Alumni Spotlight Q&A: Meet April Peng ’20

The Department of Asian Languages and Cultures celebrates its 10th anniversary this year. To commemorate this celebration, the department spotlights some of its alumni.

April Peng graduated from Weinberg College in 2020 with a Bachelor’s of Arts in Art History, and has since received her Master’s degree in Regional Studies — East Asia from Harvard University.April studies Buddhist art and visual culture of medieval East Asia. She is particularly interested in art’s role in the visualization of processes that concern the conceiving and sustaining of life beyond the physical body. Her past projects have focused on Buddhist cave temples and devotional objects of medieval China and materials of early Japanese Buddhist art. April has gained professional experiences at Harvard CAMLab, the National Museum of China, and the Block Museum of Art at Northwestern University.

Recently, she answered a few questions about her experience at Northwestern in the Department of Asian Languages and Cultures and how it has impacted her.

I wanted to learn the Japanese language since I aspired to be an art historian of East Asian art, and ended up receiving a minor in Japanese language.

ALC courses really helped me gain solid language skills in Japanese and familiarize myself with cultural history outside of my main research interests. I still go back to my undergrad class notes sometimes for information!