History of Art, Architecture, and Archaeology Commons^™

Hammurabi’S Laws: Ancient Traditions Of Violence, Aaron Secrist

The Confluence

The tradition of enforcing private property through violence is truly ancient, and goes back thousands of years to the first civilizations. There exists a prevailing attitude that contemporary culture is more “civilized” than the first organized societies – and while it’s true in some ways, our laws are still remarkably similar to those practiced in antiquity. In the following essay, I analyze the Law Code of Hammurabi and examine its parallels to the way laws function today. First, I will provide context for the technological advances that made the first city-states possible, then give a cultural and economic overview of …

Architecture As Political Symbolism: Power, Authority, & The Built Form, Naomi Minwalla

Senior Honors Projects, 2020-current

This study examines how architecture functions as a medium of political symbolism, exploring the ways in which built environments communicate authority, ideology, and collective identity. Drawing on theoretical perspectives from Émile Durkheim, Max Weber, and Murray Edelman, the research first establishes how political symbols shape social cohesion, legitimize authority, and construct political meaning. The study then applies architectural interpretation frameworks developed by Martin Warnke, Erwin Panofsky, and Alois Riegl to analyze how symbolic meaning is embedded within architectural form, spatial organization, and ornamentation.

Using a qualitative comparative case study design, the research analyzes two major religious structures: the Seville Cathedral …

Temporal Ubiquity, Brittni Mosby

MFA in Visual Art

My thesis examines looking as a sacred and relational practice rooted in familial memory, storytelling, and the photographic archive. Drawing from early experiences of engaging family photographs alongside my mother and great-grandmother, I conceptualize these encounters as the formation of “temporal altars”: living vessels that activate space, memory, and multiplicity. These intimate acts of looking and listening position the home as a critical site where Black subjectivity is held with care and complexity.

By casting these modes of perception into domestic spaces, my thesis not only resists reductive external gazes but interrogates the archive as a colonial apparatus structured by …

Illicit Origins, Public Displays: How Trafficking And Repatriation Reshaped Ancient Greek Pottery In Modern Museums, Alisha Bhandari

Honors College Theses

This thesis examines how illicit excavation, antiquities trafficking, and repatriation have reshaped the modern circulation and interpretation of ancient Greek pottery in museum collections. While Greek pottery has traditionally been studied through style, iconography, attribution, and artistic value, this project shifts attention to the modern systems that have determined how these objects were excavated, sold, displayed, and contested. Through a literature review and three case studies — the Aineta Aryballos, the Python Bell-Krater, and the Athena Kylix — this thesis argues that ancient Greek pottery should be understood not only as evidence of antiquity, but also as evidence of modern …

Shimmer Methodology: May 2026 Cultural Studies Association Of Australasia, Lola Montgomery

Staff Scholarship - Australia & Dubai

This webinar presents an overview of the contemporary state of creative-practice research and autotheory before introducing Shimmer, an emerging methodological framework developed through creative practice, postgraduate supervision, and reflective inquiry. The presentation argues that while creative-practice research has successfully established creative work as a legitimate form of knowledge production, and autotheory has legitimised lived experience as theoretical material, both traditions leave relatively under-theorised the embodied moment through which insight first emerges.

The significance of the work lies in its contribution to ongoing debates around embodiment, affect, intuition, and knowledge production within creative-practice research. Shimmer proposes a language for understanding …

Interweaving Cairo's Urban Fabric: The Formal, The Informal And The Contemporary, Hagar Ahmed

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

Architecture is a negotiation between memory and change, preservation and erasure. In Cairo, a city layered with history, rapid development threatens historic areas and informal settlements (AlSayyad, 2011). While monumental heritage preservation is institutionalized, informal urban fabrics are often excluded from heritage discussions and planning. This research explores Mansheyet Nasser, or Garbage City, an informal settlement between Islamic Cairo and the Mokattam plateau. Over the past fifty years, Zabbaleen residents have built a communal waste collection and recycling system that processes up to 80% of materials, outperforming many regulated cities (Fahmi and Sutton, 2010; Didero, 2011). This infrastructure is both …

Clue In The Roman Style House: A Twist On The Classic Board Game Featuring A Fusion Of Ancient And Modern Roman Influences, Madelyn Junk

Honors Projects

Throughout time, games have been used to convey how society functions. They hint at societal structure, behavioral patterns, and roles of community members. Specifically, board games are excellent ways to teach players about attention to detail and how to synthesize information.

