Contemporary Art
Dissertations in Progress by Subject, 2012

Show completed dissertations

Aldridge, Kelly Rae, “Crumbs from the Revolutionary Table” (Stony Brook University, Z. Patterson)

Aronowicz, Miriam, “The Triangle Arts Trust: Contemporary Art and Transnational Production” (Toronto, E. Harney)

Autry, La Tanya, “The Crossroads of Commemoration: Lynching Landscapes in America” (Delaware, C. Holloway)

Bares, Eva, “Finding Place: Diaspora Experiences in Contemporary African Women’s Art” (Stony Brook University, B. Frank)

Becker, Natasha, “Local vs. Global: The Johannesburg Bienniales and the Production of Contemporary Art in a Post-Apartheid South Africa” (Binghamton University, T. McDonough)

Berrill, Margot, “Kitchen Humour: Feminist Video Art and Pop Culture” (UIC, H. Higgins)

Bick, Tenley, “Capital and Rags: Michelangelo Pistoletto in Turin, 1958–1972” (UCLA, G. Baker)

Blakinger, John R., “Artist Under Technocracy: Gyorgy Kepes and the Vanguard of Cold War Science” (Stanford, P. Lee)

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

Cammarata-Seale, Heather, “The Actual Animal: Taxidermy in Contemporary Art” (Rutgers, J. Marter)

Cappetta, Andrew, “Pop/Art: The Birth of Underground Music and the British Art School, 1960–1980” (CUNY, C. Bishop)

Chatalbash, Rachel, “Contemporary Art and Internationalism at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, 1952–1988” (CUNY, A. Chave)

Chisholm, Anna, “Fred Wilson’s ‘Un-Natural’ Histories: Race, Trauma, and the Visual Production of Knowledge” (Minnesota, J. Blocker)

Cho, Hyeok, “Can the Subaltern Artist Speak? Postmodernity, Femininity, and Racial Identity in Lee Bul’s Art” (Binghamton University, J. Tagg)

Choi, Jung E., “Impossible Geography: Spatiality in Experiential Technosphere” (Duke, M. Hansen)

Chubb, Emma, “Of Margins and Migrations: Representations of Moroccanness in Contemporary Art” (Northwestern, H. Feldman)

Cornejo, Kency, “Visual Disobedience: The Geopolitics of Experimental Art in Central America, 1990–Present” (Duke, K. Stiles, E. Gabara)

Crain, Sarah, “The Aesthetics of Absence: Thomas Demand, Mariele Neudecker, and Gregor Schneider” (Georgia, I. Wallace)

DaPonte, Amy, “Critical Publicity: Candida Höfer’s Public Space Photographs, 1968 to Present” (Stanford, P. Lee)

Debin, Megan Lorraine, “Body Traces: Performance Against Violence in Mexico, 1994–2012” (UCLA, C. Villaseñor-Black)

Dees, Janet, “The Evidence of Things Not Seen: Performance Art as Art History” (Delaware, A. Gibson)

DeLand, Lauren, “Invisible Men: The Risks and Pleasures of Self-Portrayal in the Work of Contemporary American Male Artists” (Minnesota, J. Blocker)

Dell’Aria, Annie “The Moving Image in Public Art: US and UK, 1980–Present” (CUNY, H. Senie)

Dickenson, Rachelle, “A Question of Sovereignty: Indigenous Art Education in Canadian Universities” (York University, R. Hill)

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

Ditner, Judy, “War at a Distance: Conceptual Realism in Contemporary Art” (Boston, K. Sichel)

Erickson, Ruth, “Assembling Social Forms: Sociological Art Practice in Post-1968 France” (Pennsylvania, C. Poggi)

Evans, Emily Joyce, “The Search for Proletarian Photography, 1926–1936” (UIUC, T. Weissman)

Ewing, Margaret, “Unsettling the Politics of Reckoning: Hans Haacke in Germany” (UIUC, S. Hudson)

Ferber, Andrea, “Transhistoricity and Aestheticized Violence: Nancy Spero’s Works on Paper” (UIUC, S. Hudson)

Funk, Tiffany, “The Prosthetic Aesthetic: An Art of Anxious Extensions” (UIC, H. Higgins)

Gaitan, Juán, “Act Without Image” (University of British Columbia, S. Guilbaut)

Galliera, Izabel, “Reclaiming Public Life, Building Public Spheres: Contemporary Art, Institutions, and Exhibitions in Post-1989 Europe” (Pittsburgh, T. Smith)

