Senior Thesis
The senior thesis is an optional project for Art History, History and Theory of Architecture, and Art History/Visual Arts majors.
Writing a senior thesis qualifies students to compete for departmental honors and (indirectly) strengthens dossiers for university honors. It is also a great opportunity for students interested in graduate school to build their academic resumes and experience the intensity and rewards of graduate-style research. All thesis writers must enroll in the year-long Senior Thesis Seminar.
Students interested in writing a thesis should begin formulating a research topic and approaching potential faculty sponsors during their junior year.
Funding
Students may apply for a Riggio Summer Research Award, offered through the department and intended to facilitate the preparation of a thesis project during the summer before senior year. These competitive grants can be used for domestic and international travel to art collections, archives, architectural sites, monuments, and other places of interest, CU policy permitting.
Grants for thesis research during the academic year are also available through Columbia College and General Studies. Please visit their websites for more information.
Deadlines for the 2021-22 Senior Thesis Program
The Riggio Summer Research Award application for rising seniors is due no later than Monday, April 12th, 2021. Students must submit a proposal of ~750 words and an itemized budget. Faculty advisors must submit a letter of recommendation. These materials should be emailed to the Undergraduate Program Coordinator for review by the Director of Undergraduate Studies.
Faculty advisor confirmation via email to the Undergraduate Program Coordinator and Director of Undergraduate Studies is due no later than Thursday, May 6th, 2021.
The application deadline for a 2021-2022 senior thesis project proposal is Monday, August 23rd, 2021. Applications can be found on the Planning Sheets and Forms page. Application guidelines are included in the Undergraduate Student Handbook.
2020-21 Senior Thesis Projects
Alexandra Cooper: “Damien Hirst: Collecting and Display in the Age of Social Media” (Advisor: Prof. Anne Higonnet)
Bryn Evans: “GROUNDED IN OUR OWN IMAGE: Beverly Buchanan’s Marsh Ruins (1981) as material bodies in motion” (Sponsor: Prof. Mabel Wilson)
Mary Fellios: “In the Beginning of Dreaming: Fusing Carolee Schneemann’s Ethics and Aesthetics” (Advisor: Prof. Rosalyn Deutsche)
Alex Foo: “The Syntheses of Alessandro Vittoria: Sculptural Ambition in Renaissance Venice” (Sponsor: Prof. Diane Bodart)
Emma Gould: “The Right to Privacy: Spatial and Socially Constructed Hierarchies on Three American Plantations” (Advisor: Prof. Zeynep Celik Alexander)
Kennedy Roese: “Brendan Fernandes and the Question of Performance” (Advisor: Prof. John Rajchman)
Thomas Saenz: “From Synthesis to Nepantla: Judy Baca and Urban Los Angeles, 1970-2019” (Advisor: Prof. Lisa Trever)
Claire Wilson: “Women at Work: The Construction of Feminine Space in Christine de Pizan’s The Book of the Queen (Sponsor: Prof. Gregory Bryda)
Octavia Young: “Beyond Burne-Jones: Reassembling the Collective in the Decorative Religious Works of Morris & Co.” (Advisor: Prof. Meredith Gamer)
2019-20 Senior Thesis Projects
Clara Maria Apostolatos: “Remains: The Art of Teresa Margolles” (Sponsor: Rosalyn Deutsche)
Emma Bruckner: “Solitude and Surroundings, The Belfiore Studiolo and Cultural Exchange in Quattrocento Ferrara” (Sponsor: Diane Bodart)
Haena Chu: “Lee Bul’s Architectural Installations: How to Survive Modern History in Korea” (Sponsor: Jonathan Reynolds)
Rosie Hausmann: “Classicizing Gothic: The Architectural Fusion of Saint-Gervais-Saint-Protais” (Sponsor: Michael Waters)
