Dissertations in Progress
Sonia Dixon: “Iconography of Transition: The Chi-rho during the Late Antique Period.” Committee Chair: Lynn Jones.
Madison Gilmore-Duffey: “The Classical Past in the Art of Late Antique Byzantium.” Committee Chair: Lynn Jones.
Haylee Glasel: “Art and Activism: Sámi Responses to Contemporary Environmental Violence.” Committee Chair: Kristin Dowell.
Sarah Mathiesen: “Yılanlı Kilise: Meaning and Identity in a Byzantine Rock-Cut Church.” Committee Chair: Lynn Jones.
Tess McCoy: “Indigenous Installation Art as Story: Material, Method, and Memory in the Practices of Sonya Kelliher-Combs, Maureen Gruben, and Hannah Claus.” Committee Chair: Kristin Dowell.
Caitlin Mims: “Hystera Amulets: Magic and Female Healing in the Middle Byzantine Period” Committee Chair: Lynn Jones.
Ileana Olmos: “African Diasporas in Panamá and the Ritual of the Congo Performance at Nombre de Dios.” Committee Chair: Paul Niell.
Sheila Scoville: “Full of Sweet Magueys: Visualizing Agave–Human Symbiosis in Colonial Nahua Manuscripts.” Committee Chairs: Michael Carrasco, Paul Niell.
Leah Sherman: “The ‘Museum Problem’ and the Fantasy of the Global 1950s”
Estefanía Vallejo Santiago: “We Are Resistance: Negotiations of Identity and Place in Puerto Rican Muralism.” Committee Chairs: Mora Beauchamp-Byrd, Paul Niell.
Emily White: “Visual Surgery: Printing in Early Modern Europe.” Committee Chair: Stephanie Leitch.
Completed Dissertations
Note: Most completed FSU dissertations can be found in the DigiNole Digital Repository.
2023
Cindy Evans: “Political Playgrounds: The Effekt Group’s activist art in Postwar West Germany and Yugoslavia.”Committee Chair: Tenley Bick.
Mallory Nanny: “(Re)Framing Memory: Stories of the Vietnam War in Contemporary Photo-Based Practice.” Committee Chair: Karen Bearor.
Alison Reilly: “The Bistro Model: James Johnson Sweeney’s Curatorial Vision.” Committee Chair: Adam Jolles.
Emily Tuttle: “Documenting Domesticity: An Examination of the Home in Late Medieval Yorkshire, England.” Committee Chairs: Erika Loic, Benjamin Dodds (History).
2022
Michelle Demeter: “Imagineering a Nostalgic Past and Utopian Future: Walt Disney’s Attractions at the 1964-1965 New York World’s Fair.” Committee Chair: Robert Neuman.
Lacy Gillette: “People Watching in Paper Worlds: Jost Amman (1539-1591) and Picturing the ‘Type’ in the Sixteenth-Century Illustrated Book.” Committee Chair: Stephanie Leitch.
Britt Boler Hunter: “The Wellcome Apocalypse: Innovating Pictorial Traditions in the Ordinatio of a Late Medieval Multi-Text Manuscript.” Committee Chairs: Dr. Richard K. Emmerson; Dr. Stephanie Leitch.
Alexandra Challenger: “Printing the Cosmos: Images, Readers, and Mathematics in Peter Apian’s Instrumental texts.” Committee Chair: Stephanie Leitch.
Rachel Masters Carlisle: “All’antica Augsburg: Picturing German Antiquity in the Age of Print.” Committee Chair: Stephanie Leitch.
Ashley Lindeman: “L’Arte Murale: Modern Italian Muralism in the Age of Fascism, 1932-1945.” Committee Chair: Adam Jolles.
Emily Thames: “Empire, Race, and Agency in the Work of José Campeche, Artist and Subject in Late Spanish Colonial Puerto Rico (1751-1809).” Committee Chair: Paul Niell.
2021
Jennifer Baez: “Painting the Miracles of Altagracia: Art, Piety, and Memory in Hispaniola (1751-1795).” Committee Chair: Paul Niell.
Rachel Fesperman: “Feu à Volonté—Fire at Will! The Tirs of Niki de Saint Phalle, 1961–1964.″ Committee Chair: Adam Jolles.
Gabriela Germana: “The Tablas de Sarhua: Indigenous Aesthetics in the Context of Contemporary Peruvian Art.” Committee Chair: Michael Carrasco.
2020
Amy Bowman-McElhone: “‘Freakish’ Student: Mike Kelley, Artistic Pedagogy, and Institutional Critique.” Committee Chair: Adam Jolles.
2019
Stephanie Bender: “Constructions of the Angestellte: Photographs of the Salaried Class in the Weimar Republic.” Committee Chair: Adam Jolles.
