Concise, critical reviews of books, exhibitions, and projects in all areas and periods of art history and visual studies

Contemporary Art
Dissertations in Progress by Subject, 2014

Show completed dissertations

Albrecht, Kathe, “The Steampunk Aesthetic and Contemporary Subjectivity” (IDSVA, D. Wehrs)

Aldridge, Kelly Rae, “Crumbs from the Revolutionary Table” (Stony Brook University, Z. Patterson)

Apostol, Corina Lucia, “Dissident Education: Socially Engaged Art from Eastern Europe in Global Context (1980–2014)” (Rutgers, J. Sharp)

Aramphongphan, Paisid, “The Languid Dances of Andy Warhol and Jack Smith: A Choreo-History of 60s Art and Queer Culture” (Harvard, C. Lambert-Beatty)

Aronowicz, Miriam, “The Triangle Arts Trust: Contemporary Art and Transnational Production” (Toronto, E. Harney)

Autry, La Tanya, “The Crossroads of Commemoration: Lynching Landscapes in America” (Delaware, C. Holloway)

Bago, Ivana, “Post-Yugoslav Artistic Practices at the Unidentified Grave of the Yugoslav Project” (Duke, K. Stiles)

Bick, Tenley, “Capital and Rags: Michelangelo Pistoletto in Turin, 1958–1972” (UCLA, G. Baker)

Bissonauth, Natasha, “Transnational Trends: Parody in Sunil Gupta and Chitra Ganesh, 1980–present” (Cornell, I. Dadi)

Blair, Sara Christensen, “The Domestic Sublime” (IDSVA, E. Grabiner)

Blakinger, John R., “Artist under Technocracy: Gyorgy Kepes and the Cold War Avant-Garde” (Stanford, P. Lee)

Boivin, Julie, “Horrid Beauty: Rococo Ornament and Contemporary Visual Culture” (Toronto, M. Cheetham)

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

Bradbury, Leonie, “The Internet, Art, and Subjectivity” (IDSVA, P. Armstrong)

Brockman, Kristin, “Terminal Cinema: Engineers and Artists at Bell Labs, 1965–1972” (Ohio State, K. Paulsen)

Brooks, Kalia, “Identity and the E-Racial” (IDSVA, E. Grabiner)

Bundy, Jean, “Survival and Change Relating to Churchill’s Paintings” (IDSVA, M. Smith)

Cammarata-Seale, Heather, “Embodying Paradox: Taxidermy and Contemporary Art, 1990–2010” (Rutgers, J. Marter)

Canac, Sandrine, “From Measured Volume to Indefinite Expansion: The Early Work of Robert Barry (1963–1975)” (Stony Brook University, A. Uroskie)

Cappetta, Andrew, “Pop/Art: The Birth of Underground Music and the British Art School, 1960–1980” (CUNY, C. Bishop)

Carey, Chanda, “Marina Abramović 1969–2010: Transcultural Ethno-Aesthetics and the Global Geography of Art” (UC San Diego, N. Bryson)

Carroll, Robert, “Fabulists of the Numinous: A Philosophico-Phenomenological Study of Wonder and Image Consciousness in the Art of Varo and Borges” (IDSVA, S. Hackenberg)

Cho, Hyeok, “Can the Subaltern Artist Speak?: Postmodernity, Femininity, and Racial Identity in Lee Bul’s Art” (Binghamton University, J. Tagg)

Choi, Jung E., “Impossible Geography: Alternative Spatiality in Ubiquitous Computational Environments” (Duke, M. Hansen)

Collins, Nicholas, “Site Responsibility: Eco-art and Environmental Ethics in the Anthropocene” (Louisville, S. Jarosi)

Curtis, Susan, “Moving Metal, Emotional Kinesthetics: The Sculpture of Sokari Douglas Camp” (Wisconsin, Madison, H. Drewal)

Davis, Mary Anne, “A Genealogy of Porcelain: Globalization, Art, and Local Economies” (IDSVA, S. Moro)

Debin, Megan Lorraine, “Body Traces: Performance against Violence in Mexico, 1994–2012” (UCLA, C. Villaseñor-Black)

Decker, Larry, “Painting the Invisible: The Polyphony and Intertextuality of Artistic Spirituality” (IDSVA, J. McGee)

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

Defossez, Julie, “Take Care: Mierle Laderman Ukeles and the Art of Maintenance” (Ohio State, K. Paulsen)

Dell’Aria, Annie, “The Moving Image in Public Art: U.S. and UK, 1980–Present” (CUNY, H. Senie)

Devine, Katherine de Vos, “Transformation: Appropriation Art, Intellectual Property, and Fair Use since the 1990s” (Duke, K. Stiles, H. Van Miegroet)