Jung Kim: “Anselm Kiefer’s Occupations: A Semantic Answer to the Problem of Post-Holocaust Representation” (Sponsor: Rosalyn Deutsche)
Trinity Lester: “Reconsidering The Grid through the work of Hilma af Klint” (Sponsor: Branden Joseph)
Owen Monroe: “Gospel and Gossip: Francis Frith’s Photography Books of the Rhine and Hastings” (Sponsor: Meredith Gamer)
Mia Nicenko: “Interaction, Instruction, and “Influence” in the Works of Catharina and Jan van Hemessen (Sponsor: Michael Cole)
2018-19 Senior Thesis Projects
Natasha Coleman: “Between the Living and the Dead: Wooden Coffins and Physical, Ritual, and Pictorial Boundaries in Han Chamber Tombs” (Sponsor: Jue Guo)
Alexandra Germer: “(German) Expressionism: Emil Nolde’s Paintings and the Revision of German Identity” (Sponsor: Noam Elcott)
Clara He: “Building an Exotic Home: Architects’ Intervention in Rural Reconstruction in Contemporary China” (Sponsor: Mary McLeod)
Sofia Hernandez: “Rendering Multimedia Architecture: Francesco Panini’s Colored Prints of the Farnese Gallery in Rome” (Sponsor: Eleonora Pistis)
Emerson Jones: “Myth and Modernity: The Royal Liver Building and the Making of Edwardian Liverpool” (Sponsor: Barry Bergdoll)
Nicole-Ann Lobo: “The ‘Oriental’ Christ: Religion and Alterity in the Art of F. N. Souza (1949-1967)” (Sponsor: Vidya Dehejia)
Aaron Smithson: “‘Art on the Urban Green’: Sculpture Parks and Redevelopment in the Age of Neoliberalism” (Sponsor: Rosalyn Deutsche)
Myles Zhang: “The Church of St. Denis and Gothic Architecture: A Case Study” (Sponsor: Stephen Murray)
2017-18 Senior Thesis Projects
Irene Anastazievsky: “The Eumachia Building: Intersections of Gender and Architecture in the Forum of Pompeii” (Sponsor: Francesco de Angelis)
Aimée Auguin: “Drawing with Light: Gjon Mili’s Photography of Picasso’s Light Drawings and the Distillation of Creation within the Studio” (Sponsor: Anne Higonnet)
Adam J. Elkhadem: “Pathetic and Popular: How Fourth-Century Greece Belonged to the Maenad” (Sponsor: Francesco de Angelis)
Yuanya Feng: “Transcending the Temporal Heterotopia in Realm of Reverberations: Chen Chieh-jen’s Documentary Fiction” (Sponsor: Christopher Phillips)
Jonah Goldman Kay: “Specters of the South: Populating Sally Mann’s Landscapes Through Memory, History and Time” (Sponsor: Jonathan Crary)
Sam Lim-Kimberg: “Between Lupe and Che: José Rodríguez-Soltero and New York Underground Film” (Sponsor: Branden Joseph)
Diana Winfield Luber: “Power and Magic: On the Performative and Talismanic Properties of Monumental Mudejar in Medieval Zaragoza” (Sponsor: Avinoam Shalem)
Amber Noé: “Love to Willem de Kooning’s Prints of 1971: Lines To and From Japan” (Sponsor: Michael Golston)
Alicia Schleifman: “Something Really Messy: Ed Ruscha’s Avant-Garde Foundations, 1974-1976” (Sponsor: Branden Joseph)
Alexandra Solovyev: “A Suprematist Fairy Tale: Text, Image, and the Infantilist Aesthetic in the Post-Revolutionary Children’s Books of El Lissitzky and Vladimir Lebedev” (Sponsor: John Rajchman)
Scott Sonnenberg: “The Way Things Are, or a Theory of Decorative Arts in the Modern Museum” (Sponsor: Anne Higonnet)
Sam Velasquez: “El Abrazo Tierno: The Politicized Motherhood in the Art of Oswaldo Guayasamin” (Sponsor: Kellie Jones)
2016-17 Senior Thesis Projects
Canada Austin Choate: "It's Only Music, John: Dan Graham's Rock Criticism, 1968-88" (Sponsor: Branden Joseph)
Benjamin Philip Davidoff: "The Ancient Synagogue at Sardis: Religious Pluralism in the Late Roman Empire" (Sponsor: Ioannis Mylonopoulos)
Megan Anne Kincaid: “Motherwell’s Modernism: The Universal Language of Automatic Drawings” (Sponsor: John Rajchman)
Geon Woo Lee: “Tradition Redux: Architecture of Kim Swoo Geun” (Sponsor: Jonathan Reynolds)
