Maya Stiller

Maya Stiller is an art historian of premodern Korea whose research explores the material and social dimensions of religious life. She is particularly interested in how Buddhist temples were built and sustained, who paid for their construction and decoration, and how people experienced these spaces. Working primarily on Korea between the thirteenth and nineteenth centuries, she combines the study of architecture and visual culture with inscriptions and historical texts to investigate the relationships among artistic production, religious practice, and the communities that supported them. Her research also examines the intersections of religious traditions conventionally described as Buddhist, Daoist, shamanic, and Confucian.

She holds a Dr. phil. in East Asian art history from the Freie Universität Berlin and a Ph.D. in Buddhist studies from UCLA. Born and raised in Berlin to a Korean mother and a German father, she studied and worked in Europe and East Asia before completing her second doctorate in Los Angeles. Her international background and interdisciplinary training inform her approach to Korean art history, which draws on sources in Korean, Japanese, literary Sinitic, German, French, and English.

Her first book, Carving Status at Kŭmgangsan: Elite Graffiti in Premodern Korea (University of Washington Press, 2021), examines the inscriptions left by generations of elite visitors at one of Korea’s most revered mountains. Through these carvings, the book traces changing practices of travel, self-representation, and social distinction over four centuries. It received the American Historical Association’s Patricia Buckley Ebrey Prize and an honorable mention for the Association for Asian Studies’ James B. Palais Prize.

Her second book, Sensing the Buddha Land: Architecture, Murals, and Sound in Late Chosŏn Korea (University of Washington Press, forthcoming 2027), explores how architecture, painted imagery, and sound shaped the experience of Buddhist temple halls. She is also working on a co-authored cultural history of Korean Buddhism and several articles on artisanal labor, monastic economies, and the material expressions of political loyalty. Her research has appeared in journals including the Journal of the American Oriental Society, Artibus Asiae, the Journal of Asian Studies, Cahiers d’Extrême-Asie, and the Journal of Korean Religions. Two digital projects, the Autographic Atlas of Korea and an ongoing VR study of temple murals, extend her interest in the spatial dimensions of religious art.

Her research has received support from the ACLS/Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation, the Metropolitan Center for Far Eastern Art Studies, the Academy of Korean Studies, and the Korea Foundation. During the 2026–27 academic year, she is a senior fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts (CASVA) at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC. 

Teaching: Professor Stiller teaches courses on Korean and East Asian visual culture, ranging from Buddhist art and ceramics to modern and contemporary Korean art. Her lecture course on Korean Buddhist art explores how works of art functioned within religious life: how relics could offer protection, images of hell conveyed moral teachings, and ritual paintings provided consolation to the bereaved. Her graduate seminars combine close study of objects in the collections of the Spencer Museum of Art and the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art with training in digital and spatial methods. She also regularly invites scholars from North America, Europe, and Korea to share their research and perspectives with students. 

For prospective graduate students: Professor Stiller welcomes inquiries from prospective graduate students interested in Korean art and visual culture, as well as students in Buddhist studies, religious studies, architectural history, and East Asian studies whose interests intersect with her research. Possible areas of study include religious economies and patronage, artistic labor, pilgrimage and sacred landscape, the intersections of religious traditions, and spatial and sensory approaches to religious art and architecture. She also welcomes students interested in digital methods and their applications to art-historical research. Her current advisees pursue projects ranging from eighteenth-century royal court painting and ecology to image-text media under the U.S. Army Military Government. She is open to students working across different historical periods and particularly values research grounded in primary sources and material evidence, with an interest in the broader social and historical circumstances of artistic production.

Applicants should ideally have a background in Korean studies, art history, or a related field, along with Korean-language skills sufficient, or nearly sufficient, to read secondary scholarship. Students planning to work on premodern topics should have some preparation in literary Sinitic (hanmun) or be prepared to begin studying it early in their graduate training.

As the first person in her family to attend graduate school, Professor Stiller understands that the expectations and procedures of doctoral study are not always transparent. She is happy to answer questions about the application process and particularly encourages students from first-generation, immigrant, and nontraditional backgrounds to get in touch. Prospective applicants are encouraged to email her before applying, with a brief description of their research interests and an indication of their current language preparation.

Professor Stiller is on research leave during the 2026–27 academic year but continues to welcome inquiries from prospective students.