Maggie Mastrandrea

Magdalena (Maggie) Mastrandrea is a first-year PhD student studying modern Japanese art under the guidance of Dr. Alicia Volk. In spring 2023, she successfully defended her masters thesis “Evolution and Eternity in the Landscape of Defeat: Yokoyama Taikan and Mt. Fuji” on the making and display of Yokoyama Taikan’s 1947 scroll painting Landscape of the Four Seasons within the political climate of the Allied Occupation of Japan. Her current research interests include art and nation building and Nihonga, what constitutes Nihonga, and what it means for a painting to be “Japanese”. 

Last academic year, Maggie worked as a student assistant at the Gordon W. Prange Collection of Postwar Japanese archives where she co-curated the exhibition Fuji: Mountain as Metaphor.  This year, she works as a teaching assistant within the Art History and Archaeology Department.