art history dissertation pdf

Department of the History of Art

You are here, dissertations, completed dissertations.

1942-present

DISSERTATIONS IN PROGRESS

As of July 2023

Bartunkova, Barbora , “Sites of Resistance: Antifascism and the Czechoslovak Avant-garde” (C. Armstrong)

Betik, Blair Katherine , “Alternate Experiences: Evaluating Lived Religious Life in the Roman Provinces in the 1st Through 4th Centuries CE” (M. Gaifman)

Boyd, Nicole , “Science, Craft, Art, Theater: Four ‘Perspectives’ on the Painted Architecture of Angelo Michele Colonna and Agostino Mitelli” (N. Suthor). 

Brown, Justin , “Afro-Surinamese Calabash Art in the Era of Slavery and Emancipation” (C. Fromont)

Burke, Harry , “The Islands Between: Art, Animism, and Anticolonial Worldmaking in Archipelagic Southeast Asia” (P. Lee)

Chakravorty, Swagato , “Displaced Cinema: Moving Images and the Politics of Location in Contemporary Art” (C. Buckley, F. Casetti)

Chau, Tung , “Strange New Worlds: Interfaces in the Work of Cao Fei” (P. Lee)

Cox, Emily , “Perverse Modernism, 1884-1990” (C. Armstrong, T. Barringer)

Coyle, Alexander , “Frame and Format between Byzantium and Central Italy, 1200-1300” (R. Nelson)

Datta, Yagnaseni , “Materialising Illusions: Visual Translation in the Mughal Jug Basisht, c. 1602.” (K. Rizvi)

de Luca, Theo , “Nicolas Poussin’s Chronotopes” (N. Suthor)

Dechant, D. Lyle . ” ‘daz wir ein ander vinden fro’: Readers and Performers of the Codex Manesse” (J. Jung)

Del Bonis-O’Donnell, Asia, “Trees and the Visualization of kosmos in Archaic and Classical Athenian Art” (M. Gaifman)

Demby, Nicole, “The Diplomatic Image: Framing Art and Internationalism, 1945-1960” (K. Mercer)

Donnelly, Michelle , “Spatialized Impressions: American Printmaking Outside the Workshop, 1935–1975” (J. Raab)

Epifano, Angie , “Building the Samorian State: Material Culture, Architecture, and Cities across West Africa” (C. Fromont)

Fialho, Alex , “Apertures onto AIDS: African American Photography and the Art History of the Storage Unit” (P. Lee, T Nyong’o)

Foo, Adela , “Crafting the Aq Qoyuniu Court (1475-1490) (E. Cooke, Jr.)

Franciosi, Caterina , “Latent Light: Energy and Nineteenth-Century British Art” (T. Barringer)

Frier, Sara , “Unbearable Witness: The Disfigured Body in the Northern European Brief (1500-1620)” (N. Suthor)

Gambert-Jouan, Anabelle , “Sculpture in Place: Medieval Wood Depositions and Their Environments” (J. Jung)

Gass, Izabel, “Painted Thanatologies: Théodore Géricault Against the Aesthetics of Life” (C. Armstrong)

Gaudet, Manon , “Property and the Contested Ground of North American Visual Culture, 1900-1945” (E. Cooke, Jr.)  

Haffner, Michaela , “Nature Cure: ”White Wellness” and the Visual Culture of Natural Health, 1870-1930” (J. Raab)

Hepburn, Victoria , “William Bell Scott’s Progress” (T. Barringer)

Herrmann, Mitchell, “The Art of the Living: Biological Life and Aesthetic Experience in the 21st Century” (P. Lee)

Higgins, Lily , “Reading into Things: Articulate Objects in Colonial North America, 1650-1783” (E. Cooke, Jr.)

