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

Twentieth-Century Art
Dissertations in Progress by Subject, 2004

Show completed dissertations

Abbott, Janet, “The Barnett Aden Gallery of Washington, D.C.: 1943–1969” (Penn State, J. H. Robinson)

Adams, Catherine M., “Annette Messager: Post-1968 French Avante-Garde in the Feminine” (Iowa, C. Adcock)

Adams, Virginia, “Illusion and Disillusionment in the Works of Gerhard Richter and Jeff Wall: Picturing (Post)Modern Life” (Maryland, College Park, S. Mansbach)

Aguirre, Mariana, “Artistic Collaboraton in Fascist Italy: Ardengo Soffici and Giorgio Morandi” (Brown, K. S. Champa)

Ali, Atteqa, “Handle W/Care: The Making of an Art History and a Nation in Pakistian” (UT Austin, J. Leoshko)

Allen, Melissa S. B., “Donald Judd: Critic, Artist, Architect” (Iowa, W. Tomasini, D. Raskin)

Archias, S. Elise, “The Body as a Material c. 1970: Yvonne Rainer, Vito Acconci, and Adrian Piper” (UC Berkeley, A. Wagner)

Atwood Gibson, Jess, “Postwar Spectacles: The Zero Group” (Yale, C. Mehring, D. Joselit)

Austin, Nancy, “Industrialization and the Language of Art and Design” (Brown, D. Neumann)

Banai, Noit, “Hybrid Objects—Specific Sites: The New Order of Things, France 1958–1962” (Columbia, B. Buchloh)

Barrett, Jennifer, “The Power of the Ordinary: Contextualism, Regionalism, and ‘the everyday’ in the Architecture of Alison and Peter Smithson” (Delaware, A. Gibson)

Barron-Duncan, Rachael, “Fashioning Surrealism: The Making of Radical Couture, 1925–1938” (Yale, C. Mehring)

Baudin, Helma, “Art and Totalitarianism: Three German Artists Under Hitler’s Regime” (CUNY, R. Long)

Baum, Kelly, “The Politics of Pleasure: Gender, Desire, and Détournement in the Art of the Situationist International, 1957–1972” (Delaware, A. Gibson)

Baum, Rachel, “Andy Warhol: The Crisis of Modernist Subjectivity in Abstraction” (Harvard, N. Bryson)

Bennett, Christopher, “Boetti and Pascali: Two Case Studies (1965–1970), Revisiting Arte Povera after the Fall of the Berlin Wall” (Michigan, A. Potts)

Berkowitz, Ellie, “Innovation Through Appropriation Or an Alternative to Separatism: The Use of Commercial Imagery By Chicano Artists, 1960–1990” (UT Austin, A. Malagamba, A. Reynolds)

Bethke, Jennifer, “From Futurism to Neoclassicism: The Debate Over Tradition in Italian Modernism” (UC Berkeley, T. J. Clark)

Brown, Mikell, “The Photographer’s Wife: Genre Blurring in Emmet Gowin’s Photographs of Edith and the Dialectics of Looking” (Virginia Commonwealth, R. Hobbs)

Bryzgel, Amy, “Negotiating Identity: A Case Study of Four Artists in Russia, Latvia, and Poland after the Thaw 1970–2000” (Rutgers, J. Sharp)

Bush, Diana, “The Dialectical Object: John Heartfield, 1915–1938” (Columbia, B. Buchloh)

Butler, Karen K., “Jean Fautrier and the Representation of Resistance in Postwar France” (Columbia, B. Buchloh)

Butler-Palmer, Carolyn, “Interfaces: The Pop, Politics, and Portraiture of David Neel and Andy Warhol” (Pittsburgh, K. Savage, T. Smith)

Cabanas, Kaira, “Performing the Real: Art in France, 1957–1962” (Princeton, H. Foster)

Campbell, Shane C., “John Baldessari” (Iowa, C. Adcock)

Carlino, Justin, “Native American Art as Sources For American Sculpture after 1940” (Rutgers, J. Marter)

Cavallero, Janet, “Photography and the Mass Subject in Fascist Italy” (Columbia, B. Buchloh)

Chancey, Jill, “Elaine de Kooning: Negotiating the Masculinity of Abstract Expressionism” (Kansas, D. Cateforis)

