Yi Gu

Associate Professor
Art History and Visual Culture
416-208-4828
HW
425
Biography:
Yi Gu joined University of Toronto in 2009, after receiving her Ph.D. from the Department of History of Art and Architecture at Brown University. She is currently working on a book manuscript on outdoor sketching and the reconfiguration of art in modern China, as well as developing a book project concerning cultural exchanges and inter-communist imagination.
Education:
BA, M.A., PhD (Brown)
Research Interests:
Chinese modern and contemporary art, Asian photography, Cold War visual culture, mass art and amateurism, comparative media
Awards and Grants:
- McLuhan Centre of Culture and Technology Working Group Grant, 2020 (as co-convener with Julie Yujie Chen)
- SSHRC Insight Development Grant, 2020 (as co-applicant with Analays Alvarez Hernandez and Maria Silina)
- Chiang Ching-Kuo Foundation Publication Subsidy Grant, 2018 Connaught New Researcher Fellowship, 2015-2016
Publications:
- Chinese Ways of Seeing and Open-Air Painting. Harvard University Asia Center, 2020.
- “Which East, Whose South: Reflections on Art of the Socialist Bloc.” On Our Time, no. 2 Constellations of Intimacies, 2021, https://www.timesmuseum.org/en/journal/floating-constellation/which-east....
- “We Love Peace: Photographic Effect and Chinese People’s Volunteer Force Soldiers in the Korean War.” The Chinese Historical Review, vol. 25, no. 2, 2018, pp. 196–207.
- “The ‘Peasant Problem’ and Time in Contemporary Chinese Art.” Representations, vol. 136, no. 1, Nov. 2016, pp. 54–76.
- “What’s in a Name? Photography and the Reinvention of Visual Truth in China, 1840-1911.” The Art Bulletin, vol. 95, no. 1, 2013, pp. 120–38.