Art of the United States
Dissertations in Progress by Subject, 2008

Show completed dissertations

Abbamontian, Ramela, “Armenian-American Artists: Forging a Diasporic Identity in Los Angeles” (UCLA, C. Villaseñor Black)

Anderson, Virginia, "'A State of Anxious Uncertainty': The Critical Reception of Jasper Johns, 1957–1987" (Boston, C. Jones, G. Williams)

Andrus, Timothy, “Stuart Davis’s Art Theory, 1920–1928” (Virginia Commonwealth, R. Hobbs)

Applegate, Heidi, “Staging Modernism at the 1915 San Francisco World's Fair” (Columbia, E. Hutchinson)

Atkins, Ashley, "Winslow Homer and Aestheticism in the United States" (Rutgers, W. Bellion)

Backer, Matthew, "Building a Brave New World: The Future Made Present at Chicago's Century of Progress Exposition, 1933–34" (Indiana, Bloomington, S. Burns)

Bailey, Matthew, "Turbulent Bodies: Disruptive Materiality in American Painting, 1890–1950" (Washington University, A. Miller)

Ball, Jeffrey, "The Missouri State Capitol: Architecture, Mural Painting, and Sculptural Decoration" (Missouri, O. Overby)

Beggs, Margo, “Harriet Hosmer (1830 to 1908): The ‘Sister Arts,’ Modernity, and the ‘American Sculptress’” (Toronto, M. Gotlieb)

Bilbo, Rebecca, "The Art Academy of Cincinnati: A Social, Cultural, and Institutional History" (Indiana, Bloomington, S. Burns)

Boone, Jobyl, "Christo and Jean-Claude in the Unites States, 1964–2005” (Delaware, A. Gibson)

Brooks, Leronn, “An Art of Resistance: The Legacy of Hale Woodruff (1900–1980)” (CUNY, K. Manthorne)

Buckner, Cindy Medley, “Sketched on Copper: The Etching Revival in Late Nineteenth-Century America” (CUNY, S. Webster)

Buhler, Doyle L., “Capturing the Game: The Artist-Sportsman and Animal Conservation in American Hunting Imagery, 1844–1894” (Iowa, J. Kinsey)

Burgess, Lana A., “Advancing American Art: Survival of an Idea” (Florida State, K. Bearor)

Byrd, Dana E., "Reconstructions: Material Life of the Postbellum Plantation, 1861–1877" Yale, E. Cooke Jr.)

Campbell, Kathryn, “Imaging Russia during the Cold War: Photographs in Life Magazine, 1945–1962” (Virginia Commonwealth, R. Hobbs)

Campbell, Mary, “Holy Lands and Profane Women: Charles Ellis Johnson and the Practice of Mormon Photography” (Stanford, B. Wolf)

Carr, H. Christian, “Sweet Briar, 1800–1900: Palladian Plantation House, Italianate Villa, Aesthetic Retreat” (Virginia Commonwealth, C. Brownell)

Carroll, Katherine, "Modernizing the American Medical School, 1893–1940: Architecture, Pedagogy, Professionalization, and Philanthropy" (Boston, K. Morgan)

Cooper, Lynda, “The Larz and Isabel Anderson House, Washington, D.C., by Little & Browne (1902–1905)” (Virginia Commonwealth, C. Brownell)

Costello, Eileen Elizabeth, "Between the Easel and the Mural: The Dissolution of Abstract Expressionist Painting into the Realm of Architecture" (UT Austin, R. Shiff)

Coyle, Heather Campbell, “Having Fun with Art: Pranks, Performances, and Parody in American Art Schools, 1890–1915” (Delaware, M. Leja, M. Werth)

Curtiss, Kimberly, “Painting Skin: The Construction of Racial Identity through Representations of American Indians in Jacksonian America, ca. 1828–1848” (Rutgers, W. Bellion)

Dasch, Rowena Houghton, “‘Now Exhibiting’: Charles Bird King’s Picture Gallery; Fashioning Taste and Nation, 1824–1861” (UT Austin, S. Rather)

Davis, Alexandra, "'Artists Look Like This': Representations of Artists in
American Mass-Market Magazines, 1923–1951" (Pennsylvania, M. Leja)

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

Delamaire, Marie-Stéphanie, “Transatlantic Encounters: Franco-American Artistic Exchanges in the Civil War Era” (Columbia, E. Hutchinson)

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

Dierkes, Anne-Louise, “Assemblage as Opposition: California’s Counterculture and the Struggle for U.S. Cultural Definition” (CUNY, A. Chave)