Hodson, Josie , “Something in Common: Black Art under Austerity in New York City, 1975-1990” (Yale University, P. Lee)

Hong, Kevin , “Plasticity, Fungibility, Toxicity: Photography’s Ecological Entanglements in the Mid-Twentieth-Century United States” (C. Armstrong, J Raab)

Kang, Mia , “Art, Race, Representation: The Rise of Multiculturalism in the Visual Arts” (K. Mercer)

Keto, Elizabeth , “Remaking the World: United States Art in the Reconstruction Era, 1861-1900.” (J. Raab)

Kim, Adela , “Beyond Institutional Critique: Tearing Up in the Work of Andrea Fraser” (P. Lee)

Koposova, Ekaterina , “Triumph and Terror in the Arts of the Franco-Dutch War” (M. Bass)

Lee, Key Jo , “Melancholic Materiality: History and the Unhealable Wound in African American Photographic Portraits, 1850-1877” (K. Mercer)

Levy Haskell, Gavriella , “The Imaginative Painter”: Visual Narrative and the Interactive Painting in Britain, 1851-1914” (T. Barringer, E. Cooke Jr)

Marquardt, Savannah, “Becoming a Body: Lucanian Painted Vases and Grave Assemblages in Southern Italy” (M. Gaifman)

Miraval, Nathalie , “The Art of Magic: Afro-Catholic Visual Culture in the Early Modern Spanish Empire” (C. Fromont)

Mizbani, Sharon , Water and Memory: Fountains, Heritage, and Infrastructure in Istanbul and Tehran (1839-1950) (K. Rizvi)

Molarsky-Beck, Marina, “Seeing the Unseen: Queer Artistic Subjectivity in Interwar Photography” (C. Armstrong)

Nagy, Renata , “Bookish Art: Natural Historical Learning Across Media in Seventeenth-century Northern Europe” (Bass, M)

Olson, Christine , “Owen Jones and the Epistemologies of Nineteenth-Century Design” (T. Barringer)

Petrilli-Jones, Sara , “Drafting the Canon: Legal Histories of Art in Florence and Rome, 1600-1800” (N. Suthor)

Phillips, Kate , “American Ephemera” (J. Raab)

Potuckova, Kristina , “The Arts of Women’s Monastic Liturgy, Holy Roman Empire, 1000-1200” (J. Jung)

Quack, Gregor , “The Social Fabric: Franz Erhard Walther’s Art in Postwar Germany” (P. Lee)

Rahimi-Golkhandan, Shabnam , “The Photograph’s Shabih-Kashi (Verisimilitude) – The Liminal Visualities of Late Qajar Art (1853-1911)” (K. Rizvi)

Rapoport, Sarah , “James Jacques Joseph Tissot in the Interstices of Modernity” (T. Barringer, C. Armstrong)

Riordan, Lindsay , “Beuys, Terror, Value: 1967-1979” (S. Zeidler)

Robbins, Isabella , “Relationality and Being: Indigeneity, Space and Transit in Global Contemporary Art” (P. Lee, N. Blackhawk)

Sen, Pooja , “The World Builders ” (J. Peters)

Sellati, Lillian , “When is Herakles Not Himself? Mediating Cultural Plurality in Greater Central Asia, 330 BCE – 365 CE” (M. Gaifman)

Tang, Jenny , “Genealogies of Confinement: Carceral Logics of Visuality in Atlantic Modernism 1930 – 1945” (K. Mercer)

Thomas, Alexandra , “Afrekete’s Touch: Black Queer Feminist Errantry and Global African Art”  (P. Lee)

Valladares, Carlos , “Jacques Demy” (P. Lee)

Verrot, Trevor , “Sculpted Lamentation Groups in the Late Medieval Veneto” (J. Jung)

Von-Ow, Pierre , Visual Tactics: Histories of Perspective in Britain and its Empire, 1670-1768.”  (T. Barringer)

Wang, Xueli , “Performing Disappearance: Maggie Cheung and the Off-Screen” (Q. Ngan)

Webley, John , “Ink, Paint, and Blood: India and the Great Game in Russian Culture” (T. Barringer, M. Brunson)

