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Recent MA Topics in Art History    

2024

"Sacred Space, Relics, and Performance: The Chapel of the Virgin Mary, Karlstein Castle"
Olivia Bennes, 2024

"The Walers Art Museum's Ganymede Mosaic: Recontextualizing a Unique Polychrome Emblema from Greco-Roman Egypt"
Grace Moorman, 2024

"The Shield, The Phallus, and The Rosette: Cy Twombly's Fifty Days at Iliam"
Kait Morrison, 2024

2023

"Business, Leisure, and Piety: Animal Motifs in the Floor Mosaics at the Villa of Piazza Armerina"
Melissa DePierro, 2023

"Reexamining the ‘Vatican Runner’: A Unique Ancient Marble Sculpture of a Female Athlete"
Alejandra Gonzalez-Calvo, 2023

"The Universal Contained: Karel Teige's Thinking Through Typography (1923-1927)"
Jaime Hartman, 2023

"Christ Pantocrator: God, Emperor, and Philosopher: The Byzantine Iconography of Christ"
Anna Johnson, 2023 with Distinction

"Dore Hoyer’s Tänze für Käthe Kollwitz: Reframing Ausdruckstanz in post-World War II Germany"
Alaine Lambertson, 2023 with Distinction

2022

"'A Symphony in Lines': Sound in Abraham Walkowitz’s Abstractions of New York City"
Lacy Hamilton, 2022

"Symbolic Epigraphy and the New Rome: Humanist Capital Letters on the Tomb of Leonardo Bruni"
Noah Dasinger, 2022 with Distinction

"Displaced Movement: Body & Image in the Holographic Works of Simone Forti"
Francesca Felicella, 2022

"Colors of Commemoration: Marble Loutrophoroi and the Polychromy of Athenian Funerary Monuments"
Alex Hathaway, 2022 with Distinction

"Migrations of Word and Image: Leonora Carrington and La Dame Ovale, 1937-42"
Tara Kraft, 2022

2021

"Capturing the Vulnerable Body: Imogen Cunningham's Photographic Series Roi on the Dipsea Trail (1918)"
Charlotte Melissa Gaillet, 2021

2020

"Firm Humanity: John Brown's Blessing and It's Roots In Ecce Homo Imagery"
Ashlyn Parker Davis, 2020

"An Unpublished Greek 'Grave' Relief in the Memphis Brooks Museum: Contextualizing Banquet Scenes within the Votive and Funerary Landscapes of Late Classical Attica"
Bostick Miller, Holly, 2020 

"Her Creative Space: Photographs of Cecilia Beaux's Studio, 1885-1890"
Earley, Catherine Ann, 2020

"'Do you have eyes but fail to see?': The Unfocused Gaze and the Devotio Moderna in Hans Memling's Devotional Diptych for Isabel la Católica"
Williams, Hannah Grace, 2020

2019

“Diana and the hunt: Myth and allegory in the Court of King Francis I”
DuVall, Emily Claire, 2019 with Distinction

“The Medici Venus and the legacy of the Renaissance at La Specola”
Glennon, Taylor Kay, 2019

“Ilya Kabakov, Charles Rosenthal, and ‘the Void’ of a Soviet Past”
Erin Leigh Riggins, 2019

2018

"Circumlitio: Pliny, Painters, and Polychromy"
Bradley Brent Cavedo, 2018 with Distinction

"Part of a Larger Whole: Recontextualizing the Charleston Portrait"
Jordan Dopp, 2018

"Cut From an Ethnographic Museum: Collaging the Other from Weimar Mass Media"
Abigail Kosberg, 2018

"Reexamining Cindy Sherman's 1997 Film: Office Killer"
Augusta Gailey, 2018

2017

"Monet's Déjeuner sur l'herbe: Class and Absence"
Kendra Macomber, 2017

"Reconsidering New Objectivity: Albert Renger-Patzsch and Die Welt ist Schön"
Margaret Hankel, 2017

"Disorientation in Millennial America: Michael Arad's Reflecting Absence and the Art of Michael Heizer"
Claire Dempster, 2017

2016

"Henry Fuseli's The Nightmare: An Examination of the Recent Scholarship"
Melanie Davison, 2016

“The Virgin and her Purple Wool: Reenacting the Incarnation at the Altar”
Jessica Lynn Golden, 2016

"Anthropomorphic Mechanomorphs: Suzanne Duchamp’s Diversion from Man’s Machine Aesthetic"
Charlotte Jean Maier, 2016

2015

“Every Movement Counts: Curating Dance at the Museum of Modern Art”
Hilary Schroeder, 2015

"Memento Park and Skopje 2014: Transition, Monuments, and Memory"
Linnea West, 2015 with Distinction

"Federico Barocci's Tale of Two Troys: Aeneas in Prague and Rome"
Megan Neely, 2015

2014

"The Empathetic Gaze: Theresa Bernstein's Early Images of Women in New York City" 
Victoria Blanche Naden, 2014.