This unique and functional honors project finds its strength as a detail-oriented game that stresses the importance of critical thinking and deduction as it further rewards those skills through play and friendly competition. It combines art history, education, and graphic design disciplines to result in a creative output alongside a research paper. Its final product is a playable game …

A Methodological Dismantling: Manet’S Olympia And The Rupture Of The Western Reclining Nude, Abigail Charlotte Van Hoak

Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters

The question is whether Édouard Manet was shaped by his era or doing the shaping, and Olympia answers it. It was not an accident but a methodical dismantling of a centuries-old tradition, and by refusing to look away from modern life he forced everyone else to reckon with it too. The reclining nude has never recovered. For centuries, artists from Titian to Ingres constructed a genre around idealized bodies, mythological distance, and an uncontested male gaze that rendered real women into timeless passive objects. Manet inherited that tradition and refused to perpetuate it. Through the theoretical frameworks of Berger and …

A Methodological Dismantling: Manet's Olympia And The Rupture Of The Western Reclining Nude, Abigail Charlotte Van Hoak

Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters

The question is whether Édouard Manet was shaped by his era or doing the shaping, and Olympia answers it. It was not an accident but a methodical dismantling of a centuries-old tradition, and by refusing to look away from modern life he forced everyone else to reckon with it too. The reclining nude has never recovered. For centuries, artists from Titian to Ingres constructed a genre around idealized bodies, mythological distance, and an uncontested male gaze that rendered real women into timeless passive objects. Manet inherited that tradition and refused to perpetuate it. Through the theoretical frameworks of Berger and …

Kafr Kama: The Marble Finds, Anastasia Shapiro

Qadum: Journal of Excavation Reports from Israel

The study of 127 marble fragments from the excavation of the Umayyad building at Kafr Kama revealed that most of the samples are made of Proconnesian marble and originally belonged to panels that likely decorated a church demolished by the earthquake of 749 CE. The collapse of the building caused the breakage of the panels, which then became spolia. They were marked and reshaped into small geometric forms, such as octagons or trapezoids measuring up to 20–30 cm. Given that no completed items were found, the studied assemblage probably represents the workplace of a stonemason active in Umayyad-period Kafr Kama.

Kafr Kama: The Coins, Robert Kool

Qadum: Journal of Excavation Reports from Israel

The excavation at Kafr Kama yielded five coins. One coin, minted in Rome, dates to the reign of Constantius II, while the others are from the Early Islamic period. Among these are a gold dinar and two silver dirhams from the early Abbasid period, including a rare dirham minted in al-Haruniya during the brief reign of the caliph al-Hadi. The coin assemblage attests to activity at the site during the third quarter of the eighth century CE.

Kafr Kama: Building, Oil Press And Glass Industry From The Late Byzantine–Early Umayyad Periods And Remains From The Middle Bronze Age, Roman And Mamluk Periods / כפר כמא: מבנה, בית בד ותעשיית זכוכית מהתקופות הביזנטית המאוחרת–האומיית הקדומה ושרידים מהתקופות הברונזה התיכונה, הרומית והממלוכית, Omar Zidan

Qadum: Journal of Excavation Reports from Israel

A salvage excavation south of Kafr Kama revealed four occupational strata (IV–I). The two lowermost strata yielded meager architectural remains dating to the Middle Bronze Age (Stratum IV) and the Roman period (Stratum III), indicating early settlement at the site. Stratum II, which comprised two distinct occupational phases, yielded a building, an oil press and a glass-production furnace, along with glass-production debris, dating from the transition between the Byzantine and Umayyad periods. The site appears to have been abandoned during the late Umayyad period, with resettlement occurring in the Mamluk period, as indicated by a Mamluk-period refuse pit uncovered in …

Maa': An Analysis From The May Weber Ethnographic Study Collection, Claire T. Chilla

Department of Anthropology

Research of a maa’ textile within the May Weber Ethnographic Study Collection (MWESC) from Central Sulawesi, Indonesia. Report discusses different knowledge systems including technical and physical as well as cosmological and spiritual from the Toraja people. Also analyses affects of colonialism, trade, spirituality, tourism, and funerary practices.

