Associate Professor Emeritus; Asian/Chinese Art.
Associate Professor Qianshen Bai joined the faculty of Boston University in 1997. Having graduated from Beijing University with a B.A. in political science, Professor Bai came to the United States to pursue graduate studies in comparative politics at Rutgers University in 1986 where he received a M.A. Later he went to Yale University to study art history and obtained his Ph.D. in 1996. An art historian who also teaches studio art, Professor Bai is a renowned calligrapher and seal carver and has won a First Prize in the National Calligraphy Competition for University and College Students in China in 1982 and has participated in various international exhibitions of Chinese calligraphy. His research covers Chinese calligraphy, painting and seal carving. Professor Bai has published broadly on these subjects in refereed journals and edited volumes in both English and Chinese, he is the author of Fu Shan’s World: The Transformation of Chinese Calligraphy in the Seventeenth Century (Harvard University, 2003). Since joining the faculty of Boston University, he has taught Arts of Asia; Arts of China; Seminar on Chinese Art and Culture in the Twentieth Century; Colloquium in Chinese Art; and Seminar on Theory and Practice of Chinese and Japanese Calligraphy, a course combining the study of history, theory of East Asian calligraphy and its hands-on performance which has attracted a considerable number of students (including graduate students) from the College of Fine Arts.
In May 2019, Professor Bai was appointed the founding Dean of the School of Art & Archaeology at Zhejiang University in Hangzhou, China, and in September 2019; Director of the Zhejiang University Museum of Art and Archaeology.