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, 2020

Show completed dissertations

An, Jamin, "The Curator as the Artist's Friend: Henry Geldzahler Negotiating Artistic Autonomy in the 1960s" (UCLA, M. Kwon)

Anderson Cramer, Cortney, “'It’s Gotta Be in Ya': Heroic Individualism and the Roadside Concrete Sculpture Garden, 1910–1960" (University of Wisconsin–Madison, A. S. Martin, A. Andrzejewski)

Barrow, Theodore, "The Gilded Tropics: Winslow Homer and John Singer Sargent in Florida: 1885–1917" (CUNY, J. Sund)

Barth, Catherine Elizabeth, "Frederick Sommer: Photography at the Limits of the Avant-Garde" (Emory, T. Cronan)

Beaulieu, Anne-Philippe, "Les dessinateurs de presse montréalais au tournant du XXe siècle au Canada français: Acteurs et témoins de la construction de l'histoire nationale, entre modernité et tradition" (Université de Montréal, E. Contogouris, D. Hardy)

Blomfield, Nina, "Papered Spaces: Improvised Domestic Interiors in Late Nineteenth-Century America" (Bryn Mawr, S. Houghteling, A. Walker)

Booher, Kaitlin, "Fashioning an Industry: Photography at the Intersection of Aesthetics and Economics, 1912–68" (Rutgers, A. Zervigón)

Bozer, Julia, "Traveler-Artists in the Old New World, 1968–1982" (IFA/NYU, R. Slifkin)

Brunstrum, Mary, "Parabola City: Saarinen’s Arch, Sacred Architecture and St. Louis’s Modern Parabolic Signature" (Washington University in St. Louis, A. Miller)

Bucarelli, Viviana, "Awe in Quietude: Transcendentalist Magic Realism" (CUNY, E. Braun)

Cluck, Alyson, "Forms of Encounter: Zilia Sánchez’s ‘Erotic Topologies’ in 1960s New York" (University of Maryland, College Park, A. McEwen)

Crawford, Jack, "Flamboyant Abundance: Performing Queer Maximalism 1960–1990" (CUNY, C. Bishop)

Custer, Lee Ann, "Urban 'Voids': Picturing Light, Air, and Open Space in New York, 1890–1935" (University of Pennsylvania, M. Leja, D. Brownlee)

DeFeo, Janine, "Food, Eating, and the Social Body in American Art, 1962–1983" (CUNY, S. Wilson)

De Leon, Christina, "Mapping an American Chair Form: The History and Evolution of the Butaca" (Bard Graduate Center, I. Gaskell)

Dieter, Mark, "A Sacred Nature: Frank Lloyd Wright’s Exploration of Hierotopy in Residential, Commercial, and Civic Architecture" (University of Wisconsin–Madison, T. E. A. Dale, A. Andrzejewski)

Downey, Walker, "Engineered Sonics in the American Avant-Garde, 1960–1975" (MIT, C. Jones)

Dunbar, Maxwell, "'The Daily Struggle': Philip Guston and Leftist Art in 1930s America" (Washington University in St. Louis, A. Miller)

Encarnacion Karam, Samantha, “Ways of Being, Ways of Knowing: Dorothea Tanning’s Posthumanist Representations” (Virginia Commonwealth University, K. Chapman)

Fanning, Colin, "Bringing Theory to Form: Katherine and Michael McCoy, the Cranbrook Academy of Art, and the Expanded Discourse of Design, 1971-2005" (Bard Graduate Center, C. Whalen)

Flattley, Megan, "Out of the Fragments, New Worlds: Perspective and Spatiality in the Work of Diego Rivera, 1913–1933" (Tulane University, A. Anagnost)

Fletcher, Jessica, "A Municipal Modernity: Women, Architecture, and Public Health in Working Class New York, 1913–1950" (CUNY, M. Gutman)

Gandert, Sonja Elena, "La resolana: Chicano Artistic Imaginaries of Place, Race, and Activism in New Mexico and Texas, 1969–1985" (CUNY, A. Indych-López)

Gaylord, Kristen, "'Infiltrate the Masses': Corita Kent's Didactic Pop" (IFA/NYU, T. Crow)

Geilfuss, Robert, "The Color of Dreams in the District of Columbia: The Washington Color School, the Cold War Establishment, and the Civil Rights Movement" (IFA/NYU, R. Slifkin)

Gill, Kirsten, "Expanded Frames on Black Freedom: Racial Imaginaries of Experimental Film and Video, 1965–80" (CUNY, S. Wilson)

Green, William, "Looking Back and Looking Forward: Photographic Process in the United States, ca. 1970" (Rutgers, A. Zervigón)

Greendeer, Kendra, "Rematriating Indigeneity in Contemporary Native Art" (University of Wisconsin–Madison, J. H. Casid)