Catacombs In Context: Exploring Roman Architectural Influence In The Catacombs Of Rabat, Malta, Emily S.R Hodson

Classical Mediterranean and Middle East Honors Projects

Previously, scholarship on the Mediterranean catacombs has focused on isolated sites or on the religious significance and iconography of regional groups. By contextualizing the archaeological data through comparison and recentering the discussion on architecture, this research offers a contextualized, non-apologetic picture of ancient Mediterranean catacombs. This architectural comparison between the Roman catacombs and those of St. Paul and Abbatija Tad-Dejr in Malta reveals both significant architectural change and the persistence of archaic features, suggesting a high degree of cultural continuity under Roman provincial governance on Malta (218 BCE - c. 5th - 6th centuries CE). This, paired with the emergence …

An Introduction To East Asian Art In Three Journeys, Victoria Weston

OER Textbooks

Please Note: This is the full version of this record. For individual tour guides, visit the following links:

Guide Part 1: https://scholarworks.umb.edu/oer_textbooks/4/ Guide Part 2: https://scholarworks.umb.edu/oer_textbooks/5/ Guide Part 3: https://scholarworks.umb.edu/oer_textbooks/6/

This book is an introduction to important art forms practiced in China, the Korean peninsula, and Japan. It is in no way an encyclopedic treatment of the art histories of East Asia. Rather, it is a textbook for a single semester course. Each section is devoted to one year in time and framed by historical factors that naturally encourage comparative analysis. Students learn methods of visual analysis while also exploring …

Prompting As A New Medium: Greenbergian Medium Specificity And The Iterative Unpredictability Of Ai Art, Samantha Shapiro, James Hutson

Faculty Scholarship

This article argues that AI prompting should be understood not as a tool, technique, or accessory to image generation, but as a medium in its own right. Drawing on Clement Greenberg’s theory of medium specificity, it contends that a medium becomes legible through the operations peculiar to itself, namely, the constraints, affordances, and formal procedures that distinguish it from neighboring arts. Existing scholarship has asked whether prompting counts as art, whether prompt engineering constitutes a creative skill, and whether the prompt itself can be aesthetic; however, these accounts often stop short of a sustained theory of prompting as medium. This …

The Southwest Black Artists Collective: Afro-Modern Ecology, Kinship, And Collectivity In The Desert Southwest, Bradley L. Petty

Art History Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines the Southwest Black Artists Collective (SBAC) as a site of

Afro-diasporic kinship, artistic production, and spatial intervention within the Desert

Southwest. Operating within a region where Black populations are comparatively small

and institutional support is diffuse, SBAC emerges as both a response to and a

reconfiguration of the regional artistic landscape. The Collective constructs an affirming

community through shared artistic practice, exhibitions, and the maintenance of The

Projects/Space in Tucson, Arizona, where public engagement and private creative

exchange coexist.

Drawing on theories of human ecology, this study expands existing frameworks

by introducing the concept of Afro-modern ecology, …

Book Review: More Historic Rural Churches Of Georgia, Austina Jordan

Georgia Library Quarterly

No abstract provided.

The Log Cabin | Public Perception And Mediated Reality (1840 – 1980), Aspen M. Regan

Architecture Undergraduate Honors Theses

This capstone examines the evolution of the log cabin from 1840 to 1980. At its core, the project questions the legacy of the log cabin from its origins as simply being a traditional dwelling typology to its establishment as a cultural icon or rather, an enduring vessel that established the American Dream and ideals of self-reliance, freedom, and individualism deep within the heart of American culture.

Chapter One situates the log cabin historically and architecturally, defining the popular frontier dwelling as being a single-pen horizontal log constructed cabin. It then explores the cabin’s emergence as a cultural image through political …

Maa’: An Analysis From The May Weber Ethnographic Study Collection, Claire T. Chilla

Department of Anthropology

An analysis of Maa’ textiles from Sulawesi Indonesia. Discusses both the artistic symbolism, possible physical creation, and the spiritual connection of the textile for the Torajans. Informs through the lens of globalization, colonization, and funerary practices from the country of origin.

Self-Fashioning In Contemporary Figurative Painting, Hal Hardin

School of Art Undergraduate Honors Theses

This paper positions my painting practice as a form of resistance to historical constructions of gender, identity, and visibility, shaped by my experience as a queer, nonbinary person navigating womanhood in the American South. Drawing on Stephen Greenblatt’s concept of self-fashioning and Judith Butler’s theory of gender performativity, I argue that Western figurative painting has long disciplined the feminine body, exploiting it and commodifying it into an easily consumable object.