Werwie, Katherine , “Visions Across the Gates: Materiality, Symbolism, and Communication in the Historiated Wooden Doors of Medieval European Churches” (J. Jung)

Wisowaty, Stephanie , “Painted Processional Crosses in Central Italy, 1250-1400: Movement, Mediation and Multisensory Effects” (J. Jung)

Young, Colin , “Desert Places: The Visual Culture of the Prairies and the Pampas across the Nineteenth Century” (J. Raab)

Zhou, Joyce Yusi, “Objects by Her Hand: Art and Material Culture of Women in Early Modern Batavia (1619-1799) (M. Bass, E. Cooke, Jr.)

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Art and Art History Theses and Dissertations

Theses/dissertations from 2023 2023.

Fragmented Hours: The biography of a devotional book printed by Thielman Kerver , Stephanie R. Haas

Theses/Dissertations from 2022 2022

Assessing Environmental Sensitivity in San Diego County, California, for Bird Species of Special Concern , Eda Okan Kilic

Theses/Dissertations from 2021 2021

Empress Nur Jahan and Female Empowerment: A Critical Analysis of a Long-Forgotten Mughal Portrait , Angela N. Finkbeiner

Theses/Dissertations from 2019 2019

Seeing King Solomon through the Verses of Hafez: A Critical Study of Two Safavid Manuscript Paintings , Richard W. Ellis

Moving Away from The West or Taking Independent Positions: A Structural Analysis for The New Turkish Foreign Policy , Suleyman Senturk

A Quiet Valley at Roztoky : Testimony of Singularity in the Landscape Imagery of Zdenka Braunerová , Zdislava Ungrova

Theses/Dissertations from 2018 2018

Mirror Images: Penelope Umbrico’s Mirrors (from Home Décor Catalogs and Websites) , Jeanie Ambrosio

Theses/Dissertations from 2016 2016

Incongruous Conceptions: Owen Jones’s Plans, Elevations, Sections and Details of the Alhambra and British Views of Spain , Andrea Marie Johnson

An Alternative Ancien Régime? Elisabeth Vigée-Lebrun in Russia , Erin Elizabeth Wilson

Theses/Dissertations from 2015 2015

Sarah Sze's "Triple Point": Modeling a Phenomenological Experience of Contemporary Life , Amanda J. Preuss

Cross-Cultural Spaces in an Anonymously Painted Portrait of the Ottoman Sultan Mahmud II , Alison Paige Terndrup

Theses/Dissertations from 2013 2013

The Choir Books of Santa Maria in Aracoeli and Patronage Strategies of Pope Alexander VI , Maureen Elizabeth Cox

Theses/Dissertations from 2012 2012

Painting Puertorriqueñidad: The Jíbaro as a Symbol of Creole Nationalism in Puerto Rican Art before and after 1898 , Jeffrey L. Boe

Franz Marc as an Ethologist , Jean Carey

Renegotiating Identities, Cultures and Histories: Oppositional Looking in Shelley Niro's "This Land is Mime Land" , Jennifer Danielle Mccall

Theses/Dissertations from 2010 2010

Empty Streets in the Capital of Modernity: Formation of Lieux de Mémoire in Parisian Street Photography From Daguerre to Atget , Sabrina Lynn Hughes

Theses/Dissertations from 2009 2009

Intervention in painting by Marlene Dumas with titles of engagement: Ryman's brides, Reinhardt's daughter and Stern , Susan King Klinkenberg

Self-fashioning, Consumption, and Japonisme : The Power of Collecting in Tissot’s Jeunes Femmes Regardant des Objets Japonais , 1869 , Catherine Elizabeth Turner

Theses/Dissertations from 2008 2008

Kandinsky’s Dissonance and a Schoenbergian View of Composition VI , Shannon M. Annis

Theses/Dissertations from 2007 2007

Re-Thinking the Myth of Perugino and the Umbrian School: A Closer Look at the Master of the Greenville's Jonas Nativity Panel , Carrie Denise Baker

