Professor Volk's scholarship addresses a range of mediums and critical issues in Japanese art from the nineteenth century to the present, including its relationship to the arts of Europe, the United States, and Asia. Her award-winning book In Pursuit of Universalism: Yorozu Tetsugorô and Japanese Modern Art (University of California Press, 2010) places early twentieth-century Japanese painting in the framework of global modernism. Professor Volk’s latest book, In the Shadow of Empire: Art in Occupied Japan (University of Chicago Press, 2025) brings a novel critical perspective concerning empire to the study of Japanese art under the American occupation of Japan (1945-1952). Through the analysis of charismatic artworks in a range of mediums and political commitments, the book shows how the forgotten art of a country in the shadows of American empire variously accommodated and resisted the Cold War global realignment that followed on the heels of World War II.
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