In response, I appropriate and distort these visual conventions. My figures refuse to behave: they stretch, slouch, and linger in ambiguity, resisting fixed interpretation. Placed in spaces of visibility and …

A Modern Cabinet Of Curiosities: Patronage, Narrative, And The Foundations Of American Art At Crystal Bridges Museum Of American Art, Amelia Quinlen

School of Art Undergraduate Honors Theses

This thesis examines the 2025 reinstallation of the “Foundations of American Art” galleries at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas as a case study through which to analyze how museum narratives are constructed, negotiated, and presented in the twenty-first century. Drawing on the historiography of museum display, from early modern cabinets of curiosity to nineteenth-century salon-style exhibitions, it argues that galleries function not as neutral containers for objects, but as interpretive frameworks shaped by curatorial decisions, spatial organization, and institutional context. While the reinstallation positions itself as a reconsideration of the “foundations” of American art through thematic …

Artistic Embodiment: The Role Of Art-Based Research In Communicating Disability Experiences, Juliana Scheopner

Theses/Capstones/Creative Projects

Visual art has immense potential to communicate complex experiences of disability. As a disabled artist, I am interested in how disability has been portrayed in artwork, particularly in how other disabled artists choose to represent their lived experiences. Through art-based research, this study explores how disabled artists have used portraiture to depict their disability. Selected art includes work from Frida Kahlo, Deborah Padfield, Persimmon Blackbridge, and the author. Following an analysis of literature, selected artworks, and salient disability scholarship, emergent themes were identified. The focus on the complexity of disability experiences demonstrated the importance of considering a wide range of …

Tarot - Reimagined: Monotype Tarot Landscapes, Eleanor B. Nelson

Theses/Capstones/Creative Projects

Printmaking is a form of artmaking that utilizes transferring marks from the matrix to the final piece of paper, often through a press. These processes are able to create an edition of multiple identical prints. This is typically considered the highlight of using print processes; however, the process of making monotypes allows for one original piece. Through the process of researching and creating watercolor monotypes, I made a collection of ten original pieces, all depicting different landscapes throughout the Tarot deck. Each piece is 9” x 12” printed on a 13” x 17” piece of paper and created with watercolor, …

Initial Type Craft, Micah Angelus

Theses and Dissertations

What kinds of objects can still think when the self-contained aesthetic object can no longer be taken for granted? The historical ruptures that have placed painting under crisis have also brought into view the fallacy of artistic autonomy, raising questions about how value, contemplation, and meaning persist under conditions of deconstruction.

Beauty Over Perfection: The Idealization Of Drapery In Classical Greek Sculpture And The Stylistic Reinvention Of Roman “Copies”, Lauren M. Grover

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores Margarete Bieber’s claim that the drapery of Greek sculpture accurately reflects ancient garments. I introduce a method of tracing drapery to capture the garment pattern of sculpted drapery and argue that the drapery of Greek originals and Roman “copies” is an idealized representation of ancient dress.

Humanist Abstractions: Zilia Sánchez’S Forms Of Symbolism And The Reframing Of The Picture Plane, Sydney Srnka

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines the culturally specific visual language within the work of Zilia Sánchez through an analysis of her biography and semiotic strategies, arguing that meaning in her work emerges through the materiality of form, rather than through conventional stylistic categorization. It reconsiders how art-historical movements are used to organize artists, proposing a framework better suited to Sánchez’s practice. The issues of reception and legibility have shaped Sánchez’s career as an exile whose experience of displacement informed her shaped canvases. These works articulated a simultaneously unique and universal sense of experience. In researching Sánchez’s history, an alternative story for the …

Surface Gestures: Contemporary Sculpture, Material, And The Possibilities Of Finish, June Kitahara

Theses and Dissertations

Through the work of Tiona Nekkia McClodden, Patty Chang, and Jes Fan, alongside performance, cinema, cultural figures, and twentieth-century sculpture, the thesis argues that the surface of contemporary works reveals the inextricability of aesthetics from technologies of gendered racialization, sexuality, and sensation.

A Special Place In Hell: The Iconography Of Judgment In Twelfth-Century Sculpture And Manuscript Illumination, Nina Piper

Theses and Dissertations

While art historians have focused on the meaning of individual scenes of the Last Judgment and collections of “monstrous” images, this thesis considers images of Hell and its inhabitants as a single subject. It investigates the space of Hell itself and the beings most closely associated with it—whether or not they are depicted within the space of Hell—to identify iconographical consistencies across those images. In addition, this thesis draws upon material evidence from the medieval world to interpret images of Hell, the Devil, demons, and the damned in new ways, identifying connections between the imagery and what artists and other …

Public Art And Military Technology At The Mexico-U.S. Border: Disrupting Boundaries On Battlegrounds, Anna Luise Kaunert

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines how contemporary artists Rubén Ortiz Torres, Chico MacMurtrie, rafa esparza, and Cassils transformed military technologies into powerful artworks that interrogate the Mexico-U.S. border as a battlefield. Together, their works illuminate militarization and surveillance technologies at the border and the violent enforcement of U.S. immigration policy.