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, 2018

Show completed dissertations

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)

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)

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

Campo Rosillo, Alba, “Artistry and Industry: The Portraiture of George Peter Alexander Healy, 1830-1865” (University of Delaware, W. Bellion)

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

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

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

Custer, Lee Ann, “Urban Voids: Picturing Light, Air, and Negative Space in New York, 1890–1930” (University of Pennsylvania, M. Leja; D. Brownlee)

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

Davison, Marianna, “Places for People: Aesthetics and Ethics of Landscape Reclamation in the Pacific Northwest” (University of California, Irvine, J. Nisbet)

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)

Defossez, Julie, “Life Support: Labor, Gender, & Care in Mierle Laderman Ukeles's Maintenance Art” (The Ohio State University, K. Paulsen)

DeGregorio, William, “Objectifying Dress: Collecting Historic Costume in the United States, 1920-1970” (Bard Graduate Center, C. Whalen)

Denison, James, “Their America: Race, Place, the Stieglitz Circle, and the Historiography of Modern American Art” (University of Michigan, R. Zurier)

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

Eisenbarth, Erin, “Imagining the Founding Fathers: Luther & DeLancey Kountze's Collection of Washingtoniana” (Bard Graduate Center, C. Whalen)

Eron, Abby, “The Symbolist Impulse in American Art across 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)

Gerstenecker, Elyse, “In Some Way Southern: Lycett Studios, Newcomb Pottery, and Design in the New South, 1883-1910” (University of Virginia, R. Wilson)

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)

Graversen, Hanne, “Interchanges: Construction of the U.S. Interstate Highway System and Artistic Practice, 1956-1984” (University of Chicago, C. Mehring and R. Zorach)

Grotte-Jacobs, Miriam, “Capital Art: Rethinking the Washington Color School” (Johns Hopkins University, M. Warnock)

Halbert, Philippe, “Louisiana Purchases: Buying Respectability and Fashioning Identity in Colonial New Orleans” (Yale University, E. Cooke, Jr.)

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)

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

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

Iqbal, Sharrissa, “Alternative Abstractions: Art and Science in 20th Century Los Angeles” (University of California, Irvine, C. Whiting)

Johnson, Alexis Bard, “Turning the Page: Image and Identity in U.S. Lesbian Magazines” (Stanford University, R. Meyer)
Johnson, Lauren A., “'True Americanism': Images of Race and Citizenship in Ansel Adams's Photobooks, 1940–1960” (UIUC, T. Weissman)

Johnson, Lauren, “Camping Modernism: The Stettheimer Circles, 1915-1943” (Washington University in St. Louis, A. Miller)

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

Kelleher, Philip, “Disrupted Spaces: Urban Art Activism in New York City and Mexico City after 1968” (Rice University, G. Bader)

King, Isaac, “Authority in Early-American Portraiture” (University of Pittsburgh, K. Savage)

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

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

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)

Lerman-Tan, Yinshi, “Living Still: John F. Peto and the Artist Across Time” (Stanford University, A. Nemerov)

Limb, Matthew, “‘Living on the Edge’: Ceramics and the Environment in the American West, 1961-2000” (University of California, Santa Barbara, J. Sorkin)

Lynford, Sophie, “The American Pre-Raphaelites: An Egalitarian Ocularity” (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)

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

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)

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

Moore, Nikki, “The Aesthetics of the Green Revolution: Art, Architecture and the Agrilogistics of Development between the United States and Latin America, 1930-1972” (Rice University, F. López-Durán)

Murokh, Dina, “‘A Sort of Picture Gallery’: The Visual Culture of Antebellum America” (University of Southern California, J. Greenhill)

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

Nordyke, Marisa Gomez, “Fabricating the American Dream: Stressed-Skin Technology and the American Home, 1930-1965” (University of Wisconsin-Madison, A. Andrzejewski)

Ogrodnik, Benjamin, “Avant-Garde and Independent Filmmaking in Pittsburgh in the 1970s and 1980s” (University of Pittsburgh, T. Smith)

Olivas, Yvonne, “Lee Lozano, General Strike Piece and the Praxis of Total Revolution” (SUNY Stony Brook, Z. Patterson)

Partman, Lucy, “Science & Imagination: William Rimmer and the Story of Nineteenth-Century American Art” (Princeton, R. DeLue)

Pazian, Erika Nelson, “ From the Parlor to the Battlefield: Visualizing Contested Spaces during the U.S.-Mexican War” (Graduate Center, CUNY, K. Manthorne)

Peacock, Daniel, “'Living Pictures': Pictorialist Photography and the Illustration of Fiction” (Princeton, A. McCauley)

Perry, Rebecca, “Problematic Bodies: Dressing Pre-Adolescent Girls in the United States, 1930-1965” (Bard Graduate Center, A. Ogata)

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

Pires, Leah, “Finesse: Louise Lawler's Pictures” (Columbia University, A. Alberro)

Qiu, Serena, “The 'Far East' Nearby: Constructing China and Japan at United States World's Fairs 1870s-1910s” (University of Pennsylvania, M. Leja)

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

Robbins, Nicholas, “Oceans of Air: Landscape and Climate in the Atlantic World, 1784-1884” (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)

Sandler Perten, Rebecca, “Postwar American Jewish Religious Identity, Ritual Objects and Modern Design: Ludwig Y. Wolpert, the Tobe Pascher Workshop, and the Joint Committee on Ceremonies of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations/Central Conference of American Rabbis” (Bard Graduate Center, C. Whalen)

Schedeen, Kaila, ”Turning Back, Looking Forward: Framing Nation and Identity in the Photography of Tseng Kwong Chi, Carrie Mae Weems, and Will Wilson” (University of Texas at Austin, C. Smith)

Shahi, Kimia, “Margin, Surface, Depth: Picturing the Contours of the Marine in Nineteenth-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)

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

Stinebring, Anna-Claire, “Profanely Sacred: Jan van Hemessen and Antwerp Painting Before Bruegel” (University of Pennsylvania, S. Brisman and L. Silver)

Stout, Erin, “The Technosocial Work of Tony Martin and the Audiovisual Avant-Garde, 1960-1970” (Stony Brook University, Z. Patterson)

Stricklin, Krystle, “Grave Visions: Photography, Violence, and Death in the American Empire, 1898-1913” (University of Pittsburgh, K. Savage)

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

Tuite, Rebecca, “Nightwear in Hollywood Film and Television and the United States Nightwear Industry, 1945-1977” (Bard Graduate Center, C. Whalen)

Vaum, Jillian B. “Facing Freedom: Tracing African American Emancipation in Antebellum Portraiture” (University of Pennsylvania, G. Shaw)

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

White, Rachel, “Graphic Sensations: Vogue and the Politics of the Body, 1930-1945” (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: Visions of Imperiled Privacy in Late Nineteenth-Century American Art” (Yale University, E. Cooke, Jr.)

Yasumura, Grace, “Invisible Men, Invisible Women: Labor, Race, and the (re)Construction of American Citizenship in New Deal Post Office Murals” (University of Maryland, College Park)

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

Yoshida, Yuri, “Placing Abstraction: Barnett Newman and the System of Historicization” (Rice University, G. Bader)

Zavistovski, Katia, “Picturing Common Objects: Vija Celmins, Llyn Foulkes, and Joe Goode in 1960s LA” (Rice University, G. Bader)

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