Contemporary Art
Dissertations in Progress by Subject, 2008

Show completed dissertations

Albu, Cristina, “Self-Mirroring as a Stimulus for Interactivity in Contemporary Installations and Display Settings” (Pittsburgh, T. Smith)

Anderson, Virginia, "'A State of Anxious Uncertainty': The Critical Reception of Jasper Johns, 1957–1987" (Boston, C. Jones, G. Williams)

Bailey, Robert, “A Late Avant-Garde: Art and Language, New York” (Pittsburgh, T. Smith)

Beauchamp-Byrd, Mora, “Hogarth’s Progress: ‘Modern Moral Subjects’ in the Work of David Hockney, Lubaina Himid, and Paula Rego” (Duke, R. Powell)

Becker, Natasha, “Local vs. Global: The Johannesburg Bienniales and the Production of Contemporary Art in a Post-Apartheid South Africa” (SUNY Binghamton, A. D’Souza)

Biederman, Legier, “Disaster, Spectacle, and the Aesthetics of Globalization: The Making of Two Global Art Biennials/Mega-Exhibitions—Prospect 1: New Orleans and Documenta” (UCLA, D. Preziosi)

Boivin, Julie, “A Redefinition of the Role of Ornament in French Rococo Art and Contemporary Visual Culture: From the Horrifyingly Beautiful to the Beauty of Horror” (Toronto, M. Cheetham)

Boone, Jobyl, "Christo and Jean-Claude in the Unites States, 1964–2005” (Delaware, A. Gibson)

Buigues, Ana, “Igor Stromajer: e-motional net.scapes” (Toronto, E. Legge)

Byrd, Anne, "Hats Off, Galileo: Richard Serra before Tilted Arc (UC Berkeley, A. Wagner)

Carbonell-Coll, Gisela M., “A Spaniard in New York: Salvador Dalí and American Popular Culture, 1940–1948” (UIUC, J. Mendelson)

Chisholm, Anna, “Trading in Trauma: Globalization and the Art of Witnessing” (Minnesota, J. Blocker)

Chon, Doris, “Narrating Shadows: W. G. Sebald's Photographic Historiography” (UCLA, M. Kwon, G. Baker)

Citron, Beth, “The City as Canvas: Five Exemplary Artists and Bombay, 1965–1995” (Pennsylvania, M. Meister)

Cohen, Brianne, “Contemporary Artists Imagine Alternative Forms of Political Affiliation” (Pittsburgh, T. Smith)

Cohen, Kris, “The Aesthetics of Encounter (Mediated Intimacies in Recent Art)” (Chicago, D. English)

Crain, Sarah, "The Aesthetics of Absence: Thomas Demand, Mariele Neudecker, and Gregor Schneider" (Georgia, I. Wallace)

Culler, Jeremy, “From Television Signal to Magnetic Strip: An Archaeology of Experimental Television and Video Knowledge, 1962–2006” (SUNY Binghamton, J. Tagg)

Dees, Janet, "The Evidence of Things Not Seen: Performance Art as Art History" (Delaware, A. Gibson)

Dennis, Sarah K., "A Pictures Aesthetic: Louise Lawler, Three Decades" (UC Berkeley, A. Wagner)

Diack, Heather, “The Benefit of the Doubt: An Aporetic Approach to Conceptual Art and Photography, 1966–1972” (Toronto, L. Kaplan)

Dierkes, Anne-Louise, “Assemblage as Opposition: California’s Counterculture and the Struggle for U.S. Cultural Definition” (CUNY, A. Chave)

Durham, Dennis, “Vancouver Conceptual Art from N.E.THING CO. to Jeff Wall: The Transformation of Art Practice through Pedagogy" (Virginia Commonwealth, R. Hobbs)

Eckhardt, Sarah Louise, “A Constant Reevaluator: Hedda Sterne and the Abstract Expressionist Context” (UIUC, J. Fineberg)

Elfline, Ross, “Superstudio and the Staging of Architecture's Disappearance” (UCLA, M. Kwon)

Emmelhainz, Irmgard, “The Destinies of Representation: Jean-Luc Godard and the Palestine Question in Ici et ailleurs (1970–74) and Notre musique (2004)” (Toronto, J. Ricco)

