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

North America
Dissertations in Progress by Subject, 2017

Show completed dissertations

Abrams, Matthew, “Alternate Modernity: From Aby Warburg to Agnes Martin” (Yale University, S. Zeidler, D. Joselit)

Applebaum, Lauren, “Elusive Matter, Material Bodies: American Art in the Age of Electronic Mediation, 1865-1918” (UIUC, J. Greenhill)

Badgett, Virginia Reynolds, “Robert Henri’s Women: Art, Individuality and Influence” (University of California, Santa Barbara, E.B. Robertson)

Barrow, Theodore, “‘Gilded Tropics’: Winslow Homer and John Singer Sargent in Florida, 1885-1917” (Graduate Center, CUNY, J. Sund)

Belz, Elaine, “‘Ruin Porn’ and the Aesthetic Experience of Urban Decay” (Graduate Theological Union, R. Nakasone)

Brown, Leslie K., “‘Picture Ahead!’: The Kodak Picture Spot Sign in American Photography, Visual and Material Culture, and the Touristic Landscape” (Boston University, K. Sichel)

Brunstrom, Mary Reid, “Faith's Midwest Modern Forms: Midcentury Catholic Churches by Murphy and Mackey, Architects” (Washington University in St. Louis, A. Miller)

Bucarelli, Viviana, “Awe in Quietude: Transcendentalist Magic Realism” (Graduate Center, CUNY, E. Braun)

Camp, Jennifer, “Stories in Pictures: The Woodcut Novels of Lynd Ward and Visual Narrative in Depression-Era America” (University of Virginia, C. Higginbotham)

Campbell, Andrianna, “Norman Lewis: Linearity, Pedagogy and Activism in his Abstract Expressionism, 1946-1964” (Graduate Center, CUNY, D. Joselit)

Chan, Carson, “The Ocean in a Building: The American Aquarium and the Construction of Nature” (Princeton University, S. Papapetros)

Coe, Erin, “Cultural Icon Meets Cultural Landscape: Georgia O’Keeffe, Historiography, and Lake George” (Boston University, P. Hills)

Corcoran, Eloise, “Chalk-Talking”: Blackboards, Slates, and the Technology of Erasure in 19th Century American Visual Culture” (Yale University, E. Cooke, Jr.)

Cowan, Sarah, “Mending Abstraction: Howardena Pindell's Non-Representational Black Feminisms, 1967–86” (University of California, Berkeley, J. Bryan-Wilson)

Culp, Caroline, “The Memory of Copley: Afterlives of the American Portrait, 1774-1920” (Stanford, A. Nemerov)

Davis, Laurin Goad, “Fighting for the Children: Architecture and the Student Body, 1904 to 1940” (Penn State, C. Zabel)

Dawood, Azra, “John D. Rockefeller, Jr., and the Architecture of Protestant Internationalism (1919-1945)” (MIT, N. Rabbat)

Decemvirale, JV, “Knowing Your Place and Making Do: Radical Art Activism in Black and Latino Los Angeles, 1968 to Present” (University of California, Santa Barbara, J. Sorkin)

Dibble, Rebecca, “Making the War: Sentimentality and Materiality in the American Civil War” (Yale University, E. Cooke, Jr.)

Dosch, Mya, “Creating 1968: Art, Architecture, and the Afterlives of the Mexican Student Movement” (Graduate Center, CUNY, A. Indych-López)

Eron, Abby. “The Symbolist Impulse in American Art: Materiality and Media circa 1900” (University of Maryland, R. Ater)

Favorite, Jennifer, “Museum Additions at U.S. War Memorials and the Reinterpretation of National History” (Graduate Center, CUNY, H. Senie)

Fowler, Justin, “The Mat-Makers: Relief Tectonics from the American Renaissance to the New Deal” (Princeton University, S. Papapetros)

Gillaspie, Caroline, “‘Delicious Libations’: Representing the Nineteenth-Century Brazil-U.S. Coffee Trade” (Graduate Center, CUNY, K. Manthorne)

Gontar, Cybèle, “José Francisco Xavier de Salazar y Mendoza and Jacques Guillaume Lucien Amans: Portraiture, Identity, and Plantation Society in New Orleans, 1790-1890” (Graduate Center, CUNY, K. Manthorne)

Gore, Holly, “Reinventing Work: Modernist Wood and Skilled Trade, 1940-1970” (University of California, Santa Barbara, J. Sorkin)