Halbert, Philippe, "Consumption, Complexion, Creolization: Self-Fashioning and Colonial Subjectivity in the French Atlantic World" (Yale University, E. Cooke)

Hamm, Connor, "Coastal Modern: Art and the Lowcountry Since the Civil War" (UCLA, S. Mathur)

Harakawa, Maya, "After the Renaissance: Art and Harlem in the 1960s" (CUNY, S. Wilson)

Higgins, Lily, "Reading into Things: Articulate Objects in Colonial North America, 1650–1783" (Yale University, E. Cooke)

Hilker, Anne, "The Legal Lives of Things: The Metropolitan Museum of Art at the Boundary between Public and Private" (Bard Graduate Center, C. Whalen)

Hobson, Taylor, "Radiant Sites: Projection and the Mobile Spectator in Contemporary Moving-Image Installations" (Bryn Mawr, H. King, L. Saltzman)

Hunter, Lucy, "A Behavioral Theory of the Artist in Residence" (Yale University, P. Lee)

Joyce, Robin, "Prints, Murals, and Collective Labor in the United States, 1930–1949" (IFA/NYU, R. Slifkin)

Kleinman, Sarah, "The Curatorial Practice and Exhibitions of Kynaston McShine, 1966–1971" (Virginia Commonwealth University, M. Lindauer)

Koltiska, Katherine, "The Politics of Culture and Taste in Cleveland, 1876–1930" (Penn State University, C. Zabel)

Korroch, Kate, "Queer Play as Critique: Select Performances and Films by Tina Takemoto" (UC Santa Cruz, J. González)

Krasnopoler, Elliot, "Timescapes: Geology and Place in Contemporary Art" (Bryn Mawr, L. Saltzman)

Larson, Jessica, "Building Black Manhattan: Architecture and the Politics of Respectability, 1857–1914" (CUNY, M. Gutman)

Leach, Elisabeth, "Doris Lee (1904–1983): Self, Society, Place" (University of Iowa, J. Kinsey)

Leahy, Brian, "For Immediate Release: Contemporary Art and Exhibition Media in the United States" (Northwestern University, R. Zorach, H. Feldman)

Ledezma, Deanna, "The Fecundity of Family Photography: Histories, Identities, Archival Relations" (University of Illinois at Chicago, J. Mekinda, Ö. Harmansah)

Lee, Chaeeun, "Whither Asia? Biology, Culture, and the Questions of Identity in Asian American Art, 1960s–1970s" (CUNY, M. Hadler)

Leifer, Emily, "Light and Space: Los Angeles Installation Art and the Environment of the 1970s" (Bryn Mawr, H. King, J. Thomas)

Lodwick, Leslie, "Architectures of Schooling: School Construction Systems Development" (UC Santa Cruz, A. Narath)

Matheson, Rebecca, "American Artisans: William and Elizabeth Phelps, and Phelps Associates" (Bard Graduate Center, M. Linn, M. Majer)

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

McKittrick, Anna Katherine, "The Next Larger Thing: The Open Work at Mid-century" (Emory, T. Cronan)

McLaughlin, Laurel, "Towards a 'Performative Migratory Aesthetics' of Works by Womxn-Identifying Practitioners in the United States, 1970–2018" (Bryn Mawr, H. King)

Mitton, Desiree, "Tracing the Artistic Legacy of the Time Capsule in Post-War New York" (IFA/NYU, R. Slifkin)

Mize, Ramey, "Battle Grounds: Painting, War, and Witness in the Americas, 1861–1901" (University of Pennsylvania, M. Leja, G. D. Shaw)

Mohammadi, Banafsheh, “Images of the Experiential: The Petroleum Roots of the Phenomenology of Religion and Architectural Phenomenology, 1945–1967” (University of Alberta, J. Greer)

Monroe, Alexis, "The Crisis of the 1850s: American Land and Landscape" (IFA/NYU, R. Slifkin)

Nicholas, Sasha, "Portraiture and the Making of the Modern American Artist, 1918–1929" (CUNY, K. Manthorne)

O'Brien, Mariah, "Curatorial Performativity and Installation Art in the Canadian Museum Collection" (Université de Montréall, J. Lamoureux)

O'Keefe, Julia, "Active Enclosures: Aztec Containers and the Design of Ritual Exchange" (Tulane University, E. Boone)

Parker, Wendy, "Bringing It All Home: Martha Rosler on Person, Place, and Thing" (University of Iowa, C. Adcock)

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

Perry, Ana Cristina, "Raphael Montañez Ortiz and Affect as Institutional Critique from 1966–1972" (CUNY, A. Indych-López)

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

Qiu, Z. Serena, "Visions of a Pacific Empire: China, Japan, and the United States at World's Fairs, 1876–1915" (University of Pennsylvania, M. Leja, A. Dombrowski)

