Morgan Pitelka

Morgan Pitelka is the Bernard L. Herman Distinguished Professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His scholarship and teaching focus on the history of late medieval and early modern Japan, with an emphasis on material culture, environmental history, and urban history.

Affiliations

Department of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, Department of History, Curriculum in Archaeology, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; PI, UNC Japanese History Lab; Coeditor, Journal of Japanese Studies; Chair, American Advisory Committee, Japan Foundation

CURRENT RESEARCH

The Earth Beneath Our Feet: Ceramic Histories of Seventeenth-Century Kyoto and its Environment, a book in progress by Morgan Pitelka

This book examines how families of potters, ceramic shops, tea plantations, municipal leaders, and cultural luminaries contributed to the rebuilding of the city after an age of civil war, and how the ecology of the city was affected by and also played a major role in the capital’s successful revival. This research builds on my long commitment as a historian and teacher to the study of ceramics in premodern Japan, focusing on Kyoto as one of the world’s great cities of culture.

A Global History of Ceramics in Japan, coedited by Meghen Jones, Andrew Maske, Seung Yeon Sang, and Morgan Pitelka

From everyday vessels to ritualistic objects and works of art, ceramics have played crucial roles in Japanese aesthetics, society, and culture for over 12,000 years. This book aims to offer the first multi-author, comprehensive study in English of ceramics in Japan, spanning the prehistoric to modern eras. Its authors, leading scholars based on three continents, employ an array of innovative approaches, ranging from the explanation of archaeological findings to analysis of archival and museum sources to first-person accounts from contemporary curators and ceramicists.