Michael J. Hatch’s scholarship covers Chinese art from the 18th to the 21st century, with particular interests in materiality and sensory history. His first book, Networks of Touch: A Tactile History of Chinese Art, 1790-1840 (Penn State University Press, 2024), describes the early nineteenth-century obsession with epigraphy in China, and how it led to a form of tactile thinking that impacted all of elite visual and material culture. His upcoming projects include a co-edited volume about the exchange of antiquarian knowledge and craft across early modern East Asia, as well as a book about the effects of linearity on the brushwork of modern Chinese painting.
 
In the classroom, Prof. Hatch directs the natural curiosity that artworks produce in students toward larger conversations that bridge differences in time, culture, and language. He sees art history as a set of methods and tools that enable students to understand how their attention has been excited, to excavate historical and cultural contexts beyond those immediately available to them, and to ultimately open up new possibilities of being in the present. His courses cover various topics in East Asian art history as well as broad themes such as the art market, arts writing, pleasure, and landscape.

curriculum vitae