Esanu, Octavian, “The Aesthetics of Transition: Major Shifts in Eastern European Art of the Nineties” (Duke, K. Stiles)

Evans, Emily Joyce, “The First Russian Art Exhibition, Berlin, 1922: Display and Reception of the New Russia,” (UIUC, J. Mendelson)

Filippone, Christine, “Science, Technology, and Utopias in the Work of Contemporary Women Artists” (Rutgers, J. Marter)

Ford, Jacqueline Anne, “How to Do Things with (English) Words: Conceptual Art in Britain vs. American Hegemony, 1965–1979” (Toronto, E. Legge)

Gasparavicius, Gediminas, “The Irwin Group and Neue Slowenische Kunst: From Retro-Avant-Garde to a Virtual State of Arts” (SUNY Stony Brook, D. Kuspit)

Gonzalez, Karen, “Self-Sacrifice, Traumatic Experience, and Religion in the Performance Art of Linda Montano, Ron Athey, and Tania Bruguera” (Duke, K. Stiles)

Gonzalez-Gonzalez, Maria del Mar, “(Re)inventing a Latin American Identity: The Bienal de San Juan del Grabado Latinoamericano y del Caribe, 1970–2003,” (UIUC, O. Vazquez)

Green, Heather, “Space Invaders? Artists in the East Village, 1977–1983” (Stanford, P. Lee)

Hollenberg, Sarah, “Art on Television, 1967–1974” (USC, R. Meyer)

Hosein, Lise, “From Invisibility to Transformation: The Animal Body in Contemporary Art” (Toronto, M. Cheetham)

Jeanjean, Stéphanie, “Spectatorship and the Screen as Interface: French Art Using Television and the Projected Image from the late 1960s to the Present Day” (CUNY, C. Bishop)

Johnson, Kitty, "Matatu Art in Nairobi, Kenya: Aesthetic Strategies in Action" (Indiana, Bloomington, P. McNaughton)

Kalinsky, Yelena, “Collective Actions: Moscow Conceptualism, Performance, and the Archive, 1976–1995” (Rutgers, J. Sharp)

Kart, Susan, "Fetish, Figure, Frame: Sokari Douglas Camp, Moustapha Dimé, and Renée Stout on the ‘African’ Body in Art” (Columbia, E. Hutchinson, B. Lawal)

Kruglinski, Jennifer, “Differencing a New Canon: The Archive of Feminist Art” (SUNY Stony Brook, A. Uroskie)

Kuntz, Katrina, “The Art of Failure” (SUNY Stony Brook, D. Kuspit)

Kuo, Michelle, "'To Avoid the Waste of a Cultural Revolution': Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T.), 1966–1979" (Harvard, Y-A. Bois, B. Buchloh)

Lang, Colin, "Room 19, 1966–1969” (Yale, D. Joselit, C. Mehring)

Lauritis, Beth, “Critical Identity: Reconsidering Conceptual and Feminist Art Discourse, 1965–1980” (UCLA, M. Kwon)

Lee, Phil, “The Hybridized Space of Photography: The Photography of Francesca Woodman and Cindy Sherman, 1975–1981” (Chicago, J. Snyder)

Lockard, Brittany, “Size Matters: Imagery of the Fat Body in the Art of Lucian Freud, Jenny Saville, Ashley Bickerton, and Leonard Nimoy” (Kansas, D. Cateforis)

Lokhandwala, Arshiya, “Global Cartographies: Investigating Art in the Age of Biennales and Large-Scale Exhibitions (1990–2006)” (Cornell, S. Hassan)

Macchiavello, Carla, “Marking the Territory: Performance, Video, and Conceptual Graphics in Chilean Art, 1975–1985” (SUNY Stony Brook, D.Kuspit)

MacQueen, Kathleen, “Tactical Response: Art in an Age of Terror” (SUNY Stony Brook, J. Monteyne)

Mangini, Elizabeth, “Arte Povera, 1968–1978: An Argument for an Italian Avant-Garde” (CUNY, R. Golan)

Mazow, Alissa Walls, “Plantae, Animalia, Fungi: Transformations of Natural History in Contemporary American Art” (Penn State, S. Rich)