2018
Carolina Alarcon: “Materia Medica: Anatomical Illustrations in Renaissance Spain.” Committee Chair: Stephanie Leitch.
Tugba Batuhan: “Museums in the Construction of National Identity in Twentieth Century Mexico and Turkey.” Committee Chair: Michael Carrasco.
Segundo Fernandez: “David Cox and the Painterly Picturesque.” Committee Chair: Robert Neuman.
Lesley A. Wolff: “¡Guerra al metate! The Visuality of Foodways in Postrevolutionary Mexico City.” Committee Chair: Michael Carrasco.
2017
Sarah E. S. Buck: “Prints and Professional Habits During the Reign of Louis XIV: The Grotesque Costumes of the Trades by the Larmessin (c. 1688-1695).” Committee Chair: Robert Neuman.
Deirdre Carter: “Art, History, and the Creation of Monastic Identity at Late Medieval St. Albans Abbey.” Committee Chairs: Richard K. Emmerson, Lynn Jones.
Mery-et Lescher, “The Little Studio That Could: The Contribution of Walt Disney Feature Animation Florida to the Animation Renaissance and Theme-Park Entertainment.” Committee Chair: Robert Neuman.
Kristi Peterson: “Consumption and Construction: Devotional Images and the Place of Empire in Postclassic Mexico, 1325-1521.” Committee Chair: Michael Carrasco.
D. Bryan Schaeffer: “Sojourn to the Sun God: Places of Travel in Mixtec Codices.” Committee Chair: Michael Carrasco.
2016
Brad Hostetler: “The Function of Text: Byzantine Reliquaries with Epigrams, 843-1204.” Committee Chair: Lynn Jones.
Heather Lundy: “Architecture and Placemaking at a Northern Maya City: Ek’ Balam and the Question of Style.” Committee Chair: Michael Carrasco.
2015
Sarah Andyshak: “Christ and Exegesis: Visual Interpretation in the Moralized Bibles, Circa 1225-1235.” Committee Chairs: Richard K. Emmerson, Stephanie Leitch.
Carey Fee: “per Sanctum Vultum de Luca!: Il Volto Santo and the Face of Lucca in the Eleventh through Fourteenth Centuries.” Committee Chair: Paula Gerson.
2014
Karlyn Griffith: “Antichrist, Eschatology, and Romance in the Illustrated Harley Apocalypse, Sibylle Tiburtine, and the Tournoiement Antécrist (MSS Harley 4972 and Douce 308).” Committee Chairs: Richard K. Emmerson and Paula Gerson.
Nadia Pawelchak: “Medieval Art, Audiences, Embodied Responses, and Cognitive Theory.” Committee Chair: Paula Gerson.
2013
Brandon Burrell: “Abbott Laboratories: Provisioning A Vision.” Committee Chair: Karen A. Bearor.
A. Morgan McCormick: “Rhetorical Pop: the Art of Roger Shimomura.” Committee Chair: Lauren Weingarden.
Diantha Steinhilper: “Identity And Empire In Colonial Maps Of Mexico, 1524-1600.” Committee Chairs: Michael D. Carrasco, Stephanie Leitch.
2011
Jennifer Feltman: “Moral Theology and the Care of Souls: The Last Judgment in Thirteenth-Century French Sculpture.” Committee Chair: Paula Gerson.
Christal Hensley: “The Cult of Personality: Gertrude Stein and the Development of the Object Portrait in American Visual Art.” Committee Chair: Karen A. Bearor.
Tanja L. Jones: “The Renaissance Portrait Medal and the Court Context: On the Origins and Political Function of Pisanello’s Invention.” Committee Chair: Jack Freiberg.
Jennifer E. Courts: “The Politics of Devotion: Patronage and the Sumptuous Arts at the French Court (1374-1472).” Committee Chair: Stephanie Leitch.
2010
Lana Ann Burgess: “Advancing American Art and its Afterlife: From the State Department to the University Museum.” Committee Chair: Karen A. Bearor.
Leigh Anne Roach: “A Positive, Popular Art: Sources, Structure, and Impact of Gyorgy Kepes’s Language of Vision.” Committee Chair: Karen A. Bearor.
Nathan James Timpano: “The Semblance of Things: Corporeal Gesture in Viennese Expressionism.” Committee Chair: Adam Jolles.
Keri Watson: “The Photographic Essay as Index of African-American Identity in the Interwar Years: Black Saturday; Roll, Jordan, Roll; You Have Seen Their Faces; and 12 Million Black Voices.” Committee Chair: Robert Neuman.
2009
Ceil Parks Bare: “Achilles and the Roman Aristocrat: The Ambrosian Iliad as a Social Statement in the Late Antique Period.” Committee Chair: Paula Gerson.
