History of Art, Architecture, and Archaeology Commons^™

Stitch Theory, Brittany Adeline Adama King

Theses and Dissertations

This paper weaves personal history together using “stitched” citational text, supporting the concept that an archive can function as support, as worn; as garment.

Folds, Bayan Abukiwan

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis uses the fold as an orienting metaphor and material gesture to linger on the minor details of intimacy that are severed by occupation and political violence. Through painting, drawing and ceramics, the work traces the more implicit modes of dehumanization—particularly in relation to Palestine—while engaging the domestic as a site of quiet and complexity. Influenced by artists like Jennifer Packer and Beatriz González, the practice embraces slowness, touch, and opacity to fold the viewer into a haptic encounter with the work.

The Logic Of Car Accidents And Other Digestive Processes, Rosalie G.L. Smith

Theses and Dissertations

In this essay the author explores the artistic process via an analogy with digestion. The author goes on to explain their work via components of their practice, described as organs.

An Archeology Of Looking, Marco G. Dasilva

Theses and Dissertations

Marco DaSilva’s mosaics explore camouflage and syncretism, blending symbols from American culture, Catholic saints, Afro-Brazilian deities and queer spaces. His work examines objects as relics, where identity is hidden and revealed. By integrating simple materials and transforming them into unique compositions, DaSilva creates hybrid objects where all of his worlds intersect, crafting his own mythology.

Moiré And Its Ineffable Liquidity: A Study Of Pictorial Watered Silk In The Works Of Andrea Mantegna, Giovanni Bellini And Raphael, Olivia Birkelund

Theses and Dissertations

This study explores pictorial moiré in Renaissance Italian paintings, arguing that its liquid appearance held spiritual and humanist resonances beyond luxury. Through dissemblant facture, artists Giovanni Bellini, Mantegna and Raphael rendered a moiré with overtones of the Incarnation, sacred fluidity, and fertility, creating meditative sites of theological and cultural meaning.

The Past In The Present: Photography, Vietnam War, And Memory, Yuya Kawata

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis focuses on three contemporary artists—An-My Lê, Dinh Q. Lê, and Harrell Fletcher—who use photography to explore the contentious memory of the war in Vietnam. Addressing different contexts in which the war is remembered, their works invite careful reflection on how to approach the elusive past.

Tears, Blood, And Milk: Frida Kahlo's Depictions Of Maternity, Jenny Mushkin Goldman

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis analyzes Frida Kahlo’s representations of miscarriage, childbirth, and breastfeeding as departures from idealized portrayals of womanhood in post-revolutionary Mexico. Drawing on Catholic and Mesoamerican imagery, Kahlo reframes the maternal body as a site of resistance, engaging mexicanidad (Mexicanness) to counter its patriarchal constructions of national identity and gender.

Apocalypse As Utopia: The Exorcisms And Memorials Of Las Yeguas Del Apocalipsis And Queer Liberation In Chile, 1987-1997, Nicolas Poblete

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis provides a comprehensive history of the queer activist-art collective Las Yeguas del Apocalipsis (1987-1997) and their performance-based resistance to the Chilean dictatorship (1973-1990), cultural homophobia, and the HIV/AIDS crisis. Through art actions blending ritual, protest, and queer poetics, the collective redefined public space and national identity, envisioning a utopian queer apocalypse rooted in memory.

The Imposition Of A Narrative Line: The Bildungsroman As Form In Contemporary Art, Brianne Chapelle

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines the work of contemporary American artists and writers Moyra Davey, Chris Kraus, Frances Stark, and Martine Syms within the context of feminist art history, theory, and practice in the post-1970s artworld. While often read as autobiographical or self-referential, their work across media uses personal narrative as a means of engaging broader theoretical and institutional concerns. Through the literary form of the bildungsroman, these artists employ narrative, fiction, and memoir—often through new and time-based media, but also through interdisciplinary modes rooted in writing—to reflect on their ongoing education as artists within an increasingly globalized Euro-American artworld. By …

Hemispheres Of Faith: Mapping The Global Journey Of An Ivory Rosary Bead At The Metropolitan Museum Of Art, Mary M. Thompson

Theses and Dissertations

Hemispheres of Faith reattributes a carved ivory rosary bead in the Metropolitan Museum of Art to the Quito School in 18th-century Ecuador. Through examining the trade history of the Manila Galleons, material analysis, and iconographic study, Hemispheres of Faith challenges the bead's European origins and reveals the object as a product of global exchange, devotional practice, and colonial artistic collaboration within the Spanish Empire.