Gerspacher, Arnaud “Posthuman Animals in Art: France and Belgium 1972–85” (CUNY, C. Bishop)

Gogan, Jessica, “Experiment, Construct, Care: Art, Pedagogy, and Participation in Contemporary Art Museums” (Pittsburgh, T. Smith)

Gonzalez, Maria del Mar, “Proofing the Nation: Contested Displays of Identity at the San Juan Print Biennial, 1970–2009” (UIUC, O.E. Vázquez)

Gyorody, Andrea, “‘To Reproduce is Human’: Joseph Beuys and the Multiple” (UCLA, G. Baker)

Harbin, Virginia Allison, “Visual Excess in Contemporary Art by Women” (Rutgers, T. Flores)

Harren, Natilee, “Objects Without Object: The Artwork in Flux, 1958–1969” (UCLA, G. Baker)

Heer, Melissa, “Embodied Space: Performance Art and Public Engagement at the Regional Arts Performance and Events Gathering in Guwahati, Assam” (Minnesota, J. Blocker)

Herrero Matoses, Fernando, “Antonio Saura: The Spanish Avant-Garde and the Monster” (UIUC, J. Fineberg)

Jackson, Katherine, “The Art as Social Worker? The Community Art Movement in the UK and Re-examining the Role of the Artist in Contemporary Society” (University of British Columbia, J. Mansoor)

Jans, Rachel, “Art on the Border: Galerie René Block in 1960s and 70s Berlin and New York” (Chicago, C. Mehring)

Jardim de Santa Cruz Oliveira, Teresa Cristina, “Global Conceptualism and Cildo Meireles’s Cultural Critique” (UIUC, I. Small)

Kalinsky, Yelena, “Collective Actions: Moscow Conceptualism, Performance, and the Archive, 1976–1995” (Rutgers, J. Sharp)

Kart, Susan, “From Direct Carving to Recuperation: The Art of Moustapha Dime in Post-Independence Senegal, 1974–1997” (Columbia, E. Hutchinson, B. Lawal)

Kerrigan, Katie, “Cataloguing Critique: Experimental Forms of Documentation in American Art, 1970–1977” (USC, R. Meyer)

Kienle, Miriam, “Community at a Distance: The Networked Art of Ray Johnson” (UIUC, T. Weissman)

Kim, Joy Jeehye, “New Documents to Pictures: Lee Friedlander and the Re-Making of the Photographic Image, 1962–1989” (Yale, D. Joselit)

Klorman-Eraqi, Na’ama, “Feminism and Photography in 1970s–1980s Britain” (Binghamton University, J. Tagg)

Kovach, Jodi, “Remotely Mexican: Recent Work by Gabriel Orozco, Carlos Amorales, and Pedro Reyes” (Washington University, A. Miller)

Kuntz, Katrina, “The Art of Failure” (Stony Brook University, A. Uroskie)

Kuo, Michelle, “To Avoid the Waste of a Cultural Revolution: Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T.), 1966–1979” (Harvard, Y-A. Bois, B. Buchloh)

Kutis, Barbara, “Artist-Parents: Nature, Nurture, and Identity in Contemporary Art” (Delaware, A. Gibson)

Lacis, Indra, “Contemporary Art Star: Marina Abramović and the Celebrity Female Artist” (Case Western Reserve, E. Landau)

Lau, Charlene, “Total Work of Fashion: Bernhard Willhelm and the Contemporary Avant-Garde” (York University, J. Fisher)

Lawrence, Nora, “Dan Flavin’s Histories” (CUNY, A. Chave)

Lee, Joo Yun, “Sensuous Communities: Materialized Spectatorship and New Media Art” (Stony Brook University, Z. Patterson)

Lee, Anna, “Amateurs: Photography and the Aesthetics of Vulnerability” (Chicago, D. English)

Lee, SooJin, “Born in Asia, Made in New York: Persona Art of International Star Artists” (UIC, H. Higgins)

Lortie, Marie, “Afrique en Créations: French Patronage of Contemporary Art from Africa and the Diaspora” (Toronto, E. Harney)

Louria-Hayon, Adi, “Folding Spaces and Porous Bodies: Sound and Sight in Bruce Nauman’s Oeuvre” (Toronto, M. Cheetham)

Madura, Joe, “Revising Minimal Art in the AIDS Crisis, 1984–1998” (Emory, J. Meyer)

Marcus, Daniel, “The Banality of Speed: Automotive Modernity in Interwar France” (UC Berkeley, T. Clark)

Maroja, Camila, “Framing Latin American Art: Contemporary Institutions and the Configuration of Cultural Identity” (Duke, K. Stiles, E. Gabara)