Julianne Parse Sandlin: “Asserting Royal Power in Early Seventeenth-Century Paris: Louis XIII, Maria de’ Medici, and the Art and Architecture of Reformed Religious Orders.” Committee Chair: Robert Neuman.
2008
Elizabeth Barnhart Heuer: “Going Postal: Surrealism and the Discourses of Mail Art.” Committee Chair: Karen A. Bearor.
2007
Barbara J. Johnston: “Sacred Kingship and Royal Patronage in the Vie de la Magdalene: Pilgrimage, Politics, Passion Plays, and the Life of Louise of Savoy.” Committee Chair: Robert Neuman.
2006
Charles Preston McLane: “Alessandro Magnasco and the Painterly Picaresque.” Committee Chair: Robert Neuman.
Kara Ann Morrow: “Ears and Eyes and Mouth and Heart…His Soul and His Senses”: The Visual St. Stephen Narrative as the Essence of Ecclesiastical Authority.” Committee Chair: Cynthia Hahn.
2005
Barbara Jean Johnston: “Sacred Kingship and Royal Patronage in the Vie de la Magdalene: Pilgrimage, Politics, Passion Plays, and the Life of Louise of Savoy.” Committee Chair: Robert Neuman.
2004
William Carlisle McKeown: “’England’s Giorgione’: Charles H. Shannon and Venetianism in Late Victorian Art.” Committee Chair: Lauren Weingarden.
Irene Nero: “Computers, Cladding, and Curves: The Techno-Morphism of Frank Gehry’s Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain.” Committee Chair: Lauren Weingarden.
2003
Timothy Bryan Smith: “Alberto Aringhieri and the Chapel of Saint John the Baptist: Patronage, Politics, and the Cult of Relics in Renaissance Siena.” Committee Chair: Jack Freiberg.
Amy Wright: “The Bible of Borso d’Este: Christian Piety and Political Rhetoric in Quattrocento Ferrara.” Committee Chair: Jack Freiberg.
2002
Steve B. Choate: “Devotion and Narrative Within the Tradition of the Croce Dipinta.” Committee Chair: Jack Freiberg.
Caroline Katherine Klarr: “Painting Paradise for a Post-Colonial Pacific: The Fijian Frescoes of Jean Charlot.” Committee Chair: Jehanne Teilhet-Fisk.
Bernadine Heller-Greenman: “The Monument du Costume of Jean-Michel Moreau le Jeune in the Context of Rousseau and the Ancien Régime.” Committee Chair: Robert Neuman.
Kate Howe: “Accomodating the Faithful: San Bernardino de Sena and the Franciscan Program in Sixteenth-Century Yucatán, Mexico.” Committee Chair: Lauren Weingarden.
Michaela Merryday: “The Relevance of Jürgen Habermas’s Concept of the Public Sphere for Contemporary Public Art Practices.” Committee Chair: Karen A. Bearor.
Timothy B. Smith: “Alberto Aringhieri and the Chapel of Saint John the Baptist: Patronage, Politics, and the Cult of Relics in Renaissance Siena.” Committee Chair: Jack Freiberg.
2000
Aaron H. De Groft: “John Ringling in Perpetua Memoria: The Legacy and Prestige of Art and Collecting.” Committee Chair: Lauren Weingarden.
Kurt J. Sundstrom: “The Chiostro Grande of Monte Oliveto Maggiore and the Olivetan Reform Movement.” Committee Chair: Jack Freiberg.
Marie Watkins: “Painting the American Indian at the Turn of the Century: Joseph Henry Sharp and his Patrons, William H. Holmes, Phoebe A. Hearst, and Joseph G. Butler, Jr.” Committee Chair: Karen A. Bearor.
1997
Sherry Piland: “Charles Mulford Robinson : Theory and Practice in Early Twentieth-Century Urban Planning.” Committee Chair: Lauren Weingarden.
1993
Eloise E. Johnson: “A Critical Study of the Modernist Neglect of the Harlem Renaissance.” Committee Chair: Lauren Weingarden.
1992
B. Underwood DuRette: “The History and Interpretation of the Aldobrandini Wedding: Bacchus, Fertility and Marriage in the Time of Augustus.” Committee Chair: Nancy de Grummond.
Juan A. Martinez: “Cuban Art and National Identity: The Vanguardia Painters, 1920s-1940s.” Committee Chair: Robert Hobbs.
1987
Susan Braden: “The Florida Hotels of Henry Plant and Henry Flagler.” Committee Chair: Lauren Weingarden.
William Carl Shiver: “The Historic Architecture of Key West: The Triumph of Vernacular Form in a Nineteenth Century Florida Town.” Committee Chair: Lauren Weingarden.
1976
Kathleen M. Russo: “Lassurance-the-Younger: Architect to Madame de Pompadour.” Committee Chair: Gunther Stamm.