Contemporary Art
Dissertations in Progress by Subject, 2009

Show completed dissertations

Albu, Cristina, “Mirror Affect: A History of Collective Spectatorship in Contemporary Installation Art” (Pittsburgh, T. Smith)

Anderson, Virginia, “‘A State of Anxious Uncertainty’: The Critical Reception of Jasper Johns” (Boston, C. Jones, G. Williams)

Bailey, Robert, “Art and Language, New York: A Late Avant-Garde” (Pittsburgh, T. Smith)

Beauchamp-Byrd, Mora, “Hogarth’s Progress: ‘Modern Moral Subjects’ in the Work of David Hockney, Lubaina Himid, and Paula Rego” (Duke, R. Powell)

Becker, Natasha, “Local vs. Global: The Johannesburg Bienniales and the Production of Contemporary Art in a Post-Apartheid South Africa” (SUNY Binghamton, A. D’Souza)

Biederman, Legier, “The Aesthetics of Globalization and the Politics of Difference: From Identity Exhibitions to Transnational Artworlds?” (UCLA, D. Preziosi)

Boivin, Julie, “A Redefinition of the Role of Ornament in French Rococo Art and Contemporary Visual Culture: From the Horrifyingly Beautiful to the Beauty of Horror” (Toronto, M. Cheetham)

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

Brandt, Amy, “Complicity and Critique: ‘Neo-Geo’ Art of the 1980s” (CUNY, A. Chave)

Buigues, Ana, “Igor Stromajer: e-motional net.scapes” (Toronto, E. Legge)

Byrd, Anne, “Hats Off, Galileo: Richard Serra before Tilted Arc” (UC Berkeley, A. Wagner)

Carroll, Leanne, “Moments in Artists’ Writings since the 1960s” (Toronto, M. Cheetham)

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

Chon, Doris, “Narrating Shadows: W. G. Sebald's Photographic Historiography” (UCLA, M. Kwon, G. Baker)

Cohen, Kris, “The Aesthetics of Encounter (Mediated Intimacies in Recent Art)” (Chicago, D. English)

Cozzi, Leslie, “Siamo Femministe: Art and Feminism in Post-War Italy” (Virginia, H. Singerman)

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

Culler, Jeremy, “From Television Signal to Magnetic Strip: An Archaeology of Experimental Television and Video Knowledge, 1962–2006” (SUNY Binghamton, J. Tagg)

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)

Diack, Heather, “The Benefit of the Doubt: An Aporetic Approach to Conceptual Art and Photography, 1966–1972” (Toronto, L. Kaplan)

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

Durham, Dennis, “Vancouver Conceptual Art from N.E.THING CO. to Jeff Wall: The Transformation of Art Practice through Pedagogy” (Virginia Commonwealth, R. Hobbs)

Eckhardt, Sarah Louise, “A Constant Reevaluator: Hedda Sterne and the Abstract Expressionist Context” (UIUC, J. Fineberg)

Erickson, Ruth, “Between the Street and the Museum: The Sociological Art Collective (Fred Forest, Hervé Fischer, and Jean-Paul Thénot) in Post-1968 France” (Pennsylvania, C. Poggi, K. Beckman)

Evans, Emily Joyce, “The First Russian Art Exhibition, Berlin 1922: Display and Reception of the New Russia” (UIUC, J. Mendelson)

Ewing, Margaret, “Hans Haacke, German, and the Public Sphere” (UIUC, J. Fineberg)

Ferrell, Elizabeth, “Collaborated Lives: Individualism and Collectivity in the San Francisco Avant-Garde, 1950–1965” (UC Berkeley, A. Wagner)

Ford, Jacqueline Anne, “How to Do Things with (English) Words: The Arts Race; Conceptual Art in Britain vs. American Hegemony, 1965–1979” (Toronto, E. Legge)

Gand, Elizabeth, “The Poetics and Politics of Play: Helen Levitt's Early Work, 1935–1945” (UC Berkeley, A. Wagner)

Gasparavicius, Gediminas, “The Irwin Group and Neue Slowenische Kunst: From Retro-Avant-Garde to a Virtual State of Arts” (SUNY Stony Brook, D. Kuspit)