Rawlings, Courtney Kaye, "The Architecture of Red Los Angeles: Housing Communities for a Postwar Future, 1942–1955" (Emory, T. Cronan)

Rivera, Katja, “Art Is Only an Excuse: Felipe Ehrenberg 1968–1978” (University of Illinois at Chicago, H. Higgins, Ö. Harmansah)

Rudnick, Allison, "The Politics of Technique and the Art of the New Deal (1935–1943)" (CUNY, M. Lobel)

Saha, Indrani, "Metaphysical Institutions: The Spiritual Curation of American Modernism" (MIT, C. Jones)

Sato, Analisa, "Half-Life: Postwar U.S. Fiber Art and the Bauhaus Legacy" (CUNY, M. Hadler)

Scaturro, Sarah, "The Development of Costume Conservation in North America and Britain, 1964–1986" (Bard Graduate Center, C. Whalen)

Schapiro, Alissa, "'Busy with Other News': American Art, Visual Culture, and Antisemitism during World War II" (Northwestern University, C. Kiaer, H. Feldman)

Shabtay, Talia, "See, Think, Learn: Art, Science, and Aesthetic Experience in Early Cold War America" (Northwestern University, H. Feldman, C. Kiaer)

Shaskevich, Helena, "Specular Networks: Biopolitics & Feminist Video in 1970s America" (CUNY, S. WIlson)

Smith, Cassandra, “Kiva Murals at Pottery Mound: A Consideration of a Trans-temporal Performativity in a Puebloan Life World” (University of Illinois at Chicago, V. Miller)

Soboleva, Ksenia, "Lesbian Artists and the AIDS Crisis in New York" (IFA/NYU, R. Slifkin)

Sparks, Kaegan, "Mierle Laderman Ukeles and the Politics of Social Reproduction, 1969–Present" (CUNY, S. Wilson)

Spear, Elizabeth, "Reframing Landscape: Spectacular Display and American Landscape Painting, 1840–1892" (University of Iowa, J. Kinsey)

Sunderlin, Anna, “Plaster and Medium and Muse in Nineteenth-Century America” (Virginia Commonwealth University, C. Roach)

Szantyr, Rebecca, "Paper Work: The Transatlantic Career of Nicolino Calyo, 1825–1850" (Brown University, D. Nickel, H. Shaffer)

Swindell, Alisa, "Desire in the Time of AIDS: Art Photography and Images of Desire at the Height of the AIDS Crisis 1985–1995" (University of Illinois at Chicago, L. Yun Lee, J. Brier)

Théorêt, Alexandrine, "Réitération en art conceptuel: Une analyse de la consécration et de l’attribution des valeurs à travers cinq études de cas, de Sol LeWitt à Louise Lawler" (Université de Montréal, S. Paquet, A. Quemin)

Thompson, Amanda, "Florida Seminole and Miccosukee Patchwork and the Mediation of Settler Colonial Encounters, 1918–Present" (Bard Graduate Center, A. Glass)

Tolleson, Max, "The Museum after Minimalism: Donald Judd's Chinati Foundation, 1979–Present" (UCLA, G. Baker)

Treier, Leonie, "Reassembling George Catlin's Indian Gallery: Material Culture and the Performance of Ethnographic Realism" (Bard Graduate Center, A. Glass)

Troiano, Vanessa, "Susan Weil: Artistic Trailblazer" (CUNY, G. Levin)

Truxes, Anna, "Willem de Kooning and the Cinema" (CUNY, G. Levin)

Tuite, Rebecca, "Nightwear in Hollywood Film and Television and the US Nightwear Industry, 1945–1977" (Bard Graduate Center, C. Whalen)

Weldon-Yochim, Zoe, "Atomic Afterlives: Visualizing Nuclear Toxicity in Art of the United States Since 1979" (UC Santa Cruz, T. J. Demos)

Werther-Rosenow, Barbara, "Communication and Transformation in Video Art" (Rutgers, T. Flores)

Wheeler, Anne, "Language as Material: Rereading Robert Smithson" (IFA/NYU, R. Slifkin)

Woodward, Hayley, "The Codex Xolotl: The Visual Discourse of Place and History in Early Colonial Mexico" (Tulane University, E. Boone)

Woody Nguyen, Melanie, "Embodied Ecologies: Intersections of the Body and the Natural World in the Work of Ana Mendieta, Mierle Laderman Ukeles, and Maren Hassinger" (University of Maryland, College Park, J. Shannon)

Wyma, Chloe, "Labor and Pleasure in the Art of the Kirstein Circle, 1932–1956" (CUNY, M. Lobel)

Young, Colin, "Desert Places: The Visual Culture of the Prairies and the Pampas across the Nineteenth Century" (Yale University, J. Raab)