Chiong, Kathryn, “Lawrence Weiner: Words/Matter” (Columbia, B. Buchloh, R. Krauss)

Chlenova, Masha, “The Swan Song of the Russian Avant-Garde: The Transformations of the Avant-Garde in Soviet Public Culture, 1928–1932” (Columbia, C. Kiaer, B. Buchloh)

Chung, Francis, “Perspicuous Representations: Ordinary Language in Conceptual Art and Cinema” (UC Berkeley, W. Davis)

Clayton, Lisa, “Shaping Struggle: Heroic Themes in African American Art, 1929–1959” (Virginia Commonwealth, B. Lawal)

Colaizzi, Vittorio, “Robert Ryman, Minimalism, and Painting” (Virginia Commonwealth, R. Hobbs)

Cousins, Charlotte, “The Shaping of Constantin Brancusi: Formalism and ‘Influence’ in the Early Twentieth Century” (UT Austin, R. Shiff, J. Leoshko)

Cozzolino, Robert, “Every Picture Should Be a Prayer: A Critical Study of Ivan Albright” (Wisconsin, Madison, B. Buenger)

Cronan, Todd, “The Despair of the Physical: Materialism in George Santayana, Wallace Stevens, and Henri Matisse, 1900–1950” (UC Berkeley, W. Davis)

Curley, John J., “Blurred Ideologies: Cold War Visuality and the Art of Andy Warhol and Gerhard Richter, 1950–1968” (Yale, D. Joselit, C. Mehring)

Curzon, Lucy, “Modernity’s Revision: Culture and National Identity in Postwar Britain” (Rochester, P. Duro, J. Saab)

Cushwa, Anne J., “Fèlix Gonzalez-Torres” (Iowa, C. Adcock)

Davis, Caitlin S., “Lee Miller: A Critical Analysis of Her War Photography” (Rutgers, J. Marter)

Dawsey, Jill, “Secrets From the Streets: Women, Art, and Urban Space, 1966–1980” (Stanford, P. Lee)

De Armendi, Nicole, “Shifting Perception: Labyrinths and the Rise of Phenomenology in American Art of the 1960s and 1970s” (Virginia Commonwealth, R. Hobbs)

Defay, Christopher, “Art, Enterprise, Collaboration: Richard Serra and the Art of Technology Program” (Michigan, A. Potts)

Deeb, Elyse, “Studies in American Art: Women Sculpting in the 1960s” (Brown, H. Vanel)

Deyasi, Marco, “Indochina in French Art and Culture, 1889–1937” (Duke, P. Leighten)

Diaz, Eva, “Chance and Design: Experimental Art at Black Mountain College” (Princeton, H. Foster)

Donnelly, Brian T., “Graphic Design in Canada since 1945” (Queen’s, Kingston, L. Jessup)

Dumbadze, Alexander, “Graphic Language: Reading, Writing, and Representation in Contemporary Art From 1965 to the Present” (UT Austin, R. Shiff)

Dumett, Mari, “Corporate Imaginations: The Fluxus Collective in the Age of Multinational Capitalism” (Boston, C. Jones)

Durham, Dennis, “N.E. Thing Co. in Vancouver (1965–1978): Defining Conceptual Art On the Periphery” (Virginia Commonwealth, R. Hobbs)

Edelman, Aliza, “Abstract Expressionism and Women Artists: A Gendered Reading of the 1950s” (Rutgers, J. Marter)

Eimen, Alisa, “Museum and Mosque: Identity Construction in Twentieth-Century Tehran” (Minnesota, C. Asher)

Eisman, April, “Bernhard Heisig and the Cultural Politics of East German Art” (Pittsburgh, B. McCloskey)

Evans, Yates, “Doors and Windows: Eastern Philosophy and Western Aesthetics in the Art of Ray Johnson” (Virginia Commonwealth, R. Hobbs)

Finch, Elizabeth, “Languages of Vision: Gyorgy Kepes and His ‘New Landscape’ of Art and Science, 1944–1972” (CUNY, G. Batchen)

Floyd, Kathryn M., “The Documenta: A History and Analysis” (Iowa, C. Adcock)