Mecugni, Anna, “From Italy Going East: Alighero Boetti, Luigi Ontani, Francesco Clemente (1969–1983)” (CUNY, R. Golan)

Modigliani, Leah, “From Defeatured Landscapes to Vancouverism: Photo-Conceptual Contemporary Art and the Creation of a Global City” (SUNY Stony Brook, D. Kuspit)

Muhammed, Baqie B., "Contemporary East African Artists: The Fusion and Hybridization of Global and National Discourses in Modern Art in the Diaspora" (Indiana, Bloomington, P. McNaughton)

Mulhearn, Kevin, “Taking Critical Positions in Contemporary South African Photography, 1967–2007” (CUNY, G. Batchen)

Murayama, Nina, “Donald Judd’s Furniture, From Do-It-Yourself to the Art of Lifestyle” (CUNY, A. Chave)

Myers, Cerise, “The Visible Posthuman: Envisioning Agency for the Cybernetic Self in Digital Culture” (Minnesota, J. Blocker)

Nielsen, Kristine, “Strategies of Iconoclasm: East Berlin's Political Monuments from the Late German Democratic Republic to Postunified Berlin” (Chicago, W. J. T. Mitchell)

Nisbet, James, “Land Is Not the Setting: The Lightning Field and Environments, 1960–1980” (Stanford, P. Lee)

Perry, Weena, “America in Ruins: The Image of the Decline and Fall of Cities” (SUNY Stony Brook, M. Bogart)

Phillips, Natalie, "The Pop Apocalyptic: Keith Haring's and Kenny Scharf's Remaking of Contemporary Religious Art" (UC Irvine, C. Whiting)

Pocock-Behiery, Valerie, “Cartographies of Cloth: Mapping the Veil in Contemporary Art” (McGill, C. Ross)

Rapp, Karen M., “Not the Romantic West: Site-Specific Art, Globalization, and Contemporary Landscapes” (Stanford, P. Lee)

Rath, Amanda, "Mutable Signs: De/Con/Struction in Indonesian Experimental Art” (Cornell, K. McGowan)

Richter, Marianne, "Merged Identities: The Transformation of the Artist's Persona, 1960–1980" (UIC, P. Hales, H. Higgins)

Richter, Till, “Contemporary Art: Art Historical and Market Criteria” (UT Austin, R. Shiff)

Rojas-Sotelo, Miguel L., “Cultural Maps, Networks, and Flows: The History and Impact of the Havana Biennale, 1984 to the Present” (Pittsburgh, T. Smith)

Rosenbaum, Sarah, “In the Public Domain: Public Art, Advanced Capitalism, and the Contemporary City” (Harvard, Y-A. Bois)

Rosenblum, Beth, “From a Pedagogical Pragmatism: Cuban Art Institutions and Production during the ‘Special Period’ (1990s)” (UCLA, D. Kunzle)

Routh, Mitali, “Ice, Water, Steam: Sculpture, Performance, and Moving Images, 1958–2003,” (Duke, K. Stiles)

Rugg, Whitney, “Brian O'Doherty: Changing the Subject” (Chicago, D. English)

Samet, Jennifer, “Another New York School: The ‘Secret History’ of Figurative Painting, 1960–1980” (CUNY, P. Mainardi)

Scott, Emily, “Wasteland Aesthetics: Art and the Postindustrial Landscape, 1962–1972” (UCLA, M. Kwon)

Shane, Robert R., “A Psycho-Social Investigation of Pop Culture Imagery in the Artwork of Paul McCarthy” (SUNY Stony Brook, D. Kuspit)

Sheren, Ila, "Portable Borders/Mythical Sites: Performance Art and Politics at the U.S. Frontera, 1960 to the Present" (MIT, C. Jones)

Snider, Stephanie, “Envisioning Bodily Difference: Refiguring Fat and Lesbian Subjects in Contemporary Art and Visual Culture, 1968–Present” (USC, R. Meyer)

Snoddy, Danielle M., "Charting the Emergence of Identity Narratives in Post-Apartheid South African Art: Protectionist Sensibilities, Internationalization, and the Johannesburg Biennales" (Iowa, C. Roy)

Sorkin, Jennifer, “Live Form: Gender and the Performance of Craft, 1940–1970”
(Yale, D. Joselit, E. Cooke Jr.)

