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

Material Culture
Dissertations in Progress by Subject, 2018

Show completed dissertations

Abramovich, Lucia, “Precious Materiality in Colonial Andean Art: A Case Study of Marian Paintings” (Tulane University, E. Boone)

Beardsley, Amanda, “Celestial Mechanics: Technologies of Salvation in American Mormonism” (Binghamton University, T. McDonough and P. Smart)

Berger, Sara, “L’Horloge qui chante: Technics, Aesthetics, and Telling Time in Late Nineteenth-Century France” (MIT, A. Dutta)

Bogansky, Amy, “The Merchant's Middlemen: Factors, Supercargoes, and the Praxis of Exchange in the Early Modern Atlantic World” (Bard Graduate Center, I. Gaskell)

Caplan, Allison, “Their Flickering Creations: Value, Appearance, Animacy, and Surface in Nahua Precious Art” (Tulane University, E. Boone)

de Laforcade, Sonia, “Áudio-Visual: the Slide as Medium in Brazilian Art of the 1970s” (Princeton, Irene Small)

Doty, Lindsay, “The Ideal Made Real: The Aging of the Virgin in Italian Renaissance Art” (The University of Georgia, S. Zuraw)

Griffiths, Christine, “From Garden to Toilette: Cultivating Perfume in Early Modern England” (Bard Graduate Center, D. Krohn)

Higgins, Lily, “Reading into Things: Articulate Objects in Colonial North America, 1650-1783” (Yale University, E. Cooke, Jr.)

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

Kang, Changduk Charles, “Before the Reality Effect: Wax Representations in Eighteenth-Century France” (Columbia University, A. Higonnet)

King, Katherine, “Deliberate Defacement: Provocation and Response in Byzantine Illuminated Manuscripts” (Princeton, C. Barber)

Kopta, Joseph R., “Chromatic Networks: Materiality of Middle Byzantine Gospel Lectionaries (ca. 850–1204 CE)” (Temple University, E. Bolman)

Larnerd, Joseph, “Decorative Cut Glass and the Working Class in America, 1876 to 1916” (Stanford University, A. Nemerov)

Luterbacher, Sam, “Adrift: Portable Objects Between Iberia and Japan” (Yale University, E. Cooke, Jr.)

McCormick, Heather Jane, “Woodcarvers in the City of New York: A Study in Craft Change, 1820-1880” (Bard Graduate Center, P. Kirkham)

Menon, Arathi, “Hipped and Gabled: Similitude and Vicissitude in Kerala's Sacred Art and Architecture” (Columbia University, V. Dehejia)

Migwans, Crystal, “Selvage and Salvage: Natural Fiber Weaving in Anishinaabe-aki, 1860-1960” (Columbia University, E. Hutchinson)

Mounce, Kiersten, “The Revolutionary Life of the Chaise sandows, 1928-1937” (University of Delaware, S. Isenstadt)

Murali, Deepthi, “The Politics, Intersensoriality, and Performativity of Transcultural Decorative Arts of Kerala, India” (University of Illinois at Chicago, C. Becker)

Rokhgar, Negar, “The Overtures of a Muslim Ally: Diplomatic Gifts from Persia to Italy between 1450 and 1700” (Rutgers University, S. McHam)

Situ, Xiao, “Emily Dickinson's Window Culture, 1830-1886” (Yale University, E. Cooke, Jr, A. Nemerov)

Snow, Andrea, “Language of The Snake: Serpents and Serpentine Forms in Old Norse Visual Culture.” (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, D. Verkerk)

Spratt, Emily, “Byzantium not Forgotten: Constructing the Artistic and Cultural Legacy of an Empire between East and West in the Early Modern Period” (Princeton, P. Brown)

Su, Wenjie, “Machines of Time, Towers of Knowledge: Miniature Architectural Spaces and the Design of Timepieces in Sino-European Encounters, Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries” (Princeton, T. DaCosta Kaufmann)

Tennison, Heather, “Tradition, Innovation, and Agency in a City of God: The Philadelphia Cité de Dieu and Early Fifteenth-Century Parisian Manuscript Culture” (University of Kansas, A. Hedeman)

Vause, Rachael, “The Cross and the Body in Early Medieval England” (University of Delaware, L. Nees)

Wise, Rachel, “Art in Revolt: Scripture, Allegory, and the 80 Years' War” (University of Pennsylvania, L. Silver)

Ziegenfuss, Jessica Elizabeth, “The Matter of Eva Hesse: Industrial Collage, Latex, and Plastics within Post-War Material Culture, 1964-1969” (University of California, Irvine, J. Nisbet)