Gasparavicius, Gediminas, “The Emergence of Neo-Avantgardes in Central Europe in 1975–1995” (SUNY Stony Brook, D. Kuspit)

Gaston, Deborah, “Immigration, Ethnicity, and the Early Drawings of Joseph Stella, 1896–1924” (Delaware, W. Homer)

Geiger, Melissa, “A Socio-Historical Critique of Robert Rauschenberg’s Electronic Works of the Sixties” (Penn State, S. Rich)

Gieskes, Mette, “Games, Systems, and Structuralist Politics in European and American Art, 1960–1975” (UT Austin, R. Shiff)

Gilbert, Christopher, “American Art and Language During the Period of the Fox (1974–1976)” (Virginia Commonwealth, R. Hobbs)

Gilderhus, Kirsten, “Karl Hubbuch: Drawings and Graphic Works, 1927–1930” (Wisconsin, Madison, B. Buenger)

Gilman, Amy, “Organizing Art: Information Theory and Conceptual Art: A Case Study of the Xeroxbook Exhibition” (Case Western Reserve, E. Landau)

Gilman, Claire, “Arte Povera’s Theatrical Impulse: Italian Art of the 1960s and 70s” (Columbia, B. Buchloh, R. Krauss)

Gopinath, Gabrielle, “Ray Johnson and the U.S. Mail” (Yale, D. Joselit)

Grudin, Anthony, “Television Dreams: Warhol’s Style and the Ambivalence of Emulation” (UC Berkeley, T. J. Clark)

Haboeck, Almut, “Viennese Actionism: Theorizing a Movement” (Iowa, C. Adcock)

Hack, Brian, “Lorado Taft, George Grey Barnard, and the Promise of Monumental Symbolist Sculpture in Early Twentieth-Century America” (CUNY, S. Webster)

Hamill, Sarah, “Sculpture’s Frame: On the Photography of David Smith, 1931–1965” (UC Berkeley, A. Wagner)

Hamilton, Jaimey, “Strategies of Excess: The Postwar Assemblage of Alberto Burri, Robert Rauschenberg, and Arman” (Boston, C. Jones)

Hart, David, “Memory and the Installation Art of Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons” (UNC Chapel Hill, M. Harris)

Harwood, John, “The Redesign of Design: Multi-National Corporations, Computers and Design Logic, 1945–1976” (Columbia, B. Bergdoll)

Haxall, Daniel, “Politics, Form, and Identity in Abstract Expressionist Collage” (Penn State, S. Rich)

Heuer, Elizabeth, “Going Postal: Surrealism and the Discourses of Mail Art” (Florida State, K. Bearor)

Hickman, Caroline Mesrobian, “Clare Leighton (1898–1989): A Wood Engraver’s Impressions of Agrarian Life in England and the American South” (UNC Chapel Hill, A. Marks)

Hill, Joe, “Biennials On the Brink: New International Contemporary Art Festivals, 1984–2004” (IFA/NYU, R. Storr)

Hillman, Susanne, “Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T.)” (Rutgers, J. Marter)

Hinderliter, Beth, “The Space of Painting: Kurt Schwitters and El Lissitzky” (Columbia, B. Buchloh, R. Krauss)

Hogue, Marianne, “La Malinche as an Icon of Mestizaje and National Identity in the Murals of Orozco, Rivera, and Siqueiros” (Virginia Commonwealth, H. Risatti)

Hubenthal, John, “A Life in the Newspapers: The American Press and George Grosz” (Virginia Commonwealth, H. Risatti)

Hudson, Suzanne, “Robert Ryman: Painting Pragmatism” (Princeton, H. Foster)

Ikegami, Hiroko, “1964: Robert Rauschenberg and the Beginnings of Globalization in Modern Art” (Yale, A. Nemerov)

James, Linda, “The Decadent Dandyism of the Work of Yves Klein” (Wisconsin, Madison, B. Buenger).

