Dissertations

Dissertations completed in the Department of Art History, listed by the year in which the student defended.

2023

  • "Between Virtual and Real: A New Architecture of the Mogao Caves (Dunhuang, China), 781-1036 CE," Zhenru Zhou
  • "Vera Molnar's Programmed Abstraction: Computer Graphics and Geometric Abstract Art in Postwar Europe," Zsofia Valyi-Nagy
  • "Inventing Contemporary Chinese Architectural Culture in the Age of Globalization 1979-2006," Zhiyan Yang

2022

  • "'A Tragic Suburban Mentality': Managerial Lyricism in Contemporary Art," Jadine Collingwood
  • "Henry the Lion and the Art of Politics in Northern Europe, c. 1142-1195," Luke Fidler
  • "Interchanges: Construction of the U.S. Interstate Highway System and Artistic Practice, 1956-1984," Hanne Graversen
  • "Roaming, Gazing, and Listening: Human Presence and Sensory Impression in Song Landscape Art," Meng Zhao
  • "The City's Pleasures: Urban and Visual Culture of Garden Spaces in Shanghai, 1850s-1930s," Xi Zhang
  • "Making Merit in the Tableau: Early Sixth-Century Chinese Stele," Dongshan Zhang
  • "Caught by Surprise: Affect and Feminist Politics in the Art of Magali Lara," Maggie Borowitz 
  • "Monochrome Painting and the Period Body in Andrea del Sarto's Cloister of the Scalzo," Christine Zappella 
  • "(Re)Making the View: The Shifting Imaginary of West Lake, from the 13th to the 19th Century," Yunfei Shao 

2021

  • "The Visual Culture of English Medicine, 1348 - 1500," Carly Boxer
  • "From Gold to Green: Visualizing the Environment in the Italian Renaissance," Chloé Pelletier
  • "Making Spaces: Site-Based Practice in Contemporary Chinese Art in the Long 1990s," Nancy Pai Suan Lin
  • "From Mouth to Hand: Mopa Mopa Images in the Northern Colonial Andes," Catalina Ospina 
  • "How to Photograph the Air: Photography, Cinema, and the Problem of Atmosphere in German Modernism, 1893-1933," Katerina Korola
  • "From the Ground Up: Yona Friedman and the Postwar Reimagining of Architecture," Jesse Lockard

2020

  • "Ruthenians in Early Modern Rome: Art and Architecture of a Uniate Community, 1596 – 1750," Anatole Upart
  • "Unsettling the Spiritual Conquest: The Murals of the Huaquechula Monastery in Sixteenth Century Mexico," Savannah Esquivel
  • "Likeness, Figuration, Proof: Geometry and the Arabic Book, 1050-1250," Meekyung MacMurdie
  • "The Disputed City: Art, Architecture, and the Performance of Argument in Scholastic Paris (c.1120–c.1320)," Martin Schwarz
  • "Beyond Treaty Ports: Chinese Photography 1860-1916: Practitioners, Contexts, and Trends," Tingting Xu
  • "The History of Idolatry and the Codex Durán Paintings," Kristopher Driggers

2019

  • "Non Est Hic: Figuring Christ's Absence in Early Medieval Art," Nancy Thebaut
  • “The Art of the Periodical: Pan, Print Culture and the Birth of Modern Design in Germany, 1890 – 1900,” Max Koss

2018

  • "The Whole World is (Still) Watching: Early Video, the Televisual, and Nonviolent Direct Action, 1930s-1970s," Solveig Nelson
  • "Criticism without Authority: Gene Swenson, Jill Johnston, Gregory Battcock," Jennifer Sichel
  • "Evolving Photography: Naturalism, Art, and Experience, 1889-1909," Carl Fuldner
  • "Water, Ice, Lapis Lazuli: the Metamorphosis of Pure Land Art in Tang China," Anne Feng
  • "Le Roman de la Poire: Constructing Courtliness and Courtly Art in Gothic France," Elizabeth Woodward
  • "Unfolded Worlds: Allegory, Alchemy, and the Image as Structure of Knowledge in Early Modern Northern European Scientific Books," Alexandra Marraccini