Harnish, Katherine, “Painting Ephemera in the Age of Mass-Production: American Trompe l’Oeil Painting and Visual Culture in the Late Nineteenth Century” (Washington University in St. Louis, A. Miller)

Hunter, Lucy, “A Behavioral Theory of the Artist in Residence” (Yale University, T. Barringer, JD Connor)

Johnson, Lauren A., “'True Americanism': Images of Race and Citizenship in Ansel Adams's Photobooks, 1940–1960” (UIUC, T. Weissman)

Junker, Yohana, “Unsettling the Landscape: Religious Aesthetics, Representation, and Appropriation in the Land Art of the American Southwest” (Graduate Theological Union, D. Zuber)

Karasoulas, Margarita, “Mapping Immigrant New York: Race and Place in Ashcan Visual Culture” (University of Delaware, W. Bellion)

Kelleher, Philip, “The Ends of Alternative Art: The Street and the Museum in New York City and Mexico City, 1968-1989” (Rice University, G. Bader)

Koltiska, Katherine, “The Politics of Culture and Taste in Cleveland, 1876–1930” (Penn State, A. Thomas)

Korobkin, R. Tess, “Sculptural Bodies of the Great Depression” (Yale University, J. Raab)

Kotsioris, Evangelos, “Komp'iuter Architecture(s), 195X-198X” (Princeton University, Advisor B. Colomina)

Larnerd, Joseph, “The Makings of Cut Glass in America, 1876 to 1916” (Stanford University, A. Nemerov)

Pellolio, Natalie, “Return to Sender: Photography, Art, and the Mail, 1845-1945” (Stanford University, A. Nemerov)

Leach, Deba Foxley, “Doris Lee (1905-1983): Self, Society, Place” (University of Iowa, J. Kinsey)

LeBourdais, George Philip, “Tracing The Arctic Regions: Seeing Ice and Exploring Time in Nineteenth-Century Photographs of Greenland” (Stanford University, A. Nemerov)

Lee, Key Jo, “Melancholic Materiality: History and the Unhealable Wound in African American Photographic Portraits, 1850-1877” (Yale University, K. Mercer)

Lehman, Bree, “Ancestors and Heirlooms: The Reception, Collection, and Display of Early American Portraiture, 1876-1941” (Graduate Center, CUNY, K. Manthorne)

LoScerbo, Gianna, “A Struggle for the Real: Documentary Photography and Film in Post-WWII American Culture” (Rutgers University, A. Zervigón)

Lynford, Sophie, “Painting Dissent: The Pre-Raphaelite Experiment in America” (Yale University, T. Barringer, J. Raab)

Martin, Kristi L. “Creating ‘Concord’: How Preservation and Tourism Transformed a New England Village into a Tourist Mecca, 1824-1965” (Boston University, W. Moore)

Matsumura, Kimiko, “Science/Fiction: Habitat Dioramas, Vision, and Postwar American Art” (Rutgers University, S. Sidlauskas)

McCann, Justin, “Elastic Capacities: Whistler and the Art of Transformation” (Rutgers University, S. Sidlauskas)

McGinnis Flanagan, Julie, “Remapping the Spaces for American Art: John Singer Sargent, Modernism and the Grand Central Art Galleries, 1922-1939” (Temple University, E. Pauwels)

McGraw, Eva, “Xanthus Smith: Marine Painting and Nationhood” (Graduate Center, CUNY, K. Manthorne)

McLaughlin, Laurel, “Migratory Identity in Feminist Performance Art of the United States, 1970 to 2016” (Bryn Mawr College, H. King)

Mendoza, Elis, “From Refuge to Shelter:Frederick Cuny’s Humanitarian Architecture as Deferred Utopia” (Princeton University, L. Allais)

Michelon, Christina, “Interior Impressions: Printed Material in the Nineteenth-Century American Home” (University of Minnesota, J. Marshall)

Miller, Mark Parker, “Claiming and Denying Sophistication: Grant Wood’s Art and Responses to It, 1930-1942” (University of Delaware, A. Gibson)

Miller, Sequoia, “Expanding Ceramics: Experimental Clay Practices in the United States, 1963-1973” (Yale University, E. Cooke, Jr.)