Dooley, Michael C., “Citizen Bird: American Ornithological Art of the Progressive Era and the Beginnings of the Bird Conservation Movement” (Iowa, J. Kinsey)

Douberley, Amanda Ann, “The Corporate Model: Sculpture, Architecture, and the American City, 1954–1969” (UT Austin, A. Reynolds)

Elder, Nika, “Show and Tell: Representation, Communication, and the Still Lifes of William M. Harnett” (Princeton, R. DeLue)

Elliott, Katherine L., "Epic Encounters: Nineteenth- and Early Twentieth-Century Representations of First Contact" (Iowa, J. Kinsey)

Ellis, Amy, "‘Not a Mere Leaf-Painter’: Thomas Cole and the Figure" (Columbia, J. Crary, E. Hutchinson)

Faletti, Rina Cathleen, “Water, Architecture, and Landscape in California and the American West” (UT Austin, M. Charlesworth, R. Shiff)

Fay, Brendan, "American Photography and Abstraction, 1940–1960: Minor White, Aaron Siskind, and Harry Callahan" (Harvard, R. Kelsey)

Fisher, Joshua F., "The Spiral Jetty in the Landscape of Time and Space" (Iowa, C. Adcock)

Folland, Thomas F., “Robert Rauschenberg’s Combines and a Queer Neo-Avant-Garde, 1954–59” (UCLA, G. Baker)

Foutch, Ellery, “Arresting Beauty: The Perfectionist Impulse in Peale’s Butterflies, Heade’s Hummingbirds, Blaschka’s Flowers, and Sandow’s Body” (Pennsylvania, M. Leja)

Fredericks, Keri, “‘Black Saturday’: Eudora Welty’s Unpublished Photographic Essay of Depression-Era Mississippi” (Florida State, R. Neuman)

George, Angela, "The Old New World: Unearthing Mesoamerican Antiquity in the Art and Culture of the United States, 1839–1893" (Maryland, College Park, S. Promey)

Gerhold, Emily, “American Beauties: The Cult of the Bosom in Nineteenth-Century American Art and Culture” (Virginia Commonwealth, E. Garberson)

Glenn, Kimberly L., "The Chicago Renaissance: Art, Racial Pride, and Identity" (Iowa, B. Mooney)

Glick, Paula F., “The Life and Career of Paul Sample” (Columbia, E. Hutchinson, D. Rosand)

Glisson, James, “Anxiety and Occlusion: New York in the Imagination of American Impressionist and Ashcan School Artists, 1885–1914” (Northwestern, S. H. Clayson)

Gohari, Sybil E., "Through the Looking Glass: Race and Gender in the Reception of Helen Frankenthaler's and Alma Thomas's Paintings" (Maryland, College Park, R. Ater)

Gönlügür, Emre, “The Promise of Modernization in Architectural Backwaters: The Americanization of Postwar Turkish Architectural Culture” (Toronto, P. Scrivano)

Green, Midori, "Sec's Appeal: The Secretary in American Popular Culture, 1900–1964" (Minnesota, K. Solomonson)

Green, Robin C., "'A Certain Slant of Light': Exhilaration, Oppression, and the Forces of Sunlight in American Impressionism" (Yale, A. Nemerov)

Greene, Nikki, “The Rhythm of Glue, Grease, and Grime: Body and Indexicality in the Works of Romare Bearden, David Hammons, and Renée Stout" (Delaware, A. Gibson)

Greenhalgh, Adam, “Risky Business: Chance and Contingency in American Art, 1876–1907” (Maryland, College Park, F. Kelly, S. Promey)

Gustafson, Donna, "At Home in the ’60s: Images of the Home in American Art, 1960–1970" (Rutgers, J. Marter)

Hagood, Martha, “Representing the Truth: Realism, Sensationalism, and the Progressive Era Picture Press, 1902–1913” (Delaware, B. Herman)

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

Hensley, Christal, “The Cult of Personality: Gertrude Stein and the Development of the Object Portrait in the American Visual Arts” (Florida State, K. Bearor)

Hill, Jason, “The Artist as Reporter: Picturing the News in PM Daily, 1940–48” (USC, R. Meyer)

Hixson, Kathryn Ann, “Body to Image: The 1970s” (UT Austin, R. Shiff)

Holochwost, Catherine Reed, “Landscape as Machine: Vision and Imagination in Nineteenth-Century American Painting” (Delaware, W. Bellion)