2017

  • “Consequences of Drawing: Self and History in Jacques-Louis David's Preparatory Practices,” Tamar Mayer
  • “Seizing the Everyday: Lettrist Film and the French Postwar Avant-Garde,” Marin Sarvé-Tarr
  • “Surrealism and the Art of Consumption,” Jennifer Rose Cohen
  • “The Mancheng Tombs: Shaping the Afterlife of the ‘Kingdom within the Mountains’ in Western Han China (206BCE- 8CE),” Jie Shi
  • “Kazimir Malevich and Russian Modernism,” Daniel Phillips
  • “Engraving Identities in Stone: Stone Mortuary Equipment of the Northern Dynasties (386-581 CE),” Jin Xu
  • “Past Black and White: The Color of Photography in South Africa, 1994-2004,” Leslie Wilson
  • “Systems Depictions: A. R. Penck and the East German Underground, 1953-1980,” Hannah Klemm
  • “Body Analyses / Poetic Acts: Ambivalences of Austrian Performance Art After 1945,” Caroline Schopp

2016

  • “Allan Kaprow and the Dialectics of Instruction, 1947-1968,” Emily Capper
  • “Great Expectations: The South Slavs in the Paris Salon Canvases of Jaoslav Čermák and Vlaho Bukovac,” Rachel Rossner
  • “‘Writing Calculations, Calculating Writing’: The Art of Hanne Darboven,” Victoria Salinger
  • “The Art of Play: Games in Early Modern Italy,” Kelli Wood
  • “The Materiality of Azurite Blue and Malachite Green in the Age of the Chinese Colorist Qiu Ying (ca. 1498-ca.1552),” Quincy Ngan

2015

  • "Contested Spaces: Art and Urbanism in Brazil, 1928-1969," Adrian Anagnost
  • “Mt. Sinai and the Monastery of St. Catherine:  Place and Space in Pilgrimage Art,” Kristine Larison
  • “Planctus Provinciae: Arts of Mourning in Fifteenth-Century Provence,” Rainbow Porthé
  • “Amateurs: Photography and the Aesthetics of Vulnerability,” Anna Lee
  • “A Movable Continent: Collecting Africa in Renaissance Italy,” Ingrid Greenfield
  • “Ornament and Art Theory in Ancient Rome: An Alternative Classical Paradigm for the Visual Arts,” Nicola Jane Barham
  • “The Soft Style: Youth and Nudity in Classical Greece,” Angele Rosenberg
  • “Entangled Modernities: The Representation of China's Past in Early Twentieth Century Chinese and Japanese Art,” Stephanie Su
  • “Representing Difference: Early 20th Century Japanese and Korean Art,” Nancy Lin 

2014

  • “Asia Materialized: Perceptions of China in Renaissance Florence,” Irene Backus
  • “Art on the Border: Galerie René Block and Cold War West Berlin,” Rachel Jans
  • “Creative Disruption: Contemporary Russian Performance Art,” Michelle Maydanchik
  • “Locating Identity: Mixed Inscriptions and Multiple Media in Greek Art, ca. 630–336 BCE,” Ann Patnaude
  • “Ephemeral Monument, Lasting Impression: The Abbasid Dar al-Khilafa Palace of Samarra,” Matt Saba
  • “Making Danish Modern, 1945–1960,” Maggie Taft

2013

  • “Exhibiting Modernity: National Art Exhibitions in China during the Early Republican Period, 1911–1937,” Kris Ercums
  • “Salon Caricature in Second Empire Paris,” Julia Langbein
  • “Art Photography and the Contentions of Contemporary Art: Rhetoric, Practice, and Reception,” Phil Lee
  • “Arts of Enshrining: The Making of Relics and Bodies in Chinese and Korean Buddhist Art from the 10th to the 14th Centuries,” Seunghye Lee
  • “The Literati Lenses: Wenren Landscape in Chinese Cinema,”  Mia Liu
  • “The Civic Cornucopia of Ornament: The Florentine Picture Chronicle’s (1470–75) Somatic Visioning of the Festive City in the time of Lorenzo de’ Medici,” Iva Olah
  • “A Coat that Doesn't Fit: Jean Dubuffet in Retrospect, 1944–1951,” Jill Shaw
  • “Ben Enwonwu: His Life, Images, Education, and Art in the Context of British Colonialism in Nigeria,” Freida High W. Tesfagiorgis
  • “National Socialist Exhibition Design, Spectatorship, and the Fabrication of Volksgemeinschaft,” Lawrence Michael Tymkiw
  • “By Mind and Hand: Hollis Frampton’s Photographic Modernism,” Lisa Zaher