I'm Not Who I Was Then, Now: Performing Identity in Girl Cams and Blogs , Katherine Bzura

Manifestations of Ebenezer Howard in Disneyland , Michelle M. Rowland

The assimilation of the marvelous other: Reading Christoph Weiditz's Trachtenbuch (1529) as an ethnographic document , Andrea McKenzie Satterfield

Theses/Dissertations from 2006 2006

Rethinking the Monumental: The Museum as Feminist Space in the Sexual Politics Exhibition, 1996 , Devon P. Larsen

Vision and Disease in the Napoleonic Description de l’Egypte (1809-1828): The Constraints of French Intellectual Imperialism and the Roots of Egyptian Self-Definition , Elizabeth L. Oliver

Theses/Dissertations from 2005 2005

The articulate remedies of Dolores Lolita Rodriguez , Hyatt Kellim Brown

Negotiating Artistic Identity through Satire: subREAL 1989-1999 , Anca Izabel Galliera

From Chapel to Chamber: Liturgy and Devotion in Lucantonio Giunta’s Missale romanum , 1508 , Lesley T. Stone

Theses/Dissertations from 2004 2004

Ensenada , Julia DeArriba-Montgomery

Threatening Skies , Brandon Dunlap

Apocalypth pentagram , Matthew Alan Guest

African Costume for Artists: The Woodcuts in Book X of Habiti antichi et moderni di tutto il mondo , 1598 , Laura Renee Herrmann

The Artist and Her Muse: a Romantic Tragedy about a Mediocre and Narcissistic Painter Named Rachel Hoffman , Rachel Gavronsky Hoffman

Procession: The Celebration of Birth and Continuity , I Made Jodog

The Thornton Biennial: The Kruszka Pavilion: The 29YR Apology , Ethan Kruszka

american folk , Preston Poe

A Simple Treatise on the Origins of Cracker Kung Fu Or Mai Violence , Mark Joseph Runge

"My Journey" , Douglas Smith

Twilight , Britzél Vásquez

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School staff and students participate in University-wide research centres such as the St Andrews Institute of Mediaeval Studies and the Scottish Studies Network. Our principal strengths lie in the areas of medieval and Renaissance art, in European and American modernism, the history of photography, the decorative arts in Britain and Museum and Gallery Studies.

For more information please visit the School of Art History home page.

This material is presented to ensure timely dissemination of scholarly and technical work. Copyright and all rights therein are retained by authors or by other copyright holders. All persons copying this information are expected to adhere to the terms and constraints invoked by each author's copyright. In most cases, these works may not be reposted without the explicit permission of the copyright holder.

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Home > Meadows School of the Arts > Art History > Theses and Dissertations

Art History Theses and Dissertations

Theses/dissertations from 2023 2023.

Whiteness at the Dressing Table: Race, Gender, and Materiality in Eighteenth-Century France and the French Caribbean , Danielle Ezor

Building the Egyptian Canon in Early 20th-century Germany: The Case Study of Georg Steindorff’s Excavations , Darby Linn

The Art of Patron Sainthood: St. Teresa, Santiago, and the Early Modern Spanish Empire , Laura Martin

A Historic Supernova: The Paintings of Fernando de Szyszlo, 1959 to 1973 , Samuel Rushing

Theses/Dissertations from 2022 2022

Archival Ruins: Dennis Numkena And Neo-Anasazi Futures , Danya Epstein

Living In A Material World: The Petite Singerie of Eighteenth-Century Chantilly , Sydney Fitzgibbon

The Art of the Present in the Country of the Future: Remediations of Brasília in Contemporary Art , Alice Heeren

Es la Rosa, El Símbolo Más Proprio de La Pureza’ (The rose is the most appropriate symbol of purity) An analysis of an 18th-Century Document Reflecting Female Monasticism In Mallorca , Brigid Powers

Redressing the Body: Subjectification through Doll-Making at the Bergen-Belsen Displaced Persons Camp, 1945 , Alexandra Stern