Martynyuk, Olena, “Center-Periphery Dialogues in Moscow’s Post-Conceptual Artistic Communities of 1980s–1990s” (Rutgers, J. Sharp)

Matuszak, Joanna, “Assertions of Identity: Russian Performance Art in the Aftermath of Perestroika” (Indiana, J. Kennedy)

Maydanchik, Michelle, “Creative Disruption: Performance Art in Post-Soviet Moscow" (Chicago, M. Jackson)

McCormick, A. Morgan, “The Myth of Multiculturalism: The Works of Roger Shimomura” (Florida State, L. Weingarden)

McDowell, Tara, “Image Nation: The Art of Jess, 1951–1991” (UC Berkeley, A. Wagner)

McKay, Sally, “Bodies in Thought: Neuroaesthetics and the Critical Practice of Art History” (York University, J. Fisher)

Mecugni, Anna, “A Voyage of Identities: Luigi Ontani and the Postmodern Question in 1970s Italy” (CUNY, R. Golan)

Mericle, Robin, “A World without Water: Explorations of the American Desert in Contemporary Art since 1990” (UIC, H. Higgins)

Moon, Kavior, “Institutional Engagement: Works by Michael Asher, 1969–2011” (UCLA, M. Kwon)

Myers, Cerise, “The Visible Posthuman: Envisioning Agency for the Cybernetic Self in Digital Culture” (Minnesota, J. Blocker)

Nazarian, Ania, “In Transit: The Art of Francis Alÿs, Kimsooja, Kinga Araya, and Others” (Indiana, J. Kennedy)

Olivas, Yvonne, “System Withdrawal: Lee Lozano’s General Strike” (Stony Brook University, Z. Patterson)

Oliver, Alexandra, “Critical Realism and Contemporary Photography” (Pittsburgh, J. Ellenbogen)

Orgeman, Keely, “Visualizing the Irradiated Body and Radioactive Landscape in American Art, 1945–2010” (Boston, P. Hills)

Parent, Vanessa, “Viennese Actionism and Hermann Nitsch’s Performance of Finitude: Event, Subjecthood, and the Building of Community” (University of British Columbia, J. Mansoor)

Parke, Elizabeth, “Infrastructures of Critique: The Art and Visual Cultures of Contemporary Beijing” (Toronto, J. Purtle)

Perucic, Nadia, “From Fiction to Fact: The Need to Document in Post-Yugoslav Visual Art from 1991 to the Present” (CUNY, C. Bishop)

Prater, Erika, “Through the Woods: Fairy Tales, Documenta, and Kassel’s Cultural Export” (Minnesota, J. Blocker)

Quick, Jennifer, “The Dynamics of Skill: Ed Ruscha, 1956–1970” (Harvard, R. Kelsey)

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

Raabe, Vanessa, “Dissident Desires: Mapping Queer Ethos in Chilean Visual Art, 1975–1990” (UCLA, C. Villaseñor-Black)

Richard, Laura, “Prime Meridian: Time for Maria Nordman” (UC Berkeley, J. Bryan-Wilson)

Rivera, Katja, “Visualizing Translation: Felipe Ehrenberg 1964–2012” (UIC, H. Higgins)

Rosenblum, Beth, “From ‘Special Period’ Aesthetics to Global Relevance in Cuban Art: Tania Bruguera, Carlos Garaicoa, and Los Carpinteros” (UCLA, D. Kunzle)

Rounthwaite, Adair, “Rearrangements: Politics and Pedagogy at the Dia Art Foundation, 1988–89” (Minnesota, J. Blocker, J. Marshall)

Routh, Mitali, “Ice Water Steam: Sculpture, Performance, and Moving Images, 1958–2003” (Duke, K. Stiles)

Ruff, Georgina, “A Medium to Transform the Power of the Sun: The Untold Story of the Immersive Apparatus” (UIC, H. Higgins)

Salas, Alexis, “Performing the Making: Uses of Public Spheres of Collaboration by Artists in Mexico City, 1987–2003” (UT Austin, A. Giunta)

Sanders, Sophie, “Synergy and Counterpoint: African-Derived Patterns in Contemporary Art” (Temple, G. Silk)

Sasse, Julie, “Blurred Boundaries: The Hybrid Beings of Patricia Piccinini” (University of Arizona, P. Ivey)

Schoenberger, Janna, “Ludic Conceptualism: Art and Play in the Netherlands from 1959–1975” (CUNY, R. Golan)