2012

  • “Quest for the True Visage: Sacred Images in Medieval Chinese Buddhist Art and the Concept of Zhen,” Sun-ah Choi
  • “Towards a New Reading of Aumônières,” Nancy Feldman
  • “Dimensions of Place: Map, Itinerary, and Trace in Images of Nanjing,” Catherine Stuer

 

2011

  • “Different Objects: Repositioning the Work of Four ‘African Diaspora Artists,’” Ian Bourland
  • “Picturing the Yangzi River: Particular Landscapes in Southern Song China,” Julia Orell
  • “A Painter of Cuban Life: Victor Patricio de Landaluze and Nineteenth-Century Cuban Politics,” Evelyn Carmen Ramos
  • “Art at the limits of Modernization: The Artistic Production of Beatriz González 1962–1978,” Ana Maria Reyes
  • “Building a Community through Painting: Fourteenth-Century Chinese Scholars,” Christina Yu

2010

  • “Mutable Authority: Reimaging King Solomon in Medieval Psalm Illustration,” Kerry Boeye
  • “The Aesthetics of Encounter (Mediated Intimacies in Recent Art),” Kris Cohen
  • “Domestic Arts: Amelia Peláez and the Cuban Vanguard (1935–1945),” Ingrid Elliott
  • “Rebellious Conformists: Avant-Garde Exhibitions in Mexico City and Buenos Aires,” Harper Montgomery
  • “Privacy and Abstraction: American Painting, Late Modernism, and the Phenomenal Self,” Christa Robbins
  • “The Art of Punishment: The Spectacle of the Body on the Streets of Constantinople,” Galina Tirnanic
  • “Responding to the World: Contemporary Chinese Art and the Global Exhibitionary Culture in the 1990s,” Peggy Wang

2009

  • “Pedagogy, Modernism, and Medium Specificity: The Bauhaus and John Cage,” Jeffrey Saletnik
  • “Inventing 'Documentary' in American Photography, 1930–1945,” Sarah Miller
  • “Masks and Puppets: Metamorphosis and Depersonalization in European Avant-Garde Art Criticism, 1915–1939,” Joyce Cheng
  • “Tracing the Texture of Stone: Unearthing the Origins of Modern Korean Painting from the Archaeological Remains of the Past,” Christine Hahn
  • “Buffoons, Rustics, and Courtesans: Low Painting and Entertainment Culture in Renaissance Venice,” Chriscinda Henry
  • “Nothing to Look at: Art as Situation and its Neuro-Psychological Implications,” Dawna Schuld
  • “Landscapes of Conversion: Franciscan Politics and Sacred Objects in Late Colonial Mexico,” Cristina Gonzalez
  • “Gestures of Iconoclasm: East Berlin's Political Monuments from the Late German Democratic Republic to Postunified Berlin,” Kristine Nielsen

2008

  • “Picture-Loving: Photomechanical Reproduction and Celebrity in America’s Gilded Age,” Eileen Michal
  • “Abstraction and Einfühlung: Biomorphic Fantasy and Embodied Aesthetics in the work of Hermann Obrist, August Endell and their Followers,” Stacy Hand
  • “Theatricalizing Death in Performance Images of Mid-Imperial China,” Jeehee Hong
  • “A Vicarious Conquest of Art and Nature at the Medici Court,” Lia Markey
  • “An Eye for the Feast in Late Medieval Burgundy,” Christina Normore
  • “Sculpture Parks, Sculpture Gardens, and Site Specific Practices in the US, 1965-1991,” Rebecca Reynolds

