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Recent MA & PhD Topics in Art History

Recent MA Topics in Art History

  1. 2025

    “Reading Bodies: Coverage and Erasure in Betty Tompkins’ Apologia (Artemisia Gentileschi #1)
    Selby Ann Perkins, 2025

    “Vision in the Darkened Room: Science and Spirit in the Art of Georgiana Houghton”
    Kelsey Siegert, 2025

  2. 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

  3. 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

  4. 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

  5. 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

  6. 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

  7. 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

  8. 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

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

Last updated: September 7, 2025

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