Geppert, Melissa, “Favela Effects: Contemporary Brazilian Art at the Intersections of Community Development and Global Markets” (Minnesota, J. Blocker)

Gonzalez, Karen, “Enduring Faith: Christianity and Traumatic Experience in Contemporary American Performance Art” (Duke, K. Stiles)

Gonzalez-Gonzalez, Maria del Mar, “(Re)inventing a Latin American Identity: The Bienal de San Juan del Grabado Latinoamericano y del Caribe, 1970–2003” (UIUC, O. Vazquez)

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

Hawkins, Susan, “Urban Ecologies in Contemporary Landscape Photography: Ecological Interpretations of the Photoconceptualist Landscapes of the ‘Vancouver School’ Photographers” (University of Victoria, C. Harding)

Heineman, Anna M., “Nurturing Neighborhoods: Buster Simpson's Eco-Art” (Iowa, C. Adcock)

Hollenberg, Sarah, “Art on Television, 1967–1974” (USC, R. Meyer)

Hosein, Lise, “From Invisibility to Transformation: The Animal Body in Contemporary Art” (Toronto, M. Cheetham)

Jeanjean, Stéphanie, “Spectatorship and the Screen as Interface: French Art Using Television and the Projected Image from the Late 1960s to the Present Day” (CUNY, C. Bishop)

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

Kart, Susan, “Moustapha Dimé and the Strategy of Récupération in Postcolonial Senegalese Sculpture” (Columbia, E. Hutchinson, B. Lawal)

Kovach, Jodi, “New Baroque Tendencies in Contemporary Latin American Art” (Washington University, A. Miller)

Kuntz, Katrina L., “The Art of Failure” (SUNY Stony Brook, D. Kuspit)

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)

Lang, Colin, “Room 19, 1966–1969” (Yale, D. Joselit, C. Mehring)

Lee, Phil, “The Hybridized Space of Photography: The Photography of Francesca Woodman and Cindy Sherman, 1975–1981” (Chicago, J. Snyder)

Lin, Jenny, “Above Sea: Shanghai Imagined through Modern and Contemporary Art” (UCLA, M. Kwon)

Lockard, Brittany, “Size Matters: Imagery of the Fat Body in the Works of Lucian Freud, Jenny Saville, Leonard Nimoy, and Laura Aguilar” (Kansas, D. Cateforis)

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

Macchiavello, Carla, “Marking the Territory: Performance, Video, and Conceptual Graphics in Chilean Art, 1975–1985” (SUNY Stony Brook, D. Kuspit)

MacQueen, Kathleen, “Tactical Response: Art in an Age of Terror” (SUNY Stony Brook, J. Monteyne)

Mangini, Elizabeth, “Arte Povera in Turin: 1967–1978” (CUNY, R. Golan)

Martin, Courtney J., “Cyclones in the Metropole: British Artists, 1968–1989” (Yale, T. Barringer, K. Jones)

Matuszak, Joanna, “Performance Art in Russia, 1990–2000” (Indiana, Bloomington, J. Kennedy)

Mecugni, Anna, “From Italy Going East: Alighero Boetti, Luigi Ontani, Francesco Clemente (1969–1983)” (CUNY, R. Golan)

Modigliani, Leah, “The Limits of the Defeatured Landscape: Dialectics of a Counter Tradition in Vancouver Art” (SUNY Stony Brook, D. Kuspit)

Mulhearn, Kevin, “Taking Critical Positions in Contemporary South African Photography, 1967–2007” (CUNY, G. Batchen)

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

Newman, Emily, “Weighing the Body: Female Body Image in Contemporary Art” (CUNY, A. Chave)

Nisbet, James, “Land Is Not the Setting: The Lightning Field and Environments, 1960–1980” (Stanford, P. Lee)

Oen, Karin, “Admonition and the Academy: Video, Installation, and Performance Art in Reform-Era China, 1978–2008” (MIT, C. Jones)

Palczynski, Matthew, “Rothko and Architecture” (Temple, G. Silk)

Ratliff, Jamie, “Presence of Mind, Absence of Voice: Feminist Art in Mexico, 1970–Present” (Louisville, S. Jarosi)

Richter, Till, “Contemporary Art: Art-Historical and Market Criteria” (UT Austin, R. Shiff)

