Profile

Mariachiara Gasparini is an Assistant Professor of Chinese Art and Architectural History at the University of Oregon. Previously, she taught Asian Art History at the University of California, Riverside, San Jose State University, San Francisco State University, and Santa Clara University. She studied Oriental Languages and Civilization at the University of Oriental Studies in Naples, Italy, earned an M.A. in East Asian Art History from Sotheby’s Institute of Art in London, U.K., and received her Ph.D. in Transcultural Studies: Global Art History from Ruprecht Karl University of Heidelberg, Germany. Gasparini's interests include historical, theoretical, and visual investigation of the history of Eurasian art and culture. Her research focuses on Chinese and Central Asian textiles, material culture, wall painting, artist’s praxis, and Sino-Iranian and Turko-Mongol interactions. She collaborates with museums and institutions worldwide. Between 2012 and 2014, she analyzed and cataloged the Turfan Textile Collection in the Museum of Asian Art in Berlin with the support of the International Dunhuang Project at the British Library, and, in 2016, she compiled the annotated Italian bibliography for the project Buddhist Mural of Kucha on the Northern Silk Road at the Saxony Academy of Science and the University of Leipzig. She is the author of Transcending Patterns: Silk Road Cultural and Artistic Interactions through Central Asian Textiles (University of Hawai’i Press, 2019), and, of Chapter 6: “Beyond Space and Time: Sino-Iranian Textiles and the Creation of Eurasian Religious Material and Visual Cultures of Power and Sanctity,” in Persian Cultures of Power and the Entanglement of the Afro-Eurasian World, edited by Matthew Canepa (Getty Research Institute Publications, 2024). She is also currently co-editing Volume 6: Trade and Industry: Global Circulation of Local Manufacture, and the Migration and Consumption of Textile Products, both Historically and Contemporaneously of Bloomsbury Encyclopedia of World Textiles. 

Dr. Gasparini is a recipient of the Henry Luce Foundation China Studies Early Career Fellowship 21-22. Her new research project focuses on Tuyuhun and early Tibetan material culture across Qinghai and Sichuan Provinces, and the trans-Himalayas.

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 207 History of Indian Art

ARH 208 History of Chinese Art 

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

ARH 382 Arts of the Silk Road

ARH 387 Chinese Buddhist Art

ARH 4/510 Arts of the Silk Road

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

ARH 4/581 Chinese Architecture

ARH 4/581 Chinese Funerary Art

ARH 607 Who Owns Art? Provenance, Acquisition, and Ownership

SPRING 2024

OFFICE HOURS: TR 2:00 – 4:00 pm; LA 217 or

Zoom: https://uoregon.zoom.us/j/8043399040 Meeting ID: 804 339 9040