Stanek, Damon, “Seeing the Light: A History of the Projected Image in the Gallery, (1963–Present)” (CUNY, C. Bishop)

Stanners, Sarah, “Going British and Being Modern in the Visual Art Systems of Canada, 1906–1976” (Toronto, M. Cheetham)

Summers, Robert, “Unbecoming Art History” (UCLA, D. Preziosi)

Sutton, Gloria, “The Experience Machine: Stan VanDerBeek's ‘Movie-Drome’ and Expanded Cinema Practices of the 1960s” (UCLA, M. Kwon)

Tanta, Mirela, “Portraits of Utopia: Socialist Realism inside Ceausescu's Palace" (UIC, H. Higgins)

Taub, Emily, “On Site-Specificity: A Genealogy” (Emory, J. Meyer)

Theodore, Molleen, “Walter De Maria’s Work: Patronage, Reception, and Aura” (CUNY, A. Chave)

Tradowsky, Christopher, “After Sherrie Levine: Appropriation and the Art of Absolute Influence” (UCLA, M. Kwon)

Trotman, Nat, “Performance, Ritual, and Multimedia in 1970s Body Art” (CUNY, A. Chave)

Ugur, Selen, "Ottoman House, Turkish House: Eski Ev in the Contemporary National Imagination" (SUNY Binghamton, N. Um)

Van Scoy, Susan, “The Photography of Tina Barney: Exteriors, Interiors, and Interiority” (SUNY Stony Brook, J. Monteyne)

Vazquez, Edward, “Aspects: The Art of Fred Sandback” (Stanford, P. Lee)

Vens, Mary Kiplok, “Déjà Jadis (Already Long Ago): French Histories of Dada from 1945–1965” (CUNY, R. Golan)

Voss, Annemarie, "Incremental Remedies: Women Artists and Ecology since 1980" (Rutgers, J. Marter)

Werther-Rosenow, Barbara, "Communicative Strategies in Contemporary Video Art" (Rutgers, A. Zervigón)

White, Marisa, “A Feminist Inheritance? Questions of Ambivalence and Subjectivity in Paul McCarthy, Mike Kelly, and Robert Gober” (CUNY, A. Chave)

Widrich, Mechtild, "Performative Monuments: Public Art and Commemoration in Postwar Europe" (MIT, C. Jones, M. Buskirk)

Wilson, Paul, “The Global Aesthetics of Nostalgia: Nation and Longing in Contemporary Art” (Minnesota, J. Blocker)

Wofford, Tobias, “Constructing Africa: The Visualization of Homeland and Diaspora in African American Art during the 1960s and 1970s” (UCLA, S. Nelson)

Woltmann, Kim, “Psychic Space and the Conceptual Document: Contemporary Photography and Los Angeles, 1980–2006” (SUNY Stony Brook, M. Bogart)

Wong, Winnie, "After the Copy: China, Dafen Village, and the Hand-Painted Art Product (1979–)" (MIT, C. Jones)

Woods, Nicole L., “'Gift Event': Alison Knowles, Fluxus, and the Enigmatic Work of Art” (UC Irvine, C. Whiting)

Yamamura, Midori, “Yayoi Kusama: Biography and Cultural Confrontation, 1945–1969” (CUNY, A. Chave)

Yi, Hyewon, “Photographer as Participant Observer: The Photographs of Larry Clark, Nan Goldin, Richard Billingham, and Nobuyoshi Araki” (CUNY, G. Batchen)

Yoon, Soyoung, “Filming Das Kapital: Reconceptualization of Collage/Montage in Post-War Avant-Garde Cinema of the 1950s and ’60s” (Stanford, P. Levi)

Yoshitake, Mika, “Requiem for the Sun: The Art of Mono-ha and Bikyoto in Postwar Japan (1968–1974)” (UCLA, M. Kwon, G. Baker)

Zaher, Lisa, “Modules and Modulations: Photographic Media and the Contest of Modernism, 1950–1990” (Chicago, J. Snyder)