Mitchem, Hollis, “Triptychs for Victory: Altar Paintings for the American Armed Forces in World War II” (Graduate Theological Union, R. Schroeder)

Nicholas, Sasha, “Portraiture and the Making of the Modern American Artist, 1918-1929” (Graduate Center, CUNY, K. Manthorne)

Ogrodnik, Benjamin “The Rise of Ruin Cinema: Working-Class Filmmaking in the US Rust Belt, 1970s-1980s” (University of Pittsburgh, T. Smith)

Padgett, Jennifer, “Made for 'Modern Surroundings': Intersections of Fine Art, Decorative Arts, and Design in America, 1920-1940” (Washington University in St. Louis, A. Miller)

Pazian, Erika Nelson, “Visual Culture and the Formation of National Identity during the U.S.-Mexican War” (Graduate Center, CUNY, K. Manthorne)

Peacock, Daniel, “Alvin Langdon Coburn and the Pictorialist Photograph in Print” (Princeton. A. McCauley)

Phillips, Kate, “American Ephemera” (Yale University, J. Raab)

Pires, Leah, “Finesse: Louise Lawler in Collaboration, 1978-1984” (Columbia University, A. Alberro)

Richmond-Moll, Jeffrey, “Roots/Routes: Spirituality and Modern Mobility in American Art, 1900-1935” (University of Delaware, W. Bellion)

Rife, Michaela, “Public Art, Private Land: Visual Culture, Land Use, and Settler Colonialism in the American West 1890-1940” (University of Toronto, M. Cheetham)

Robbins, Nicholas, “Oceans of Air: Landscape and the Production of Climate in the Nineteenth-Century Atlantic World” (Yale University, C. Armstrong, J. Raab)

Roje, Natasha, “After Abstract Expressionism: Revisiting the ‘Death of Painting’ Problematic” (Graduate Center, CUNY, D. Joselit)

Sackeroff, Samuel, “The Liberal Image” (Yale University, C. Armstrong)

Salseda, Rose, “The Visual Art Legacy of the 1992 Los Angeles Riots” (University of Texas at Austin, C. Smith)

Shahi, Kimia, “Margin, Surface, Depth: Picturing the Contours of the Marine in Nineteeth-Century America” (Princeton, R. DeLue)

Shea, Laura Elizabeth. “Photographs from the Road: Inge Morath, Sophie Calle, Sally Mann and Feminist Road Trip Vision” (UIUC, T. Weissman)

Shupe, Samuel, “Pedaling Vacationland: Bicyclists, Genteel Recreation, and Landscapes in Maine, 1878-1902” (Boston University, W. Moore)

Silverman, Emma R. “From Eyesore to Icon: The Watts Towers and Modernism in the Margins” (University of California, Berkeley, J. Bryan-Wilson)

Simon, Sydney Skelton, “Harry Bertoia and Postwar American Design Culture” (Stanford, P. Lee)

Smiley, Michelle, “Becoming Photography: The American Development of a Medium” (Bryn Mawr College, H. King)

Smith, Cassandra, “Kiva Murals at Pottery Mound: Toward an Analysis of a Trans-temporal Performativity and Intermediality” (University of Illinois at Chicago, V. Miller)

Spear, Elizabeth A. “Reframing Landscape: Spectacular Display and Nineteenth-Century American Landscape Painting” (University of Iowa, J. Kinsey)

Sperling, Juliet, “Animating Flatness: Moving Images in American Art, 1780-1895” (University of Pennsylvania, M. Leja)

Strupp, Brittany, “Between Impressionism and Realism: The Early Career of Robert Henri” (Temple University, E. Pauwels)

Weaver, Alison, “The Beuys Effect: Joseph Beuys’ Reception in the United States” (Graduate Center, CUNY, S. Wilson)

Welch, Adam, “Borderline Research: Art between Canada and the United States, 1965–75” (University of Toronto, E. Legge)

White, Rachel, “Graphic Form: Vogue and the Politics of the Body, 1930-1950” (UIUC, T. Weissman)

Wigmore, Spencer, “Albert Bierstadt and the Speculative Terrain of American Landscape Painting, 1863-1888” (University of Delaware, W. Bellion)

Williams, Nicole, “The Shade of Private Life: The Right to Privacy and the Press in American Art, 1875-1900” (Yale University, E. Cooke, Jr.)

Wurzelbacher, Karli, “Reverse Painting on Glass: Seeing through the Surface of American Modernism” (University of Delaware, W. Bellion and J. Hill)

Yohalem, Hannah, “Movement and Arrest: Jasper Johns, 1954-1968” (Princeton, H. Foster)

Zundo, Mary Elizabeth, “Mapping Destiny: Cartography and Nineteenth-Century American Art of the Frontier” (UIUC, D. O’Brien)