Howe, Catherine, “Mean Men and Average Joes: The Representation and Transformation of the Average American Man in the United States, 1917–1945” (UC Santa Barbara, B. Robertson)

Huerta, Monica, “Is it Real?” (Michigan, R. Zurier)

Hyde, Kimberly, “Louis C. Tiffany and the Business of Art” (Case Western Reserve, H. Adams)

Ikemoto, Wendy, "The Space Between: Paired Paintings in Antebellum America" (Harvard, J. Roberts)

Jones, Penny, "Figural Trees: Artistic Response to Forest Loss in Nineteenth-Century America" (Columbia, E. Hutchinson)

Kaiserlian, Michelle, "Artistic Responses to The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám in Great Britain and the United States, ca. 1890–1930" (Indiana, Bloomington, M. Facos)

Karpinskaia, Natalia, "Landscape Art and Landscape Attitudes in Russia and America" (Columbia, B. Novak)

Katz, Roberta Gray, “Mediated by Text: The Literary Paintings of Thomas Cole” (UIC, D. Sokol)

Kelly, Sarah E., "Camera's Lens and Mind's Eye: Whistler and the Science of Art" (Columbia, D. Rosand)

Kiefer, Evelyn, “The Birth and Death of the American Dining Room: An Evolution from the Colonial Hall to Frank Lloyd Wright’s Dining Rooms and Beyond” (Case Western Reserve, H. Adams)

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

Knappe, Stephanie, “‘Art Perpetuating Fame’: The Visual Imagery of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West” (Kansas, C. Eldredge)

Knox, Page, "Scribner's Monthly/The Century: A Vehicle of Aesthetic Thought in Late-Nineteenth-Century America" (Columbia, E. Hutchinson)

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

Kurtz, Amy, "Old Worlds and New: Edward Lamson Henry (1814–1919), Conservative Genre Painting" (Yale, J. Prown)

Kuykendall, Lara, “By Popular Demand: The Hero in American Art, ca. 1929–1945” (Kansas, C. Eldredge)

LaFountain, Jason, "A History of New England Puritan Art" (Harvard, J. Roberts)

Laster, Margaret, “Collecting and Patronage of European Art in Gilded Age New York and Newport: Catharine Lorillard Wolfe” (CUNY, P. Mainardi, K. Manthorne)

Lawton, Saadia, “Representing the Representative: Visual Binaries of the Wedgwood Slave Medallion, 1787–1887" (Wisconsin, Madison, A. Andrzejewski)

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

Lemay, Kate C., "Forgotten Memorials: The American Military Cemeteries in France from World War II" (Indiana, Bloomington, S. Burns)

Liakos, Barbaranne E., "The Civil War and Collective Memory: Reconstructing the National Conflict in Paintings and Prints, 1869–1894" (Iowa, J. Kinsey)

Lindenberger, Laura, “Southern Art Communities and Regional Feelings, 1930–1945” (UT Austin, A. Reynolds)

Loechle, Anne M., "Ye Intruders Beware: Masculinity, Vicarious Adventure, and Fantastical Pirates in the Golden Age of Illustration and Beyond" (Indiana, Bloomington, S. Burns)

Luarca-Shoaf, Nenette, "The Place of the Mississippi River in Antebellum Visual Culture and Imagination" (Delaware, W. Bellion)

Madsen, Annelise, “Model Citizens: Mural Painting, Pageantry, and the Art of Civic Life in Progressive America” (Stanford, W. Corn)

Mann, Crawford Alexander, III, "When in Rome: Italian Travel and the Pursuit of the Ideal Male Body in Antebellum American Art" (Yale, A. Nemerov)

Markovitz, Holly, "Reframing the Frontier: Rephotography, Repetition, and Return" (Boston, K. Sichel)

Marley, Anna, “Rooms with a View: Landscape Representation in Early National Domestic Interiors” (Delaware, W. Bellion)

May, Jessica, "Off the Clock: Walker Evans and the Crisis of Capital" (UC Berkeley, M. Lovell)

Mazow, Alissa Walls, “Plantae, Animalia, Fungi: Transformations of Natural History in Contemporary American Art” (Penn State, S. Rich)

Mcatee, Cammie, "Form and Formalism in American Architecture in the 1950s and '60s" (Harvard, N. Levine)

Mcguire, Heather, “John Baldessari: Blasted Allegories” (Virginia Commonwealth, R. Hobbs)