Isabella Michelle Sterman Rosner: “The Neatest Worker of the Party”: Text, Stitching, and Sisterhood in Charlotte Brontë and Jane Austen’s Needlework” (Sponsor: Anne Higonnet)
Amanda Brooks-Kelly Weiss: "Italian Baroque Outsiders: Guercino and his Old Testament Subjects" (Sponsor: Michael Cole)
Samantha R. Williger: “Performing Anarchy: Christopher D’Arcangelo’s Rosa Esman Gallery Invitational Action—Look Outfor what you Look At” (Sponsor: John Miller)
2015-16 Senior Thesis Projects
Megan Elizabeth Baker: "Peinte par elle-même: The Digital Reassertion of Female Artistic Style in Eighteenth-Century France" (Sponsor: Anne Higonnet)
Eyvana Maria Bengochea: "From Stalin to the Surrealists: Connecting Exhibition Practice Between the Wars in France and Germany" (Sponsor: John Rajchman)
Sean Stephen Brian Delanty: "On UFO Photography" (Sponsor: Branden Joseph)
Jacob Ian Gagne: "Meat Monumentalized: The Slaughterhouses of Francisco Salamone" (Sponsor: Barry Bergdoll)
Eleanor Crimmins Goerss: "Fragmented Temple & Maiden Intact: The Art of Sanctuary and Sermon Book in the Seventeenth-Century Amsterdam Begijnhof" (Sponsor: Diane Bodart)
Kolleen Alexandra Ku: "Figuring Sensation: Kazimir Malevich's Late Figurative Paintings (1926-1935)" (Sponsor: John Rajchman)
Aidan Timothy Mehigan: "Toward a Benedictine Architecture: The Campus of Portsmouth Abbey, 1952-present" (Sponsor: Barry Bergdoll)
Kady Min Pu: "Taming The Bull: Bull-Leaping in the Ancient Mediterranean" (Sponsor: Ioannis Mylonopolos)
Sofia Silva: "Guillermo Kuitca's Produced Space in the Age of Globalization" (Sponsor: Kellie Jones)
2014-15 Senior Thesis Projects
Sarah Bell: "The History of Preservation as a History Worth Preserving: William Sumner Appleton and His Work at Jackson House" (Sponsor: Barry Bergdoll)
Martha Scott Burton: "To Suffer a Sea-Change: The Afro-Future Female and the Aquatic in Ellen Gallagher's Watery Ecstatic" (Sponsor: Kellie Jones)
Andrew Demas: "Born Out of Autocracy, Forged in Democracy: the Metamorphosis of the World Trade Center and the Mediation of Economic and Public Priorities" (Sponsor: Barry Bergdoll)
Alexandra Eynon: "Curious Cases: The Cabinet and the Contemporary" (Sponsor: Keith Moxey)
Alexander Hyman: "Constructed Regionalism: Architectural Eclecticism in Jewish and Arab Homes in Mandatory Palestine" (Sponsor: Jonathan Reynolds)
Julia Jarrett: "Reflections on the Polish Avant-Garde: Wladyslaw Strzeminski and the Theory of Unism" (Sponsor: Noam Elcott)
Angel Jiang: "Storied Cycles: Reading the Boss Sculpture of Norwich Cathedral" (Sponsor: Stephen Murray)
Elizabeth Lightfoot: "Form Follows Family: The Impact of Edith Elmer Wood on Modernism, Feminism, and New Deal Housing Reform" (Sponsor: Mary McLeod)
Daniel Merritt: "Build the Bridge: Felix Gonzalez-Torres and the Development of Memory, Recognition, and Contemporaneity" (Sponsor: Kellie Jones)
Zachary Small: "Sojourning Senescence: John Baldessari and his Late Works" (Sponsor: Branden Joseph)
Ione Wang: "Intimate Matters: Giorgio Morandi's Still Lifes, The Museum of Innocence, and Waste Not" (Sponsor: John Rajchman)
2013-14 Senior Thesis Projects
Roko Rumora: "The Danger of Seeing Double(s): Same-Subject Pendant Statues in Roman Visual Culture" (Sponsor: Francesco de Angelis)
Rebecca Schechter Fattell: "Inhaling Viewers, Exhaling Music: The Visualization of Sound in Johannes Vermeer's Oeuvre (Sponsor: Keith Moxey)
Shirlynn Sham: "A Shocking Split: Intrusions of the Phantasmagoric into the Embodied Perceptual Model" (Sponsor: Jonathan Crary)
Past Senior Thesis Research Fellowship Recipients
Clara Apostolatos, CC ’20 to research the works of conceptual and performance artist Teresa Margolles in Mexico City and Venice.