DiBenedetto, Erica, “Drawing from Architecture: The Conceptual Methods of Sol LeWitt’s Art, 1965–1980” (Princeton, B. Doherty, H. Foster)

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

Doherty, Joni, “Animals, Ethics, and Aesthetics: Expanding Lexicons” (IDSVA, L. Hunter)

Domene-Danés, Maria, “Reshaping the Archive: Contemporary Artistic Practices around the Lebanese Civil Wars” (Indiana, D. Schuld)

Doyle, Jessica, “The Gaming Genre: License to Create the Self” (IDSVA, C. Johnson)

Dubreuil, Martine, “Identification de tensions au sein de la collection du Musée d’Art Contemporain de Montréal et observation de leur gestion, en particulier” (Université de Montréal, E. Dubuc)

Duffy Owen, “The Dematerialization and Rematerialization of Art, 1966–1979” (Virginia Commonwealth, R. Hobbs)

Duncan, Alexandra, “Disability Arts and Neurodiverse Artists: A Comparative Analysis of Arts Organizations for the Developmentally Disabled in Canada and Abroad” (University of Alberta, N. Loveless)

Dyangani Ose, Elvira, “Poetics of the Infra-ordinary: The Aesthetic of Recognition in Modern and Contemporary Urban Africa” (Cornell, S. Hassan)

Edwards, Randall, “Dennis Oppenheim: Sites, 1967–75” (CUNY, A. Chave)

Ewing, Margaret, “A Politics of Action: Hans Haacke in Germany, 1972–2006” (UIUC, S. Hudson)

Farrington, Kate, “Place as Medium: The Experience of Community in Contemporary Art Practices” (IDSVA, C. Yates)

Fiset, Daniel, “Photographie d’art contemporain et culture visuelle: Vers de nouvelles fonctions de l’image” (Université de Montréal, S. Paquet)

Flores, Jessica, “Camp as a Weapon: Chicano Identity and Asco’s Aesthetics of Resistance” (UC Berkeley, J. Bryan-Wilson)

Ford, Jennifer, “Spiritual Capital: Assigning Value in the Global Art Market” (IDSVA, D. Wehrs)

Franco, Joshua, “Marfa, Marfa: Minimalism, rasquachismo, and Questioning ‘Decolonial Aesthetics’ In Far West Texas” (Binghamton University, T. McDonough)

Gerspacher, Arnaud, “Posthuman Animals in Art: France and Belgium 1972–85” (CUNY, C. Bishop)

Goldstein, Jennifer, “Moving Bodies, Moving Things: Convergences of Art and Dance, 1960–1975” (Stony Brook University, A. Uroskie)

Grabiec, Brooke, “Fashioning Philosophy: How the Democratization of Fashion Rethinks Contemporary Aesthetic Discourse” (IDSVA, S. Moro)

Grayson, Saisha, “Cellist, Catalyst, Collaborator: The Work of Charlotte Moorman, 1963–1980” (CUNY, C. Bishop)

Greenberg, Alyssa, “Arts Awareness at The Metropolitan Museum of Art: Art Museum Education as Artistic and Political Practice” (UIC, T. Quinn)

Guerrero-Hernandez, Juan Carlos, “Photography, Video, and Mutilated Bodies: Constellations and Paradoxes in the Representation of Current Violence and Internal Conflict in Contemporary Art in Colombia between 1991 and 2012” (Stony Brook University, A. Uroskie)

Gyorody, Andrea, “‘To Reproduce is Human’: Joseph Beuys and the Multiple” (UCLA, G. Baker)

Hamelin, Candice, “Behind Immaterial and Material Divides: East German Photography, 1949–1989” (Michigan, M. Biro, G. Eley)

Hamilton, Elizabeth C., “Afrofuturist Feminism in the Contemporary Art of the African Diaspora” (Florida, A. Ongiri)

Harbin, Virginia Allison, “Visual Excess in Contemporary Art from the South Asian Diaspora” (Rutgers, T. Flores)

Heer, Melissa, “Bordering: Contemporary Performance Art and Activism in Northeast India” (Minnesota, J. Blocker)

Hiro, Rika, “Explosion, Mutation, and Evaporation: Art and the Aftereffects of the Atomic Bomb in Postwar Japan” (USC, M. Mizuta Lippit, S. Lee)

Huang, Karen, “Artists’ Reenactments: The Vietnam War, the War on Terror, and the Performance of American Activism” (USC, K. Flint)

Hunt, Steve, “The Body of Sculpture: Anthony Caro’s Writing Pieces” (Ohio State, S. Melville)

Jordan, Cara, “Joseph Beuys and Social Sculpture in the United States: Suzanne Lacy, Rick Lowe, and Mary Jane Jacob” (CUNY, H. Senie)