Black America, Ethiopianism And Ethiopians: Tizita (ትዝታ), And The Longing That Binds, David Brunberg

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis maps the concept of Ethiopia within the development of Black American peoplehood and Pan-Africanist thought, while shedding light on the deep influence of an American-inspired Pan-Africanist ethos on the works of two Ethiopian-American bridge artists, Julie Mehretu and Aïda Muluneh specifically, and on art production more generally as expressed within contemporary Ethiopia. They are “bridge” artists because they straddle an international space between Black American and Ethiopian identities. It explores the following questions: How did an American Ethiopianism morph into or become synonymous with Afrocentrism? What crosscurrents can one see in contemporary art production in Ethiopia, and its …

Intersections: Gastro-Politics Aesthetic And Contemporary Chinese Art, Fan Du

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines how contemporary Chinese artists use food as a medium to explore ritual, trade, politics, and cultural identity. Centering on The Note of Food, an exhibition I curated, it draws on Arjun Appadurai’s concept of gastro-politics and Lu Xun’s nalaizhuyi (“grabbing doctrine”) to analyze how artists strategically appropriate cultural resources amid tensions between East and West, and tradition and modernity. Merging curatorial practice with food and visual anthropology, the project uses exhibition-making as both method and object of inquiry. As a native anthropologist working as both curator and researcher, I propose a model of curatorial anthropology that …

Louis-Léopold Boilly’S Toddler In Mamluk Costume, Circa 1803: Feminism And Orientalism In The Napoléonic Era, Jessie Polk

Theses and Dissertations

Privately held until it came into the Met collection, Toddler in Mamluk Costume by Louis-Léopold Boilly was not widely known and hasn’t been extensively studied. This thesis seeks place it in context and argues that it is likely a portrait of a girl, a niece of Napoléon I, Zénaïde Bonaparte.

Piecemeal, Max J. Eisenberg

Theses and Dissertations

Exploring the history of photographic manipulation both inside and outside of the camera from the late 19th century until today. My work plucks out cultural and local signifiers from the state of Florida, and the American South as a whole, and disseminates them using a constructed symbolic vernacular in the form of in-camera collaging on large format film.

The International Art Show For The End Of World Hunger By Artists To End Hunger, Coty Heinz

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines the development of The International Art Show for the End of World Hunger, organized in the 1980s by the New York nonprofit Artists to End Hunger and a broad network of volunteers. It also considers the exhibition’s context, lead organizer, and impact within an extensive international tour.

Geraldo De Barros’S Fotoformas: Towards The Construction Of New Forms Of Legibility, Jay Bravo

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines the legibility and reception of Geraldo de Barros’s Fotoformas within Western art institutions, using MoMA’s 2021 Fotoclubismo exhibition as a case study. It argues that the integration of Brazilian modernist photography into canonical narratives often hinges on strategic affinities with Euro-American frameworks. Drawing on institutional critique, postcolonial theory, and the concept of Anthropophagy, the study explores how Fotoformas challenges conventional photographic discourse and reveals broader dynamics of artistic legitimacy and representation.

The Tales Of Maruni, Sikuma Rai

Theses and Dissertations

Sikuma Rai journeys into the fading indigenous genre of Maruni—an eastern Nepali song and dance form—narrating letters to her late grandfather. Accompanied by her father, and a devoted folk musician from an upper-caste background, she traces echoes of memory, identity, and the fragile inheritance of indigenous culture.

The Principles Of Islamic Moral Philosophy And The Possibility Of Re-Conceptualizing Classical Islamic Aesthetics Of Architecture, Muhammad Feteha

Theses and Dissertations

This study is primarily concerned with the intersection of the moral and aesthetic theories of Abū Ḥāmid al-Ghazālī (d. 1111). Al-Ghazālī’s theory of aesthetics has been the subject of thorough scholarly investigations and diverse interpretations in the field of Islamic art history since the 1940s. This thesis critiques the premises upon which the use of al-Ghazālī’s writings in studies of Islamic art and architecture were built. It suggests that they lead to what could be described as “the contradiction of unethical beauty.” To overcome this contradiction, it offers a comprehensive interpretation of al-Ghazālī’s aesthetics through analyzing the concept ḥusn in …

Resurrection In The Regensburg Pendant: Materials And Iconography, Devotional Object As Sacred Jewelry, Margarita Benacerraf

Theses and Dissertations

The Regensburg butterfly (1310-1320), an exquisitely crafted reliquary pendant, was found in the head of a fourteenth-century crucifix in 1991. The locket’s butterfly shape—and the ways in which the butterfly serves as a metaphor for Christ’s redemption—remains a fascinating window into late medieval Christianity and devotional practices in the medieval world.

Structures Of Feeling: Zoe Leonard And The Photographic Archive, Anika Zempleni

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines Zoe Leonard’s work with photographic archives. Focusing on three of Leonard’s archive-based projects—The Fae Richards Photo Archive (1993-96), You see I am here after all (2008), and In the Wake (2015-16)—this thesis argues that these works are connected through frameworks of feeling and subjectivity.

Aesthetics And Hidden Orientalism In Chicago's Nickerson Mansion, Julie Treumann

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis offers new research on the Sitting Room at the Nickerson Mansion, an 1883 Gilded Age-era house in Chicago, IL. As a rare extant example of neo-Islamic interior design, it provides a new lens on Orientalism in American domestic architecture and a new perspective on Mrs. Nickerson, a little-known female tastemaker of her time.