Haena Chu, CC ’20 to research the works of artist Lee Bul in Seoul.
Rosie Hausmann, GS ’20 to research sixteenth-century architectural preservation techniques in Paris.
Jung Kim, CC ’20 to research works of Anselm Keifer in Scotland and Germany.
Trinity Lester, CC ’20 to research the archives of Hilma af Klint, Louise Bourgeois, and Agnes Martin in New York, Amsterdam, and Taos, New Mexico.
Owen Monroe, CC ’20 to research the photographs and archives of Francis Frith in London and Dorset.
Mia Nicenko, CC ’20 to research the paintings of Catharina von Hemessen in England and Belgium.
Natasha Coleman, CC ’19 to visit ancient tomb sites in China.
Alexandra Germer, CC ’19 to visit exhibition archives in Kassel, Germany.
Sofia Hernandez, CC ’19 to research the eighteenth-century prints of Francesco Panini.
Emerson Jones, CC ’19 for research on the architecture firm Mewès and Davis in England.
Nicole-Ann Lobo, CC ’19 for research on Francis Newton Souza’s years in London.
Kellie Zhao, CC ’19 to visit mausoleum sites in Eastern Europe.
Adam J. Elkhadem, CC ’18 to research the late classical sculpture of Skopas of Paros in Greece.
Diana Winfield Luber, CC ’18 for research on the cultural and artistic exchange of Medieval Islamic Spain.
Amber Noé, CC ’18 for research on Willem de Kooning's lithographs in Japan.
Alicia Schleifman, CC ’18 for research on the paintings of Ed Ruscha in Los Angeles.
Iphigenia Seong, CC ’18 to study the works of Nam June Paik in South Korea.
Sam Velasquez, CC ’18 for research on the works of Oswaldo Guayasamín in Ecuador.
Benjamin Philip Davidoff, CC ’17 for research on the architecture of ancient synagogues in Israel, Turkey, and Italy.
Geon Woo Lee, CC ’17 for research on modern architect Kim Swoo Geun in Korea.
Elizabeth Monroe, CC ’17 for research on contemporary artist Mark Bradford in New Orleans.
Isabella Michelle Sterman Rosner, CC ’17 for research on nineteenth-century needlework in England and Massachusetts.
Eleanor Crimmins Goerss, CC ’16 to travel to the Netherlands to research the aesthetics of religious identity in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
Aidan Timothy Mehigan, CC ’16 to research Pietro Belluschi at the Oregon Historical Society in Portland.
Sarah Bell, GS ’15 to research the Jackson House of Portsmouth, New Hampshire.
Angel Jiang, CC ’15 to conduct research on the Norwich Cathedral in the United Kingdom.
Elizabeth Lightfoot, GS ’15 to travel to Europe to research her thesis on Edith Elmer Wood.
Hwi Jane Lee, CC ’13 to travel to Korea to study Korean Contemporary Art.
Andrea Lujan, GS ’11 to research her proposed thesis on the Aztec Moon Goddess.
Diana Greenwald, CC ’11 to study the American painter Thomas Moran and his portrayals of Yellowstone National Park.