Jara, Jeff, “A Fine Tradition: Folk Art and the Development of Modernist American Art, 1900–1940” (Delaware, A. Gibson, M. Leja)

Jozefacka, Anna, “Rebuilding of Warsaw: Architecture, Urban Planning, and Ideology in Postwar Poland (1945–1970)” (IFA/NYU, J-L. Cohen)

Jung, Eun Young, “From Sculpture to Situations: Critical Issues in Dan Flavin’s Fluorescent Light Installations of the 1960s” (UIUC, J. Fineberg)

Kaizen, William, “The Immediate: Video Art, c. 1970” (Columbia, B. Buchloh)

Kawalko, Karolina, “Geometric Abstraction Before and Behind the Iron Curtain” (CUNY, R. Golan)

King, Jennifier, “Michael Asher and the Art of Infrastructure: Space, Cities, Institutions” (Princeton, H. Foster)

Kohn, Adrian, “Seeing Los Angeles Minimalism, 1958–1972” (UT Austin, R. Shiff)

Kudriavtseva, Ekaterina, “Art as Politics: The Afterlife of Kazimir Malevich’s Black Square” (USC, N. Troy)

Kurczynski, Karen, “Intimate Banalities to Extreme Aesthetics: Asger Jorn, 1940–1963” (IFA/NYU, R. Lubar)

Lawrence, James, “Abdication in a Artistic Democracy: Meaning in the Work of Barnett Newman and Donald Judd, 1950–1970 (And Thereafter)” (UT Austin, R. Shiff)

Ledezma, Juan, “Gustav Klutsis, El Lissitzky, and the October Group: Montage and the Post-History of the Constructivist Object in Russia’s ‘Reconstruction Period’ (1928–1932)” (Columbia, C. Kiaer, B. Buchloh)

Lee, Hyewon, “Politics and Public Sculpture in Seoul, Korea” (Missouri, J. Klein)

Lee, Kee-Lee, “Sur Vampyr: Theresa Hak Kyang Cha and the Cultural Para-Sites of the Korean Diaspora” (UNC Chapel Hill, C. Mavor)

Leichtnam, Christopher, “The Lyric in Painting” (Michigan, H. Lay)

Leimer, Ann, “The Performance of the Sacred: The Concept of Journey in Codex Delilah” (UT Austin, A. Malagamba)

Levin, Julie, “The Early Career of Allan Rohan Crite (1930–1950)” (UT Austin, L. Henderson)

Mansoor, Jaleh, “Marshall Plan Modernism: The Matrix of Fifties Abstraction” (Columbia, B. Buchloh, R. Krauss)

Marie, Annika, “The Most Radical Act: Working Toward a Materialist Aesthetic in Theodor Adorno, Harold Rosenberg, Barnett Newman, and Ad Reinhardt” (UT Austin, A. Reynolds, R. Shiff)

Mathews, Heather, “Refiguring Memory in Postwar German Painting” (UT Austin, A. Reynolds)

McCormick, Seth, “Subject Divisions: Agency and Aesthetics in the Art of Jasper Johns” (Columbia, B. Buchloh, R. Krauss)

McGrail, Michael Justin, “Category Killers, Power Centres, and Warehouse Clubs: The Architectural Geography of New Retail in British Columbia’s Georgia Basin” (Victoria, C. Thomas)

Millett, Ann, “Spectacular Spectacles: The Disabled Body On Display in Contemporary Art” (UNC Chapel Hill, C. Mavor)

Minturn, Kent, “Contre-Histoire: The Postwar Art and Writings of Jean Dubuffet” (Columbia, B. Buchloh, R. Krauss)

Mitzen, Anne, “Gender, Modernism, and Regionalism: The Promotion of Künstlerinnen in the Rhineland, 1900–1933” (Brown, H. Vanel)

Necol, Jane, “Matisse and His Books: Transcending Limits” (Columbia, D. Rosand)

Nedd, Andrew, “Defending Russia: Russian History and Pictorial Narratives of the ‘Patriotic War,’ 1812–1912” (USC, J. Bowlt)

Nelson, Andrea, “Reading Montage: The Photography Books of Làszlò Moholy-Nagy and Walker Evans” (Minnesota, J. Blocker)

Newman, Sarah, “Excavating New York: George Bellows’s Landscapes of Modernity” (UC Berkeley, M.M.Lovell)

Nigro, Carol, “Cy Twombly’s Italian Journey: Histories and Myths For a Modern Era” (Delaware, A. Gibson)