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

Rosenblum, Beth, “From a Pedagogical Pragmatism: Cuban Art Institutions and Production during the ‘Special Period’ (1990s)” (UCLA, D. Kunzle)

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

Rugg, Whitney, “Brian O'Doherty: Changing the Subject” (Chicago, D. English)

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

Sande-Friedman, Amy, “Primary Structures: The Work of Kenneth Snelson, 1948–2008” (The Bard Graduate Center, C. Whalen)

Sander, Sophie, “Wrapped in Memory: Contemporary African Diaspora Art and Textile” (Temple, G. Silk)

Scott, Emily, “Wasteland: American Landscapes in/and 1960s Art” (UCLA, M. Kwon)

Shea, Tusa, “Autonomy as a Temporary Collective Experience: Anna Halprin’s Dance Events and the Emergence of Dialogical Art” (University of Victoria, A. Antliff)

Sheren, Ila, “Portable Borders/Mythical Sites: Performance Art and Politics at the US Frontera, 1960 to the Present” (MIT, C. Jones)

Shin, Chunghoon, “Art as Spatial Critique: South Korean Visual Arts since the Late 1960s” (SUNY Binghamton, J. Tagg)

Snider, Stefanie, “Envisioning Bodily Difference: Refiguring Fat and Lesbian Subjects in Contemporary Art and Visual Culture, 1968–Present” (USC, R. Meyer)

Snoddy, Danielle M., “Charting the Emergence of Identity Narratives in Post-Apartheid South African Art: Protectionist Sensibilities, Internationalization, and the Johannesburg Biennales” (Iowa, C. Roy)

Sorkin, Jennifer, “Live Form: Gender and the Performance of Craft, 1940–1970” (Yale, D. Joselit, E. Cooke, Jr.)

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

Summers, Robert, “An Aesthetics of Experience: The Art and/as Life of Vaginal Davis” (UCLA, D. Preziosi)

Taub, Emily, “On Site-Specificity: A Genealogy” (Emory, J. Meyer)

Theodore, Molleen, “Walter De Maria’s Work: Patronage, Reception, and Aura” (CUNY, A. Chave)

Tradowsky, Christopher, “After Sherrie Levine: Appropriation and the Semiotics of Seriality” (UCLA, M. Kwon)

Van Scoy, Susan, “Exteriors, Interiors, and Positionality: The Photography of Tina Barney” (SUNY Stony Brook, J. Monteyne)

Vens, Mary Kiplok, “Déjà Jadis (Already Long Ago): French Histories of Dada from 1945–1965” (CUNY, R. Golan)

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

Wang, Peggy, “Responding to the World: Contemporary Chinese Art and the Global Exhibitionary Culture in the 1990s” (Chicago, H. Wu)

Wasserman, Andrew, “Contemporary Manhattan Cartographies: Ephemeral Public Art Projects in New York in the 1990s and 2000s” (SUNY Stony Brook, M. Bogart)

Watson, Mark, “Apparitions: Memory and Globalization in Contemporary Native American Art” (Columbia, E. Hutchinson)

Weil, Harry Jacob, “The Ghost of Performance Art Past: Re-Performance in 20th-Century and Contemporary Art” (SUNY Stony Brook, Z. Patterson)

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

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

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

Woltmann, Kim, “Photographing Place: Catherine Opie's Los Angeles Landscape Series, 1994–1998” (SUNY Stony Brook, M. Bogart)

Wong, Winnie, “After the Copy: Originality, Creativity, and the Skilling of Contemporary Art in China's Dafen Village” (MIT, C. Jones)

Yamamura, Midori, “Yayoi Kusama: Biography and Cultural Confrontation, 1945–1969” (CUNY, A. Chave)

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

Yoon, Soyoung, “Debord, Détournement, and the Desire of History: The Films of Guy Debord” (Stanford, P. Levi)

Yoshitake, Mika, “Requiem for the Sun: The Art of Mono-ha and Bikyoto in Postwar Japan (1968–1974)” (UCLA, M. Kwon, G. Baker)

Zaher, Lisa, “Modules and Modulations: Photographic Media and the Contest of Modernism, 1950–1990” (Chicago, J. Snyder)