., Death and Death Rituals in Japan, Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2003.

Articles

"The Gender of Buddhist Truth: The Female Corpse in a Group of Japanese Paintings," Japanese Journal of Religious Studies, Fall (1998): pp. 79-121.

"The Mukaekô of Taimadera: Salvation Re-enacted," Cahiers d'Extrème Asie 8 (1995): pp. 325-334.

Proceedings

"Women in the Yamai no soshi, a Set of Twelfth Century Japanese Paintings," Proceedings from the "Across Time and Genre Conference," August 16-20, 2001.

Catalogues

The Asian Collection at the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria. Victoria: Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, 1996.