Noonan, Jennifer, “Romancing the Stone: Desire in Conceptual Prints of the 1960s and 1970s” (Penn State, S. Rich)

Obler, Bibiana, “Intimate Collaborations: Kandinsky and Muenter, Taeuber and Arp” (UC Berkeley, T. J. Clark)

Olgren-Leblond, Kelly, “Reading Expressionist Architecture: The German Avant-Garde and ‘Paper Architecture,’ 1914–1924” (USC, K. Lang)

Patrick-Sternin, Margaret, “The Female Figure in the Art of the 1980s” (Rutgers, J. Marter)

Pepper, Ian, “On the Difference Between Serialism and Seriality in the Visual Arts after 1945” (Columbia, R. Krauss)

Phillips, Kristy, “Exhibiting the Nation: Politics and Identity in the National Museum of India” (Minnesota, C. Asher)

Price, Justine, “Critical Distinctions: Attitudes Towards American Abstraction, 1936–1952” (UT Austin, R. Shiff)

Proctor, Jacob, “Between Object and Experience: Video Art and Broadcast Television in the United States, 1967–1977” (Harvard, Y-A. Bois)

Ramirez, Yasmin, “Nuyorican Vanguards: Political Actions, Poetic Visions” (CUNY, K. Manthorne)

Qin, Zhao-Kai, “Transnational Modernities: Artistic Interactions Between China and the West, 1979–1999” (Cornell, L. Meixner)

Rau, Paula, “Chance Encounters: John Cage’s Late Visual Works” (Virginia Commonwealth, H. Risatti)

Reeves, Teresa Bramlette, “Cowboys and Indianers: The American West in German Art of the Twentieth Century” (Georgia, E. Firestone)

Rippner, Samantha, “Vija Celmins in Context: Paintings, Drawings, and Prints 1964–1994” (CUNY, M. Hadler)

Roberts, Sarah Rehm, “Englishness, Abstraction, and Surrealism: Modern Art in England, 1932–1936” (Brown, H. Vanel)

Robinson, Katie, “Raising and Lowering Brows: Norman Rockwell and Jackson Pollock in the Cultural Context of America, 1945–1962” (UT Austin, R. Shiff)

Roethke, Leigh, “A Passion For Spain: Españolismo in American Visual Culture” (Minnesota, K. A. Marling)

Rogan, Clare, “Freundinnen and Mannweiber: Constructing Female Homoeroticism and the Figure of the Lesbian in German Art and Visual Culture, 1900–1933” (Brown, K. D. Kriz)

Rompilla, Denise, “From Hiroshima to the Hydrogen Bomb: American Artists Witness the Birth of the Atomic Age” (Rutgers, J. Marter)

Roth, Lynette, “‘Neue Sachlichkeit’ in Cologne: August Sander and the Cologne Progressives” (Johns Hopkins, B. Doherty)

Rottner, Nadja, “Claes Oldenburg, 1959–1966: The Violence of Sensation” (Columbia, B. Buchloh, R. Krauss)

Rundquist, Leisa, “Firestorms and Conflagrations: The Inflamed Cosmology of Henry Darger” (UNC Chapel Hill, C. Mavor)

Schreyach, Michael, “Towards Pragmatic Painting: Reflexivity in Hans Hofmann and Jackson Pollock” (UC Berkeley, W. Davis)

Schwartz, Malka, “The Space of Production: Brooklyn and the Creation of an Urban Industrial Landscape” (IFA/NYU, J-L. Cohen)

Schwartz, Stephanie, “A Frontier Town Still: Cuban Urban Planning, 1925–1930” (Columbia, H. Ballon)

Scott, Sascha, “Constructing the American Southwest: Paintings of New Mexico and Popular Culture, 1898–1942” (Rutgers, J. Marter)

Slifkin, Robert, “Out of Time: Philip Guston’s 1970 Marlborough Show” (Yale, A. Nemerov)

Smith, T’ai, “Weaving Work at the Bauhaus: The Gender and Engendering of a Medium” (Rochester, D. Crimp)

Snow, Rachel, “Incidental Tourists: Vernacular Photo-Travel Books, 1920–1940” (CUNY, G. Batchen)

Soccio, Lisa, “Nothing’s Shocking: On the Persistence of Avant-Gardism in Alternative Music” (Rochester, J. Wolff)