Shin, Chunghoon, “Art as Spatial Critique: South Korean Visual Arts since the Late 1960s” (Binghamton University, T. McDonough)

Simblist, Noah, “Psychogeographies of Occupation: Art and Politics at the Borderland” (UT Austin, A. Reynolds)

Smith, Ginger Elliott, “Practicing Big Science: Artists, Technology, and Institutions in 1960s and 1970s Southern California” (Boston, G. Williams)

Smucker, David, “Auto-Centric Photography and the Traveling Index” (Stony Brook University,
A. Uroskie)

Smulevitz, Cara, “Contemporary Feminist Art and the Legacy of Joanie4Jackie” (UIC, H. Higgins)

Solomon, Virginia, “Modeling Queer Methods: General Idea’s Art and Politics, 1969–1994” (USC, R. Meyer)

Stanek, Damon, “Seeing the Light: A History of the Projected Image in the Gallery, (1963–Present)” (CUNY, C. Bishop)

Szymanek, Angelique, “The Fear of Rape, the Threat of Looking: Performance, Activism, and Spectatorship” (Binghamton University, T. McDonough)

Tanga, Martina, “Acts of Disengagement: Italian Art in the 1970s” (Boston, G. Williams)

Tani, Ellen, “Black Conceptualism and the Atmospheric Turn, 1968–2008” (Stanford, P. Lee)

Telfair, Catherine, “Stillness: Subject and Space in Symbolist Portraiture” (UC Berkeley, T. Clark)

Thompson, Allison, “Arriving at the Caribbean: Constructing Visual Representations of Transatlantic and Transcultural Experience” (Stony Brook University, B. Frank)

Thwaits, Anne, “Where Art Meets Science: Arts-based Experiences in Science and Natural History Museums” (University of Arizona, E. Garber)

Triandos, Theodore, “A Social History of Postmodern Art and Its Criticism” (Delaware, A. Gibson, C. Holloway)

Tumbas, Jasmina, “In the Specter of Sovereignty: Experimental Art in Hungary and Yugoslavia circa 1968–1989” (Duke, K. Stiles)

Tyson, John, “Hans Haacke: Beyond ‘Systems Esthetics’” (Emory, J. Meyer)

Uchill, Rebecca, “From Atmospheres to Transactions: Art, Experience, and Alexander Dorner's Audience, 1920–1960” (MIT, C. Jones)

Voss, Annemarie, “Incremental Remedies: Contemporary Women Artists and Ecology, 1980–2000” (Rutgers, J. Marter)

Warbelow, Anna, “Camping the Canon: Artifice and Identity in Yasumasa Morimura’s Photographic Self Portraiture” (Washington University, A. Miller)

Warner, John-Michael, “Traces: In Consideration of the Terrain of Borders in the North American West” (University of Arizona, S. Moore)

Wei, Chu-Chiun, “Globalism and Identity in Taiwanese Contemporary Art, 1978–2009” (CUNY, A. Chave)

Weichbrodt, Elissa, “Through the Body: Corporeality, Subjectivity, and Empathy in Contemporary American Art” (Washington University, A. Miller)

Welton, Jessica W., “Fred Kabotie and the Genesis of the Santa Fe Style” (Virginia Commonwealth, R. Hobbs)

Wertheim, Laura, “Dust and Shadow Feminism: Disavowed Supportive Labor, Feminine Transitivity, and Temporal Drag in Postwar American Art and Performance” (Minnesota, J. Blocker)

Werther-Rosenow, Barbara, “Communicative Strategies in Contemporary Video Art” (Rutgers, T. Flores)

Westerman, Jonah, “Standard Deviations: Reality, Reproducibility, and Politics in Performance Art since 1989” (CUNY, C. Bishop)

White, Marisa, “A Feminist Inheritance? Questions of Ambivalence and Subjectivity in Paul McCarthy, Mike Kelley, and Robert Gober” (CUNY, A. Chave)

Wilson, Leslie, “Beyond Committed, Past Concerned: Photography as a Documentary Medium in Post-Apartheid South Africa” (Chicago, J. Snyder)

Yi, Hyewon, “Photographer as Participant Observer: The Photographs of Larry Clark, Nan Goldin, Richard Billingham, and Nobuyoshi Araki” (CUNY, G. Batchen)

Young, Megan K, “After the Deluge: Contemporary Artists Engage Katrina” (Kansas, D. Cateforis)

Zinsli, Beth A., “Writing with Salt Water and Sunlight: Circulation and Contemporary Spanish Caribbean Photography” (Wisconsin, Madison, J. Casid)