Profile

Dr. Gasparini is Assistant Professor of Chinese Art and Architectural History. Previously she taught at the University of California Riverside, San Jose State University, San Francisco State University, and Santa Clara University. She studied Oriental Languages and Civilizations at the University of Naples "L' Orientale" and East Asian Art at Sotheby's Institute of Art in London (University of Manchester). In 2015, she completed her Ph.D. in Transcultural Studies: Global Art History at the Cluster of Excellence Asia and Europe in a Global Context at Ruprecht Karl University of Heidelberg, Germany.

Her interests include historical, theoretical, and visual investigation of the history of Eurasian art and culture. In particular, her research focuses on Central Asian textiles, material culture, wall painting, artist’s praxis, and Sino-Iranian and Turko-Mongol interactions. 

She is the author of Transcending Patterns: Silk Road Cultural and Artistic Interactions through Central Asian Textiles (University of Hawai’i Press, 2019), and is currently coediting Trade and Industry: Global Circulation of Local Manufacture, and the Migration and Consumption of Textile Products, both Historically and Contemporaneously. Volume 6. Bloomsbury Encyclopedia of World Textiles (Forthcoming in 2023).

She is Henry Luce Foundation/ACLS Program in China Studies Early Career Fellow 21-22

Among her other publications:

“The ‘Mongol’ Cloud Collar of Serbian Despot John Oliver: A Historical and Iconographic Investigation.” The Journal of Transcultural Studies. Vol.12, No. 1. (2022): Forthcoming (Co-authored with Dr. Vladimir Aleksic, Department of History, Faculty of Philosophy, University of Niš, Serbia).

“Collars and Wing Sleeves as Marks of Buddhist Royal Patronage.” Connecting the Art, Literature, and Religion of South and Central Asia: Studies in Honor of Monika Zin. Edited by Ines Konczak-Nagel, Satomi Hiyama, and Astrid Klein. New Delhi: Dev Publishers & Distributors, 2022; 129-138.

 “A Tent for the Afterlife: Remarks on a Qinghai-Sichuanese Panel.” Acta Via Serica. Vol. 6, No.2. (2021): 61-90.

 “Sasanian Textiles” and the “Tang Cosmopolitan Style.” Sasanian Studies. Late Antique Iranian World. Vol I. (2021): 81-97. 

“Sino-Iranian Textile Patterns in Trans-Himalayan Areas.” Silk Road, vol. 14 (2016): 84-96.

“Woven Mythology. The Textile Encounter of Makara, Senmurv and Phoenixes.” Global Textile Encounters: China, India, Europe. Ancient Textile Series 20, ed. by Marie-Louise Nosch, Zhao Feng, and Lotika Varadarajan. Oxbow Books, 2014; 119-126.

“A Mathematic Expression of Art: Sino-Iranian and Uighur Textiles Interactions and the Turfan Textile Collection in Berlin.” Transcultural Studies Journal 1, (2014): 134-163. http://journals.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/index.php/transcultural/article/vie....

“The Silk Cover of the Admonitions Scroll: Aesthetic and Visual Analysis.” Ming and Qing Studies (2013): 161-218.

https://uoregon.academia.edu/MARIACHIARAGASPARINI

SELECTED COURSES

ARH 208 History of Chinese Art 

ARH 210 Contemporary Asian Art

ARH 325 Islamic Art (focusing on China and Central Asia)

ARH 382 Arts of the Silk Road

ARH 387 Chinese Buddhist Art

ARH 4/581 Through the Looking Glass: Chinese Textiles, Fashion, and Art

ARH 4/581 Chinese Architecture