Congradulations to Miriam Chusid, Assistant Professor of Art History, who was awarded a Millard Meiss publication grant from the College Art Association for her upcoming book titled The Ill-Fated Afterlife: Painting the Buddhist Cosmos in Premodern Japan. 

Chusid specializes in Japanese art and visual culture with an interest in East Asian Buddhist art; the role of women in the production and reception of religious images; visual narratives and narrative theory; the place of conservation in art historical inquiry; and contemporary Japanese art.

The Ill-Fated Afterlife examines the emergence of paintings of Buddhist hells in thirteenth-century Japan. It seeks to untangle the seemingly paradoxical idea of using images of suffering to care for the deceased by investigating the iconographies and themes that patrons and painters incorporated into images of hell, by showing how people used and displayed these images, and examining how they repaired and maintained them. By uncovering the visual, ritual, and material matrix from which depictions of hell were given form and meaning, this book demonstrates how ritual specialists employed them to address a range of postmortem concerns and expectations within increasingly diverse Buddhist communities. 

The book will be published in fall 2026.