Srypzak, Joann, “Sporting Modernity: German Artists and the Athletic Body, 1918–1945” (Wisconsin, Madison, B. Buenger)

Steck, Stuart, “Veiling the Subject: Ellsworth Kelly and the Discourses of Modernism” (Boston, C. Jones)

Steer, Linda M., “Appropriated Photographs in French Surrealist Reviews, 1924–1939” (SUNY Binghamton, J. Tagg)

Stryker, Eric M., “Reconstruction, Conflict, and Art in Postwar London: Four Case Studies, 1945–1962” (Yale, T. Barringer)

Stuhlman, Jonathan, “Navigating a Constantly Shifting Terrain: Yves Tanguy and Surrealism” (University of Virginia, M. Affron)

Surdu, Robert C. A., “Wholesome Architecture and the Rise of the Tourist State in Early-Twentieth-Century Canada” (Queen’s, Kingston, L. Jessup)

Susik, Abigail, “Exhibiting the Outmoded: Surrealist Collage Novels By Louis Aragon, Max Ernst, and Andrè Breton” (Columbia, B. Buchloh, R. Krauss)

Thomas, Bragan, “Naked Fascism? Body Politics and the Male Nude in German Sculpture of the Third Reich” (IFA/NYU, R. Lubar)

Tomlin, Patrick, “Spectacular Visions: Op Art, 1964–1968” (Northwestern, C. Lambert-Beatty)

Travis, Amber, “Theatres of War, Torture, and Duress: Leon Golub’s Mercenaries, Interrogations, and White Squads, 1979–1987” (Northwestern, S. Eisenman)

Tseng, Li-Lin, “Melodrama as Modernity in Early Chinese Cinema: A Case Study in the Works of Zheng Zhengqiu and His Shanghai Contemporaries, 1922–1937” (UIUC, J. Fineberg)

Twa, Lindsay, “Troubling Island: The Imagining and Imaging of Haiti By African-American Artists” (UNC Chapel Hill, M. Harris)

Van Hoesen, Brett M., “Crossing Borders: German Propaganda and the Arts During the 1920s ‘rhineland Controversy’” (Iowa, C. Adcock, S. Foster)

Vanarragon, Elizabeth J., “The Photo League: Views of Urban Experience in the 1930s and 1940s” (Iowa, C. Adcock)

Walker, Lanitra, “Pictures That Satisfy: Modernist Discourses and the Politics of Race, Gender, and Nation in the Art of Irma Stern (1894–1966)” (Duke, R. Powell)

Wang, Meiqin, “Transformation and Construction: Exhibiting Chinese Contemporary National Art in 2003” (SUNY Binghamton, N. Um)

Warnock, Molly, “Painting Blind: Simon Hantai’s Technique-Based Paintings” (Johns Hopkins, B. Doherty)

Weissman, Terri, “Super Sight: The Realisms of Berenice Abbott” (Columbia, B. Buchloh)

Weller, Rebecca, “The Los Angeles Look: Light, Space, and Phenomenology, 1962–1974” (Delaware, A. Gibson)

Werschkul, Hilda, “Modernism Into Memory: The Drawings of Eva Hesse” (Columbia, D. Rosand, B. Buchloh)

Wexler Katsnelson, Anna, “Aesopian Tales Or What Happened after 1927: The Late Russian Avant-Garde, Painting, Film” (Harvard, Y-A. Bois)

Williams, Thomas, “Pop Art, Affluence, and the Politics of Taste” (SUNY Stony Brook, J. Katz)

Wilson, Siona, “Narrative Turn: The Filmic Mode in Feminist Art Practices of the 1970s, North America and Britain” (Columbia, B. Buchloh, C. Kiaer)

Wolfskill, Phoebe, “Constituting the Elusive City: Documentation and Fantasy in the Work of Archibald Motley, Jr. and Reginald Marsh” (UIUC, J. Fineberg)

Young, Lisa Jaye, “All Consuming: Weimar Photography and the Aesthetics of Americanization, 1923–33” (CUNY, G. Batchen)

Zeidler, Sebastian, “Carl Einstein’s History and Theory of Art” (Columbia, B. Buchloh, R. Krauss)