Chicano Art is Not Dead: The Politics of Curating Chicano Art in Major U.S. Exhibitions, 2008-2012 , Claudia Zapata

Theses/Dissertations from 2021 2021

Miming Modernity: Representations of Pierrot in Fin-de-Siècle France , Ana Norman

As Above, So Below: Italian Amuletic Practices Following the Black Death , Danielle Pigeon

Havana Impressions: Print Culture And Global Modernity In Plantation Cuba (1790-1860) , Asiel Sepulveda

Colonialism, Cohabitation, and Charismatic Llamas: Representations of Animals in Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala's El primer nueva corónica y buen gobierno , Laura Varela Mejia

Care, Collectivity, and Disabled Futurity , Madison Whitaker

Theses/Dissertations from 2020 2020

Painting and Performing the Past: Representation of a Historical Marriage in Eighteenth-Century Peru , Xena Fitzgerald

International Resonance in the Artwork and Writing of Jiro Takamatsu , Adrian Ogas

The Exchange Happens Here: Net Art's Alternative Currencies , April Riddle

Theses/Dissertations from 2019 2019

Traces of Identity: Portraiture in the Work of Teresa Margolles , Alexandra M. Perez

"Silent Salesmen," Skeptical Consumers: American Images in a Divided Berlin, 1949-67 , Lauren Richman

Always In-Formation: The Presence of Sound in the Work of Dan Graham , Jennifer Smart

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Dissertation,   the dissertation.

After the successful completion of the general examination, a topic and adviser for the dissertation should be chosen. Students should discuss potential topics with several faculty members before beginning. The final prospectus should be approved not later than 3 months (within the academic calendar -- September through May) of passing the general examinations in order to be considered to be making satisfactory progress toward the degree. This is the time when the Thesis Reader and Dissertation Proposal form should be completed and submitted to the department office or DGS. Three signatures are now required on the thesis acceptance certificate. Two of the three signatories must be GSAS faculty. The primary adviser must be in the department of History of Art and Architecture; the secondary adviser need not be. In addition to the primary and secondary advisers the student may have one or more other readers. Two readers must be in the department.

Thesis Defense

The Department of History of Art and Architecture requires that all Ph.D. dissertations (of students entering in September 1997 and beyond) be defended. At the defense, the student has the opportunity to present and formally discuss the dissertation with respect to its sources, findings, interpretations, and conclusions, before a Defense Committee knowledgeable in the student's field of research. The Director of the thesis is a member of the Defense committee. A committee is permitted to convene in the absence of the thesis Director only in cases of emergency or other extreme circumstances. The Defense Committee may consist of up to five members, but no fewer than three. The suggested make-up of the members of the committee should be brought to the Director of Graduate Studies for approval. Two members of this committee should be from the Department of History of Art and Architecture. One member can be outside the Department (either from another Harvard department or outside the University). The Defense will be open to department members only (faculty and graduate students), but others may be invited at the discretion of the candidate. Travel for an outside committee member is not possible at this time; exceptions are made rarely.  We encourage the use of Skype or conference calling for those committee members outside of Cambridge and have accommodation for either.  A modest honorarium will be given for the reading of the thesis for one member of the jury outside the University. A minimum of one month prior to scheduling the defense, a final draft of the dissertation should be submitted to two readers (normally the primary and secondary advisors). Once the two readers have informed the director of graduate studies that the dissertation is “approved for defense,” the candidate may schedule the date, room, and time for the defense in consultation with the department and the appointed committee. This date should be no less than six weeks after the time the director of graduate studies has been informed that the dissertation was approved for defense. It should be noted that preliminary approval of the thesis for defense does not guarantee that the thesis will be passed. The defense normally lasts two hours. The candidate is asked to begin by summarizing the pertinent background and findings. The summary should be kept within 20 minutes. The Chair of the Defense Committee cannot be the main thesis advisor. The Chair is responsible for allotting time, normally allowing each member of the committee 20 to 30 minutes in which to make remarks on the thesis and elicit responses from the candidate. When each committee member has finished the questioning, the committee will convene in camera for the decision. The possible decisions are: Approved; Approved with Minor Changes; Approved Subject to Major Revision (within six months); Rejected. The majority vote determines the outcome. --Approved with minor changes: The dissertation is deemed acceptable subject to minor revisions. The dissertation is corrected by the candidate, taking into account the comments made by the committee. The revisions will be supervised by the primary adviser. Upon completion of the required revision, the candidate is recommended for the degree. --Approved subject to major revision within six months: The dissertation is deemed acceptable subject to major revisions. All revisions must be completed within six months from the date of the dissertation defense. Upon completion of the required revisions, the defense is considered to be successful. The revisions will be supervised by the primary adviser. --Rejected: The dissertation is deemed unacceptable and the candidate is not recommended for the degree. A candidate may be re-examined only once upon recommendation of two readers. Rejection is expected to be very exceptional. A written assessment of the thesis defense will be given to the candidate and filed in the Department by the Chair of the Defense Committee. Candidates should keep in mind the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences deadlines for submission of the thesis and degree application when scheduling the defense.