Kapica, Steven S., “Negotiating Obscenity: Rhetorical Delivery, Kairos, and Popular Culture’s Mediation of the Obscene” (Northeastern, C. Gallagher)

Kim, Joy Jeehye, “New Documents to Pictures: Lee Friedlander and the Remaking of the Photographic Image, 1962–1989” (Yale, D. Joselit)

Kowalski, Sara, “Refabricating the Body: Contemporary Intersections between Art and Medicine” (McGill, A. Jones)

Kuntz, Katrina, “The Art of Failure” (Stony Brook University, A. Uroskie)

LaBarge, Maria, “Recuperating the Indigenous: Jackson Pollock’s Drip Paintings” (IDSVA, C. Yates)

Lancaster, Lex, “Dragging Away: The Queer Work of Abstraction in Contemporary Art” (Wisconsin, Madison, J. Casid)

Landres, Sophie, “Body, Law, Instrument: Charlotte Moorman’s Early Performances with Nam June Paik” (Stony Brook University, A. Uroskie)

Larach, Gustavo, “Discourses of Dissent in Contemporary Honduran Art” (New Mexico, K. Cornejo)

Lawrence, Nora, “Dan Flavin’s Histories” (CUNY, A. Chave)

Leduc, Marie, “Transition and Transformation: Chinese Contemporary Art in the Global Marketplace” (University of Alberta, S. Harris)

Lee, Joo Yun, “Sensuous Communities: Materialized Spectatorship in Ryoji Ikeda’s Intermedia Installation and Performance” (Stony Brook University, Z. Patterson)

Lortie, Marie, “Afrique en Créations: Transnational Patronage in the Francophonie” (Toronto, E. Harney)

Machida, Nico, “City-Site-Syntax: Art and the US Urban System, 1950s–1970s” (UCLA, M. Kwon)

Madura, Joe, “Revising Minimal Art in the AIDS Crisis, 1984–1998” (Emory, J. Meyer)

Magloughlin, Amara, “Art and the City: Walid Raad, Postwar Beirut, and the Question of Cosmopolitanism” (Columbia, A. Alberro)

Maroja, Camila, “Framing Latin American Art: Contemporary Institutions and the Configuration of a Regional Identity” (Duke, K. Stiles, E. Gabara)

Martynyuk, Olena, “Center-Periphery Dialogues in Moscow’s Post-Conceptual Artistic Communities of 1980s–1990s” (Rutgers, J. Sharp)

Matuszak, Joanna, “Assertions of Identity: Russian Performance Art in the Aftermath of Perestroika” (Indiana, J. Kennedy)

McCollum, Christina, “Exhibitions of Outsider Art since 1947” (CUNY, A. Chave)

Metcalf, Megan, “Dancing with the Art World: Merce Cunningham, Trisha Brown, and Simone Forti Encounter the Contemporary Art Museum” (UCLA, M. Kwon)

Moon, Kavior, “Economy of Space: Works by Michael Asher, 1989–1998” (UCLA, M. Kwon)

Musteata, Natalie, “From Radicality to Romanticism: The Institutionalization of the Artist as Curator, 1970–2010” (CUNY, C. Bishop)

Nouril, Ksenia, “The Operative Object: Investigating the Historical Turn in Post-Soviet Art” (Rutgers, J. Sharp)

O’Steen, Danielle, “Plastic Fantastic: American Sculpture in the Age of Synthetics” (Maryland, College Park, J. Shannon)

Olivas, Yvonne, “System Withdrawal: Lee Lozano’s General Strike” (Stony Brook University, Z. Patterson)

Park, Eunyoung, “Cross-cultural Exchange of Language, Labor, and Art Criticism in the Era of Globalization: Kyuchul Ahn, Yiso Bahc, and Hong-sok Gim’s Conceptual Art” (Kansas, D. Cateforis)

Parks, Tammy, “Space and Time in the Murals of Benton and Rivera: Contrast in Ideas and Forms” (IDSVA, E. Grabiner)

Parrish, Sarah, “Embellishing Modernism: Abstraction and Decoration in 1970s American Art” (Boston, G. Williams)

Perucic, Nadi, “From Fiction to Fact: The Need to Document in Post-Yugoslav Visual Art from 1991 to the Present” (CUNY, C. Bishop)

Pinar, Ekin, “Canyon Collective Artists: Micropolitics in West Coast Experimental Film, 1960–79” (Pennsylvania, K. Beckman, C. Poggi)

Prater, Erika, “Through the Woods: Fairy Tales, Documenta, and Kassel’s Cultural Export” (Minnesota, J. Blocker)

Poirier, Josiane, “Les plans lumière et l’identité des lieux : représentations et pratiques de la ville contemporaine” (Université de Montréal, S. Paquet)