Middleman, Rachel, “Filthy Pictures or a New Eros? Erotic Art by Women Artists in New York, 1963–1973” (USC, R. Meyer)

Miller, Jennifer, “In the Flesh: The Burlesque Theater in American Art and Visual Culture” (USC, R. Meyer)

Miller, Mark Parker, “Claiming and Denying Sophistication: Grant Wood’s Art and Responses to It, 1930–1942” (Delaware, A. Gibson)

Miller, Sarah, “Inventing ‘Documentary’ in American Photography, 1930–1945” (Chicago, J. Snyder)

Ming, Leta, “‘Art is anything you can get away with’: Tom Marioni and Bay Area Conceptualism, 1968–1979” (USC, R. Meyer)

Morris, Anthony, “The Censored Paintings of Paul Cadmus: Contesting the Boundary between Decent and Vulgar, 1934–1940” (Case Western Reserve, H. Adams)

Moss, Dorothy, “Recasting the Copy: Original Paintings and Reproductions at the Dawn of American Mass Culture, ca. 1900” (Delaware, M. Leja, M. Werth)

Murley, James, “The Impact of Edward Perry Warren’s Collecting on the Study of Greek and Roman Art in American Academia” (Louisville, L. Gigante)

Murphy, Jessica, "Portraiture and Feminine Identity in the Stieglitz Circle: Agnes Ernst Meyer, Katharine Rhoades, and Marion Beckett" (Delaware, M. Werth)

Naeem, Asma, "'The Imagery of the Ear': Listening, Sound, and Sound Technologies in American Art, 1850–1950" (Maryland, College Park, S. Promey)

Newton, Gregory, “The Emergence of Monochrome Painting in 1950s New York” (CUNY, A. Chave)

Niedzielski-Eichner, Nora, “Integrating Modernism: The Migration Paintings of Douglas, Lawrence, and Bearden” (Stanford, B. Wolf)

Nygard, Travis, “The Art of Agribusiness: How Visual Culture Shaped Grain Production in the U.S., 1893–1943” (Pittsburgh, K. Savage)

Palm, Nancy, "Unsettling Identities: Indian Iconography in Thomas Cole's National Landscapes" (Indiana, Bloomington, S. Burns)

Peiffer, Prudence, "Routine Extremism: Ad Reinhardt and Modern Art" (Harvard, Y-A. Bois)

Pohrt, Tanya, “Touring Pictures: The Exhibition of American History Paintings in the Early Republic” (Delaware, M. Leja, W. Bellion)

Powers, Sarah, “Images of Tension: City and Country in the Work of Charles Sheeler, Edward Hopper, and Thomas Hart Benton” (Delaware, A. Gibson, M. Leja)

Price, Marshall, “John Ferren and the Development of Abstraction” (CUNY, K. Manthorne)

Pultz, Janet, "Christian Abrahamsen (1887–1983), Norwegian-American Portrait Painter" (Missouri, O. Overby)

Raab, Jennifer, "Frederic Church and the Culture of Detail” (Yale, A. Nemerov)

Rees, Nathan, "Esoteric Primitivism: The Transcendental Painting Group and Native American Cultures" (Maryland, College Park, S. Promey)

Renn, Melissa, "Life Magazine in the Art World, 1936–1972 (Boston, P. Hills, K. N. Morgan)

Roach, Leigh Anne, “A Positive, Popular Art: Sources, Structure, and Impact of Gyorgy Kepes’s Language of Vision” (Florida State, K. Bearor)

Robertson, Breanne, “Forging a New World Nationalism: Native Mexico in United States Art and Visual Culture, 1933–1945” (Maryland, College Park, S. Promey)

Robertson, Letha Clair, “The Art of Thomas Hicks and Celebrity Culture in Mid-Nineteenth-Century New York” (Kansas, C. Eldredge)

Roeder, Katherine, "Cultivating Dreamfulness: Fantasy, Longing, and Commodity Culture in the Work of Winsor McCay” (Delaware, M. Leja, M. Werth)

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

Rosenbaum, Sarah, “In the Public Domain: Public Art, Advanced Capitalism, and the Contemporary City” (Harvard, Y-A. Bois)

Rottner, Nadja, "Claes Oldenburg and the Emergence of the ‘Happening’" (Columbia, J. Rajchman, R. Krauss, B. Joseph)

Sablove, Henrietta, "Study Abroad: American Architects and Their Travel Sketches, 1850–1920" (Rutgers, C. Yanni)