Submitting the Dissertation

Students ordinarily devote three years to research and writing the dissertation, and complete it prior to seeking full-time employment. The dissertation will be judged according to the highest standards of scholarship, and should be an original contribution to knowledge and understanding of art. The final manuscript must conform to University requirements described in the Supplement The Form of the Doctoral Thesis distributed by the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.

Graduate students should negotiate with their readers the timing of submission of drafts prior to final revisions. However, the complete manuscript of the dissertation must be submitted to the thesis readers not later than August 1 for a November degree, November 1 for a March degree, and April 1 for a May degree (this in order to provide both the committee with time to read and the candidate to revise, if necessary). The thesis readers may have other expectations regarding dates for submission which should be discussed and handled on an individual basis. The student is still responsible for distribution of the thesis to the committee for reading. In cases where a thesis defense is scheduled, the thesis must be submitted to the primary adviser at least one month prior to the defense. The thesis defense must be scheduled at least two weeks prior to the university deadline for thesis submission.

A written assessment by dissertation readers must be included with the final approval of each thesis including suggestions, as appropriate, on how the dissertation might be adapted for later publication.

The Dissertation is submitted online.   The Dissertation Acceptance Certificate (original) must be on Harvard watermark paper and is submitted directly to the registrar’s office once it is signed.

Degree Application and Deadlines

Commencement

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Home > Dissertations, Theses & Capstones Projects by Program > Art History Dissertations

Art History Dissertations

Dissertations from 2024 2024.

A Municipal Modernity: Women, Architecture, and Public Health in Working-Class New York, 1913–1950 , Jessica Fletcher

Without Us There Is No Britain: Black British Photography and Film Networks, 1950-1989 , Maria T. Quinata

Dissertations from 2023 2023

The Gilded Tropics: Winslow Homer and John Singer Sargent in Florida, 1886-1917 , Theodore W. Barrow

Flamboyant Abundance: Performing Queer Maximalism, 1960–1990 , Jack Owen Crawford

"A Decorator in the Best Sense": Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Lilly Reich, the Fabric Curtain Partition, and the Articulation of the German Modern Interior , Marianne E. Eggler-Gerozissis

From Allegory to Revolution: The Inca Empire in the Eighteenth-Century French Imagination , Agnieszka A. Ficek

“Delicious Libation”: The Art of the Coffee Trade from Brazil to the United States, 1797-1888 , Caroline L. Gillaspie

Fifteenth-Century Sienese Art in Its International Setting: A Case Study of Cross-Cultural Exchange in Italy and Beyond , Maria Lucca

Creative Figures: Portraiture and the Making of the Modern American Artist, 1918-1930 , Sasha Nicholas

Raphael Montañez Ortiz and Alternative Art Spaces, 1966–1971: From Repulsion to Exaltation , Ana Cristina Perry