"Rites of Passage: Rineke Dijkstra’s New Mothers and Bullfighters Photographs"
Erin Dunn, 2014

"The Subtle Body in the Esoteric Buddhist Art of the Himalayas: Practice and Representation"
Linsday Ethridge, 2014 with Distinction

"The Roman Display Contexts of the Three-Figure Reliefs"
Natalie Fort, 2014

"Projection as Paradise in Sarah Morris’ Los Angeles"
Taylor Hobson, 2014

2013

“Avant-Garde Mechanics: Montage Structures in Germaine Krull’s Métal and Joris Ivens’ De Brug”
Erin McClenathan, 2013

"A Measure of Grace: Measured Icons of the Russian Tsars (16th to 19th c.)"
Stuart Gandy, 2013

2012

"A Colorado Landscape: George Caleb Bingham's View of Pike's Peak"
Maggie Deiters, 2012

"Pan's Follower: Baccio Bandinelli's Villano Statue at the Boboli Garden"
Kathryn Frances Hall, 2012

"(Dis)embodiment in Christian Marclay's Telephonic Series and Video Quartet"
Emelie Matthews, 2012

"'Continuous Rupture': Identity and Postcoloniality in Dr. Lakra's Tattooed Pin-ups"
Kristina Stoll, 2012

"Alphonse Mucha's Slav Epic and the Projection of Czech Identity"
Joan Tkacs, 2012

“Claude Cahun and the Photographic Self”
Angela Woodlee, 2012

2011

"Abolitionism, Memory, and the Civil War in William Louis Sonntag's Virginia Landscapes"
Samantha Cole, 2011

"Leonardo da Vinci's Saint Jerome in the Wilderness: An Image of Spiritual Beauty"
Lindsay Marie Cox, 2011

"Aubrey Beardsley, Oscar Wilde, and Salome as Aesthetic Parody"
Stacee L. Highsmith, 2011

"Space and Image: The Meaning of the Wall Paintings at the Hermitage of Ioannes (aka Ayvali Church, Cappadocia)"
Alev Turker, 2011

2010

"Building and Traversing a 'Pocket Cathedral'  an Interdisciplinary Reading of William Morris’s Wood Beyond the World"
Laura Golobish, 2010

"Through a Shifting Lens: The Photo Criticism of Francis Wey"
Maria Graffagnino, 2010

2009

“Photography, Presence, and Physicality in the Work of Vija Celmins"
D. Chad Alligood, 2009 with Distinction

"Hope for Salvation and Salvation Granted: The Bural Chapel and Reburial Ceremony of Pope Sixtus V in Santa Maria Maggiore"
Jenny M. Beene, 2009

“Cremaster 5: Mathew Barney and the Neo-Baroque”
Rebecca Brantley, 2009 with Distinction

"Erasing the Image, Revealing the Game: The Works of Paul Pfeiffer"
Nathanael Roesch, 2009 with Distinction

"The Indecorous Angel in Caravaggio's Inspiration of St. Matthew"
Katie Seefeldt, 2009

"Portrait / Icon / Code: Marc Quinn's DNA Portraits and the Imaging of the Self"
Brigette N. Thomas, 2009

2008

"The ceramic sculptures of Carl Walters (1883-1955)"
Micheal Antoni Karczewski, 2008

"Form as Content: The Miminalist Cube as Institutional Critique (1960-1969)"
Caroline Cason Barratt, 2008 with Distinction

“The Lascivie: Agostino Carracci’s Erotic Prints as the Sources for the Farnese Gallery Vault”
Waverley Wren Eubanks, 2008 with Distinction

"Elisabetta Sirani's Judith with the Head of Holofernes"
Jessica Cole Rubinski, 2008