Samet, Jennifer, “Another New York School: The ‘Secret History’ of Figurative Painting, 1960–1980” (CUNY, P. Mainardi)

Scanlan, Patricia S., "'God-gifted girls': Women Illustrators, Gender, Class, and Commerce in American Visual Culture, 1885–1925" (Indiana, Bloomington, S. Burns)

Scott, Emily, “Wasteland Aesthetics: Art and the Postindustrial Landscape, 1962–1972” (UCLA, M. Kwon)

Scruggs, Dalila, “'The Love of Liberty Has Brought Us Here': The American Colonization Society and the Imaging of African-American Settlers in Liberia, West Africa" (Harvard, S. Blier)

Sels, Kim, "Assembling Identity: The Object-Portrait in American Art, 1917–1927" (Rutgers, J. Marter)

Sherry, Karen, “Exposing the ‘Natural’ Woman: Female Bodies in American Visual Culture, 1785 to 1830” (Delaware, M. Leja, W. Bellion)

Sivard, Susan, "The Volcano in European and American Art, 1770–1865" (Columbia, B. Novak, E. Hutchinson)

Snook, Sarah, "The Development of the American Art Market in Antebellum New York" (Columbia, E. Hutchinson, D. Rosand)

Smith, Jerry, “Auto-America: The Automobile and American Art, ca. 1900–1950” (Kansas, C. Eldredge)

Stamey, Emily, “Pop, Place, and Personal Identity in the Art of Roger Shimomura” (Kansas, D. Cateforis, C. Eldredge)

Stephens, Rachel E., "Ralph E. W. Earl and the Myth of Jacksonian Politics" (Iowa, J. Kinsey)

Stevens, Jolee, “Modern Art and Modern Movement: Images of Dance in American Art, ca. 1900–1950” (Kansas, C. Eldredge)

Stuart, Carolyn, “American Autoscapes: The View from the Road, 1920–1949” (UCLA, S. Nelson)

Swisher, Christine, “American Home, American Dream: Home Economics, Housing, and the University Response to Immigration, 1899–1933” (Penn State, C. Zabel)

Talbott, Jennifer, “Avis Mortis: Ornithology and Modern American Art” (Kansas, C. Eldredge)

Terry, Colleen, "William Hogarth's Prints in British North America" (Delaware, B. Herman)

Tomlin, Patrick, “Op Art: Painting, Perception, and Visual Culture in the Sixties” (Northwestern, C. Lambert-Beatty)

Toteva, Maia Todorova, "Language Use in Conceptual Art: Eastern European and North American Strategies" (UT Austin, R. Shiff)

Trent, Mary, "Innocence Reproduced: Girlhood in the Art of Joseph Cornell and Henry Darger" (UC Irvine, C. Whiting)

Tsen, Hsuan, “Spectacles of Authenticity: The Emergence of Mass Entertainment in Japan and America, 1890–1910” (Stanford, S. Bukatman)

Tuite, Diana, “Methods for Modernism: Arthur Wesley Dow Intersects the Stieglitz Circle” (Princeton, J. Wilmerding)

Vincenti, Marissa, “Our Spiritual Strivings: Gurdjieffian Philosophy, Spiritualism, and Politics in the Art of Aaron Douglas” (Duke, R. Powell)

Walz, Jonathan, "The New Face of Modernism: Anti-Mimetic Portraiture and the American Avant-Garde, 1912–1927" (Maryland, College Park, S. Promey)

Warak, Melissa Christine, “Sound Exchange: Interactions of Music and Art, 1955–1976” (UT Austin, L. Henderson)

Weathers, Chelsea Lea, “Shooting Underground: Andy Warhol’s Cinema and the Making of a Public Image, 1963–1966” (UT Austin, A. Reynolds)

Wilde, Tamara L., “Virgins and Vixens: Women, Musical Instruments, and Identity in Gilded Age Art” (Iowa, J. Kinsey)

Witt, Susan Powell, “The Gendered Language of War: Picturing the Parlor in Civil War America” (Stanford, B. Wolf)

Wofford, Tobias, “Constructing Africa: The Visualization of Homeland and Diaspora in African American Art during the 1960s and 1970s” (UCLA, S. Nelson)

Wolf, Vanessa, "Surplus Feeling: War and Remembrance in Lee Bontecou's Wall Reliefs, 1958–1966” (Yale, A. Nemerov)

Yoshida, Atsushi, "Modern Eremites: Art and the Vocation of Withdrawal in Gilded Age America" (Washington University, A. Miller)

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