Powers, Holiday, “The Casablanca School: Modernism in Post-Colonial Morocco and Its Transnational Alliances” (Cornell, S. Hassan)

Quick, Jennifer, “Back to the Drawing Board: Ed Ruscha 1956–69” (Harvard, R. Kelsey)

Raabe, Vanessa, “Dissident Desires: Mapping Queer Ethos in Chilean Visual Art, 1975–1990” (UCLA, C. Villaseñor-Black)

Roberge Van Der Donckt, Julia, “Le musée et la cité: (re)configuration de l’espace de la controverse” (Université de Montréal, S. Paquet)

Rochester, Katherine, “Animating Ornament: From Lotte Reiniger’s Silhouette Films toward a Theory of the Decorative in Animation” (Bryn Mawr, C. Hertel, K. Beckman)

Roesch, Nathanael, “On Sport, Representation, and Contemporary Art” (Bryn Mawr, L. Saltzman)

Roje, Natasha, “After Abstract Expressionism: Revisiting the Death of Painting Problematic” (CUNY, A. Chave)

Routh, Mitali, “Matthew Barney - Deadpan, Animality, and the Sculptural Idiom” (Duke, K. Stiles)

Roy, Andréanne, “La perception du marché de l’art par les acteurs institutionnels de l’art au Québec : nouvelles attitudes, nouveau rapprochement” (Université de Montréal, S. Paquet)

Sauzade, Alena, “Witnesses to Terror: Nationhood and Trauma in Memorials to Victims of Terrorism” (Stony Brook University, M. Bogart)

Schoenberger, Janna, “Ludic Conceptualism: Art and Play in the Netherlands from 1959–1975” (CUNY, R. Golan)

Scott, Hallie, “Doing=Teaching: Interdisciplinary Pedagogy in California, 1966–1974” (CUNY, C. Bishop)

Shultz, Oliver, “Paul Thek’s Untimely Bodies, 1963 – 1988” (Stanford, P. Lee)

Smith, Ginger Elliott, “Practicing Big Science: Artists, Technology, and Institutions in 1960s and 1970s Southern California” (Boston, G. Williams)

Smith, Laura Lake, “Imaging the In-between: The Serial Art of Richard Tuttle” (Georgia, I. Wallace)

Smucker, David, “Auto-Centric Photography and the Traveling Index: Automotive Movement in Postwar American Photography, 1959–Present” (Stony Brook University, A. Uroskie)

St Jean, Mathieu, “L’effet de la présence : conscience corporelle dans l’art contemporain,” (Université de Montréal, J. Lamoureux)

Steel, Gregory, “The Sublime: An Existential Alliance with Mystery” (IDSVA, E. Grabiner)

Stewart-Halevy, Jacob, “The Casual” (Yale, D. Joselit)

Sweeney, Taryn, “On Mathesis Universalis” (IDSVA, D. Wehrs)

Szymanek, Angelique, “The Fear of Rape, the Threat of Looking: Performance, Activism, and Spectatorship” (Binghamton University, T. McDonough)

Tanka, Akshaya, “The Politics of Images in Post-Reform Nagaland” (Toronto, K. Jain)

Tanga, Martina, “Acts of Disengagement: Italian Art in the 1970s” (Boston, G. Williams)

Tauschinger-Dempsey, Michael, “Suspensions: Violent Infrastructures in the Global Economy of Fear” (Duke, B. Seaman)

Triandos, Theodore, “A Social History of Postmodern Art and Its Criticism” (Delaware, A. Gibson, C. Holloway)

Tunali, Tijen, “Festivals of Art, Carnivals of Images: On Contemporary Art and the Neoliberal Globalizaton” (New Mexico, O. Lumpkin)

Tyson, John, “Hans Haacke: Beyond ‘Systems Esthetics’ ” (Emory, J. Meyer)

Voss, Annemarie, “Incremental Remedies: Contemporary Women Artists and Ecology, 1980–2000” (Rutgers, J. Marter)

Walsh, Taylor, “Medium at the Margins: Bruce Nauman, 1965–1975” (Harvard, C. Lambert-Beatty, B. Buchloh)

Wei, Chu-Chiun, “Globalism and Identity in Taiwanese Contemporary Art, 1978–2009” (CUNY, A. Chave)

Wertheim, Laura, “Dust and Shadow Feminism: Disavowed Supportive Labor, Feminine Transitivity, and Temporal Drag in Postwar American Art and Performance” (Minnesota, J. Blocker)

Werther-Rosenow, Barbara, “Communicative Strategies in Contemporary Video Art” (Rutgers, T. Flores)

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

Wolff, R.M., “To Be Still: Persistence, Performance, Photography” (Minnesota, J. Blocker)