Yuriko Saito (Japanese: 斉藤 百合子, born 1953) is a retired Japanese-American philosopher specializing in aesthetics, including wabi-sabi, the Japanese philosophy of appreciating transience and imperfection.[1] She is a professor emeritus of philosophy at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD).[2]
Education and career
Saito is originally from Sapporo, Japan,[3] where she was born in 1953.[4] She studied philosophy at International Christian University in Tokyo, earning a bachelor's degree there. Next, she completed her PhD in philosophy, with a minor in Japanese literature, at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.[2][5] Her 1983 doctoral dissertation, The Aesthetic Appreciation of Nature: Western and Japanese Perspectives and Their Ethical Implications, was supervised by Donald W. Crawford.[6]
Meanwhile, she began working for the Rhode Island School of Design as an assistant professor in 1981. She remained there for the rest of her career, becoming a full professor in 1995 and retiring as professor emeritus in 2018.[5]
Recognition
Saito's book Aesthetics of the Familiar: Everyday Life and Worldmaking was the 2018 winner of the Outstanding Monograph Prize of the American Society for Aesthetics.[7]
In 2020, Saito was the Richard Wollheim Lecturer at the British Society of Aesthetics Annual Conference.[8]