2007

"An Image of Southern Repose: Intentions and Implications of Thomas Addison Richard's River Plantation"
Kate Bruce, 2007 with Distinction

"Victor Hugo and Surrealism: Phantom Drawings, Automatism and the Occult"
Jill Allison Miller, 2007

The Image of a Queen: The Representation of Catherine De’Medici as Penelope in the Galerie D’Ulysse”
Elizabeth Miller, 2007 with Distinction

2006

"Materiality, the Model and the Myth of Origins: Problems in Eighteenth-Century European Terracotta and its Reception"
Lauren R. Cannady, 2006

"Andea del Castagno's Last Supper"
Eva Maria Lundin, 2006

"How Do I Look: Identity and Photography in the Work of Nikki S. Lee"
Matthew R. McKinney, 2006

"The Riace Bronzes"
Michael Joseph Melen, 2006

"An Icon as a Prayer, a Poem as an Icon: The Personal Devotion of a Fourteenth-Century Poetess"
Bojana Bjelicic-Miletkov, 2006

2005

"The Artists of Les XX: Seeking and Responding to the Lure of Spain"
Caroline Conzatti, 2005

"Thomas Moran's The Old Bridge Over Hook Pond: Uncertain Crossings"
Sandra Ann Pauly, 2005

2004

"Man Ray and Futurism: An Overlooked Connection"
Sarah Carrison Bockel, 2004

"William Baziotes' Duality: Escaping the Ordinary and Finding the Extraordinary"
Sarah D. Crain, 2004

"Fra Angelico's Tempio Lamentation: A Consideration of its Function and Meaning"
Carissa Maria DiCindio, 2004

"Where Remote Futures Meet Remote Pasts: Prehistoric and Contemporary Earthworks"
Joshua Frederick Fisher, 2004

"Henrietta Shore in Point Lobos and Carmel: Spirit of Place, Essence of Being"
Mina Tocheva Stoeva, 2004

2003

"Nicolas Poussin's Realm of Flora: Painted Poetry in 17th-Century Rome"
Amy Marie Costrini, 2003 with Distinction

"Raphael's Lo Spasimo di Sicilia"
Monica Culqui Jordan, 2003

"Michelangelo's Last Judgment: The Influence of the Laocoon and His Sons"
Michael Paul Kemling, 2003

"The Influence of Caravaggio on Jacques-Louis David's Development of French Neo-Classical Painting"
Erin Claire Martin, 2003 with Distinction

"Gino Severini and the Symbolist Aesthetics of His Futurist Dance Imagery, 1910-1915"
Shannon N. Pritchard, 2003 with Distinction

2001

“Viewing the Back: The Reverse of Byzantine Icons”
Katherine Marsengill, 2001

"The Play of Nature: Nation and Domesticity in Winslow Homer's Croquet Series"
Heidi Domescik, 2001

"From Court to Pleasure Quarters"
Kendal Anne Korach, 2001

2000

"Han Dynasty Chinese Funerary Art in the Georgia Museum of Art"
You Mi Kim, 2000

"Myth and Monument: The Sculptural Image of Robert E. Lee and the Ideology of the Lost Cause"
Christopher R. Lawton, 2000

"Talking of Michelangelo: Mark Rothko's Interior, 1936"
Mary Beth Looney, 2000

"Robert Mapplethorpe's Use of Mirroring, Reflection, and Reversal 1949 to 1960"
Natalie C. Major, 2000

"An Analysis of the Form and Function of Gerrit Van Honthorst's Christ Before Caiphas"
Christine Rienstra-Kiracofe, 2000

"Fransciscan Pedagogy: The Transept Frescoes in the Lower Church, San Francesco, Assisi"
Lisa A. Walli, 2000

1999

"Early Iconography of the Indian Sun-God Surya"
David S. Efurd, 1999

"Max Ernst, Anticlericalism and the Crisis of Surrealism"
Kathryn M. Floyd, 1999

1998

"Italy and the North: Rogier Van Der Weyden's Medici Madonna"
Amy E. Bardakjy, 1998

"Images of Female Piety and Devotion in Domenico Beccafumi's Stigmatization of Saint Catherine of Siena Altarpiece"
Mary D. Koon, 1998

"A Diachronic Exploration of Two Groups of Mythical Women on Attic Vases on the Archaic and Classical Periods"
John Stephenson, 1998