Styling Sweatshops: Seamstress Imagery, Industrial Capitalism, and Nationalist Agendas in Nineteenth-Century Europe and the United States , Alice J. Walkiewicz

Dissertations from 2022 2022

Pop/Art: The Birth of Underground Music and the British Art School, 1960–1980 , Andrew Cappetta

After the Renaissance: Art and Harlem in the 1960s , Maya Harakawa

Cultural Predicaments: Neorealism in The Netherlands, 1927–1945 , Stephanie Huber

Hellenikotita — Greekness: Constructing Greek Genre Painting, Visualizing National Identity, 1850–1900 , Olga Zaferatos Karras

Contextualizing Britain’s Holocaust Memorial and Museums: Form, Content, and Politics , Rebecca D. Pollack

The Beehive, the Favela, the Castle, and the Ministry: Race and Modern Architecture in Rio de Janeiro, 1811–1945 , Luisa Valle

Globalism and Identity in Taiwanese Contemporary Art, 1978–2009 , Chu-Chiun Wei

Dissertations from 2021 2021

Europ: Expanded Cinema, Projection and the Film Co-op in Western Europe, 1966–1979 , Drew E. Bucilla

Inevitable Associations: Art, Institution, and Cultural Intersection in Los Angeles, 1973–1988 , Liz Hirsch

Xanthus Smith: Marine Painting and Nationhood , Eva C. McGraw

Art After Dark: Economies of Performance, New York City 1978–1988 , Meredith Mowder

The Integration of Art, Architecture, and Identity: Alfred Kastner, Louis Kahn, and Ben Shahn at Jersey Homesteads , Daniel S. Palmer

The Making of Transpacific Video Art, 1966–1988 , Haeyun Park

The U.S.–Mexican War: Visualizing Contested Spaces from Parlor to Battlefield , Erika Pazian

After Abstract Expressionism: Reconsidering the “Death of Painting” at Midcentury , Natasha Roje

The Painter and His Poets: Paul Gauguin and Interartistic Exchange , Aaron Slodounik

Compromised Values: Charlotte Posenenske, 1966–Present , Ian Wallace

Dissertations from 2020 2020

Traditions and Transformations in the Work of Adál: Surrealism, El sainete , and Spanglish , Margarita J. Aguilar

Norman Lewis: Linearity, Politics, and Pedagogy in His Abstract Expressionism, 1946–1964 , Andrianna T. Campbell-LaFleur

The Art of Opacity: Guy de Cointet in L.A. , Media Farzin

Northwest Coast Native Art Beyond Revival, 1962–1992 , Christopher T. Green

Staging the Modern, Building the Nation: Exhibiting Israeli Art, 1939–1965 , Chelsea Haines

Labor and the Picturesque: Photography, Propaganda, and the Tea Trade in Colonial India and Sri Lanka, 1880–1914 , Leila Anne Harris

The International Rise of Afro-Brazilian Modernism in the Age of African Decolonization and Black Power , Abigail Lapin Dardashti

Accomplices in Art: The Expansion of Authorship in the 1970s and '80s , Sydney Stutterheim

The “Olympiad of Photography”: FIAP and the Global Photo-Club Culture, 1950–1965 , Alise Tifentale

Dissertations from 2019 2019

A Series of Acts that Disappear: The Valparaíso School’s Ephemeral Architectures, 1952–1982 , Elizabeth Rose Donato

Added Interpretive Centers at U.S. War Memorials and the Reframing of National History , Jennifer K. Favorite

Stills of Passage: Photography and Migration in the US-Mexico Borderlands, 1978-1992 , Nadiah Rivera Fellah

Arts et Métiers PHOTO- Graphiques : The Quest for Identity in French Photography between the Two World Wars , Yusuke Isotani

Crossing the Atlantic: Italians in Argentina and the Making of a National Culture, 1880–1930 , Lauren A. Kaplan