The Price Of Zero: On Aesthetics, The Market, And The Salvage Art Institute, Emily Henson

Theses and Dissertations

Founded by Elka Krajewska, The Salvage Art Institute (SAI) recontextualizes artworks classified as "total loss" through public exhibition and archival practices, and challenges conventional art market values by exploring alternative frameworks for artistic worth.

For Now We See Through A Darkened Mirror, But Then Face To Face: Striving To See Christ ‘Beneath The Veil’ In A Fourteenth-Century French Book Of Hours, Daniel S. Berman

Theses and Dissertations

M.90’s folio 130r evoked spiritual union with God in the Eucharist and in Heaven, and the concomitant need for repentance if divine union in any form could be achieved. It was also an authoritative relic of Christ’s body which helped the worshiper imaginatively reconstruct that body in their own space.

Body Of Work: Wax As Medium In Art And Science In Enlightenment Bologna, Kristen Pou

Theses and Dissertations

Eighteenth-century Bologna is well known for its body of accurate and precise wax anatomical models. However, wax was also used for non-scientific purposes: for portraiture and religious artworks. This paper sets forth an argument to explain the scholarly neglect of enlightenment Bolognese waxworks that did not depict anatomized human bodies.

Wiring Attachment, Alexander K. Bacon

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis began with a question: can diagrams create understanding, or only reflect it? Through paintings that layer automotive wiring schematics with family photographs, I explore how the human attachment system resists easy mapping. Using digital tools like Photoshop and scanning, alongside analog methods such as papier-collé and photo transfer, I examine how systems built for clarity—like wiring diagrams—contrast with the layered, often messy realities of human relationships. Drawing from attachment theory’s empirical foundation, rather than the metaphorical leanings of psychoanalysis, my work investigates how emotional bonds form, falter, and repair over time. Material loss and layering are not flaws, …

In Praise Of Dust, Hasler Gomez-Perez

Theses and Dissertations

A desire path is a physical manifestation of where a system has failed, but also where it has been refused, where a new path has been made. The wake exists in the post, it is not a singular, untethered event, but a subtle double entendre that lives in the post-death, but also in the pre-life—not a liminal limbo, but a superposition of dying and waking.

This collection was assembled and composed over the course of two years as I navigated my practice, myself, and others. Present here are my thoughts, my experiences, and in many ways my beliefs. IN PRAISE …

The Paradox Of Value, David Enrique Guarnizo

Theses and Dissertations

The present thesis project examines how, in the United States, and especially in the state of Virginia, archetypes of "wealth," "value," and "identity" have been constructed in relation to land and territory. This analysis explores the tension between the inherent value of life on the land and the economic value that can be derived from it. This tension is exemplified by a theory known as the "paradox of value", also referred to as the "paradox of water and diamonds", which was developed by the renowned Scottish economist and philosopher, Adam Smith. This theoretical framework serves as a fundamental axis for …

The Cut Worm Forgives The Plow, August Neuscheler

Theses and Dissertations

The explorations in this thesis writing are centered on William Blake’s proverb “The cut worm forgives the plow.” It has been reinterpreted as an allegory of history and energy. A theory of their relation is proposed based on forgiveness, a theory that accepts the palimpsest of orders as evidence for the abundance of the present moment. The writing focuses on questions of proportionality, scale, archaeological screening methods, planar cutting, and a critique of entropy as grounds for this theory. Some of its subjects include the Statue of Liberty, Kate Raworth’s donut economic model, sashimi, triangulation, Joseph Beuys’ “7,000 Eichen,” semiconductors, …

I Am Not A Dictator; I Am A Defender: The Rhetoric Of Coup D’État In Francophone Africa, Isaac Asare Kwakye

Theses and Dissertations

This study examines the rhetorical strategies used by coup leaders in Francophone Africa to authorize their actions and garner public support. Focusing on recent military takeovers in Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger since 2020, I investigate how coup leaders construct narratives of legitimacy within the context of contemporary geopolitical dynamics. I utilize Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) to analyze speeches by three key coup leaders: Colonel Assimi Goïta, Captain Ibrahim Traoré, and General Abdourahamane Tchiani. My analysis reveals four interconnected rhetorical frameworks: framing interventions as emergency measures, cultivating savior personas, weaponizing anti-colonial grievances, and deploying anti-corruption narratives. A comparative analysis of …

Fans In Ancient Egypt: Iconographic And Contextual Study Of Fans In The Predynastic, Old, And Middle Kingdoms, Nadra Zaki

Theses and Dissertations

A variety of fans existed throughout ancient Egyptian history. They had several forms and were made of different materials. They appear in two- and three-dimensional representations, as well as in texts. They relate to royalty and high officials and also feature in domestic settings, both out- and indoors. Fans were used for creating breeze, and providing shade in real life, and also during the journey to the afterlife, where they combined physical and metaphysical protection. Several names were associated with fans, depending on their functions, both in the secular and sacred world.

Earlier studies have either generally examined fans …