"Joeseph Fleeing Potiphar's Wife: An Allegory of Cosimo I De'Medici as Politician, Patriarch and Spouse"
Marissa Vivona, 1998

1997

"The Franciscan Allegories in the Lower Church at San Francesco, Assisi: Form and Meaning"
Mary Anne Dougan, 1997

"James McNeil Whistler's The Artist in his Studio: A Study in the Concealment and Revelation of an Artist"
Rhonda Reymond, 1997

1996

"Search for Identity Feminism and the Art of Ana Mendieta"
Kelly Dawn Baker, 1996

"Rereading Originality and Repetition: Matisse's L'Ecorche"
Shannon Kelley, 1996

"A Transformation in Consciousness: The Art of Nancy Spero"
Mary Lee Sullivan, 1996

"A Reconsideration of Rosso Fiorentino's Dead Christ"
Tiffanie Townsend, 1996

1995

"Edouard Manet's Olympia: A Critical Analysis of the Literature"
Bradley P. Fratello, 1995

"Essential Character: Images of African Americans by Howard Cook"
D. Elise Blitch Drake, 1995

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Recent PhD Topics in Art History

 

The Flaying of Marsyas or the Judgment of Midas: Titian's Self-Portrait 'in malo"
Megan Neely, 2023 with distinction
Doctoral Advisor: Dr. Shelley Zuraw

Handheld Cinema: The Ephemeral Avant-Garde, C.1917-44
Erin McClenathan, 2018
Doctoral Advisor: Dr. Nell Andrew

Imaging the In-Between: The Serial Art of Richard Tuttle
Laura Lake Smith, 2017
Doctoral Advisor: Dr. Isabelle Wallace

Navigating a Land Divided: Charles Fraser, His Antebellum Landscapes, and the Refinement of Southern Taste
Sandy McCain, 2015
Doctoral Advisor: Dr. Janice Simon

The Power of Friendship: Amity and Politics in European Art and Gardens of the Eighteenth Century
Emily Everhart, 2015
Doctoral Advisor: Dr. Alisa Luxenberg

The Art of Reconciliation: The World's Industrial and Cotton Centennial Exposition, New Orleans 1884
Sandra Pauly, 2014
Doctoral Advisor: Dr. Janice Simon 

The Aesthetics of Absence: Mariele Neudecker, Thomas Demand, and Gregor Schneider
Sarah Crain, 2013
Doctoral Advisor: Dr. Isabelle Loring Wallace

Michelangelo as Patron: The Construction of his Artistic and Social Identities through Portraiture
Michael Paul Kemling, 2013
Doctoral Advisor: Dr. Shelley Zuraw

Giambologna's Bronze Pictures: The Narrative Reliefs for Ferdinando I de'Medici and the Post-Tridentine Paragone
Shannon N. Pritchard, 2010
Graduate Student Excellence in Research Award in Fine Arts, 2011
Doctoral Advisor: Dr. Shelley Zuraw

Cowboys and Indians: The American West in German Art of the Twentieth-Century
Teresa Bramlette Reeves, 2008
Doctoral Advisor: Dr. Evan Firestone

For Glory and for Beauty: Richard Morris Hunt, George Washington Vanderbilt, and All Soul's Church, Biltmore Village, North Carolina
Rhonda Laseman Reymond, 2006
Doctoral Advisor: Dr. Janice Simon

Narrative and Allegory in the Genesis Fresco Cycle in the Chiostro Verde, Santa Maria Novella, Florence
Amber Allison McAlister, 2003
Doctoral Advisor: Dr. Andrew Ladis

"In the Fullness of Time:" The Vault Mosaic in the Cappella Sant'Elena, Santa Croce in Gerusalemme, Rome
Cynthia Anne Payne, 2003
Graduate Student Excellence in Research Award in Fine Arts, 2004
Doctoral Advisor: Dr. Shelley Zuraw

Painting Monstrosities: The Grotesque, Mannerism, and Rosso Fiorentino
Tiffanie Paige Townsend, 2003
Doctoral Advisor: Dr. Shelley Zuraw

Franciscan Spirituality and Papal Reform: True Cross Cycles in Tuscany, 1388–1464
Phyllis M. Rambin, 1999
Doctoral Advisor: Andrew Ladis

The "Curious and Poite" World of William Hogarth's The Analysis of Beauty
Gail Kallins, 1998
Doctoral Adviser: Dr. Carolyn Wood

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