2007

  • “Putti, Pleasure, and Pedagogy in Sixteenth-Century Italian Prints and Decorative Arts,” Alexandra Korey
  • “Jewish Expressionism: The Making of Modern Jewish Art in Berlin,” Celka Straughn
  • “Figures en buste in Medieval China: Three Studies,” Yudong Wang
  • “Narrating Sanctity: The Narrative Icon in Byzantium and Italy,” Paroma Chatterjee
  • “Bodies of the Avant-Garde: Modern Dance and the Plastic Arts, 1890-1930,” Ellen Andrew
  • “Ethnicity and Esoteric Power: Negotiating Sino-Tibetan Synthesis in Ming Painting,” Karl Debreczeny
  • “On the Lips of Others: Fame and the Transformation of Moctezuma's Image,” Patrick Hajovsky
  • “Chinese Modern: Sun Yat-Sen's Mausoleum as a Crucible for Defining Modern Chinese Architecture,” Delin Lai
  • “Creative Pathologies: French Experimental Psychology and Symbolist Avant-Gardes, 1889-1900,” Allison Morehead
  • “Rebuilding Bungalows: Home Improvement and the Historic Chicago Bungalow Initiative,” Anne Stephenson
  • “Robert Hooke Fecit: Making and Knowing in Restoration London,” Matthew Hunter
  • “Antiquity to Antiquarianism: Chinese Discourses on Antiquity from the Tenth to Thirteenth Century,” Yun-Chiahn Sena

2006

  • “‘Realized Day-Dreams’: Excursions to Authors’ Homes,” Erin Hazard
  • “Layers of Being: Bodies, Objects, and Spaces in Warring States Burials,” Joy Beckman
  • “Building a Sacred mountain: Buddhist Monastic Architecture in Mt. Wutai during the Tang Dynast, 618-907 C.E.,” Wei-Cheng Lin
  • “The Origins of the American School Building: Boston Public School Architecture, 1800-1860,” Rachel Remmel

2005

  • “Between Seeing and Knowing: Shifting Standards of Accuracy and the Concept of Shashin in Japan, 1830-1872,” Maki Fukuoka
  • “The Body and the Family: Filial Piety and Buddhist Art in Late Medieval China,” Winston Kyan
  • “Sites of Lost Dwelling: The Figure of the Archaic City in the Discourses of Urban Design, 1938-1970,” Anthony Raynsford
  • “Images and Memory: The Construction of Collective Identities in Seventeenth-Century Quito,” Carmen Fernandez
  • “Experiment in Seventeenth-Century Dutch Painting: The Art of Carel Fabriitus,” Lisa Pincus
  • “Making the Scene: Assemblage, Pop Art and Locality in 1960s Los Angeles,” Ken Allan
  • “Reframing Viceregal Painting in Nineteenth-Century Mexico: Politics, The Academy of San Carlos, and Colonial Art History,” Ray Hernandez
  • “Collecting Objects/Excluding People: Chinese Subjects and the American Art Discourse, 1870-1900,” Lenore Metrick
  • “Politics on the Cloister Walls: Fra Angelico and His Humanist Observers at San Marco,” Allie Terry
  • “Last Judgments and Last Emperors: Illustrating Apocalyptic History in Late and Post-Byzantine Art,” Angela Volan
  • “I Cannot Paint You But I Love You: Portraiture and the Pre-Raphaelite Search for the Ideal-Elizabeth Siddall, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Jane Burden, and William Morris,” Amy Bingaman
  • “The Moor's Last Sigh: Boabdil and the Black Image in American Orientalism, 1816-1893,” James Brunson
  • “Photography and the Imperceptible: Bertillon, Galton, Marey,” Josh Ellenbogen
  • “Rubbernecking and the Business of Disaster,” Emily Godbey
  • “Better than the Prodigies: The Prints of Hans Burgkmair, Jorg Breu, and the Marvels of the New World,” Stephanie Leitch
  • “Representing Sappho: The Classical Tradition in Nineteenth-Century French Painting,” Rachel Lindheim