The Evolution of the Centaur in Italian Renaissance Art: Monster, Healer, Mentor, and Constellation , Trinity Martinez

Weaving Modern Forms: Fiber Design in the United States, 1939–1959 , Sarah Mills

The "I" of the Artist-Curator , Natalie Musteata

Ray Johnson: Collage as Networked "Correspondance" , Gillian Pistell

Mechanical Kingdoms: Sound Technologies and the Avant-Garde, 1928–1933 , Lauren Rosati

Minor Forms, Dismantled Norms: Mediums of Modernism in Pakistan , Gemma Sharpe

Gendered Subjectivity and Resistance: Brazilian Women’s Performance-for-Camera, 1973–1982 , Gillian Sneed

Framing the City: Photography and the Construction of São Paulo, 1930–1955 , Danielle J. Stewart

Between the Cracks: From Squatting to Tactical Media Art in the Netherlands, 1979–1993 , Amanda S. Wasielewski

Dissertations from 2018 2018

Writing with Light: Cameraless Photography and Its Narrative in the 1920s , Karen K. Barber

Bloomsbury's Byzantium and the Writing of Modern Art , Elizabeth Sarah Berkowitz

The Labyrinth and the Cave: Archaic Forms in Art and Architecture of Europe, 1952–1972 , Paula Burleigh

The South Korean “Meta-Avant-Garde,” 1961–1993: Subterfuge as Radical Agency , Sooran Choi

Creating 1968: Art, Architecture, and the Afterlives of the Mexican Student Movement , Mya B. Dosch

Cellist, Catalyst, Collaborator: The Work of Charlotte Moorman , Saisha Grayson

Modern Arts and Pueblo Traditions in Santa Fe, 1909–1931 , Elizabeth S. Hawley

Women’s Suffrage in American Art: Recovering Forgotten Contexts, 1900-1920 , Elsie Y. Heung

Rising Above the Faithful: Monumental Ceiling Crosses in Byzantine Cappadocia , Alice Lynn McMichael

Visualizing Knowledge in the Illuminated Manuscripts of the Breviari d’amor , Joy Partridge

Lauretta Vinciarelli in Context: Transatlantic Dialogues in Architecture, Art, Pedagogy, and Theory, 1968-2007 , Rebecca Siefert

Prints on Display: Exhibitions of Etching and Engraving in England, 1770s-1858 , Nicole Simpson

Dissertations from 2017 2017

Open Works: Between the Programmed and the Free, Art in Italy 1962 to 1972 , Lindsay A. Caplan

I. M. Pei, William Zeckendorf, and the Architecture of Urban Renewal , Marci M. Clark

Posthumanist Animals in Art: France and Belgium, 1972-87 , Arnaud Gerspacher

On London Ground: The Landscape Paintings of Frank Auerbach and Leon Kossoff , Lee Hallman

Joseph Beuys and Social Sculpture in the United States , Cara M. Jordan

Claude III Audran: Ornemaniste of the Rococo Style , Barbara Laux

Exhibitions of Outsider Art Since 1947 , Christina McCollum

Mónica Mayer: Translocality and the Development of Feminist Art in Contemporary Mexico , Alberto McKelligan Hernandez

Merchandise, Promotion, and Accessibility: Keith Haring’s Pop Shop , Amy L. Raffel

Ludic Conceptualism: Art and Play in the Netherlands, 1959 to 1975 , Janna Therese Schoenberger

Communicationists and Un-Artists: Pedagogical Experiments in California, 1966-1974 , Hallie Rose Scott

Foreign-Born Artists Making “American” Pictures: The Immigrant Experience and the Art of the United States, 1819–1893 , Whitney Thompson

Left and Right: Politics and Images of Motherhood in Weimar Germany , Michelle L. Vangen

From Design to Completion: The Transformation of U.S. War Memorials on the National Mall , Sara Jane Weintraub

Dissertations from 2016 2016

Export / Import: The Promotion of Contemporary Italian Art in the United States, 1935–1969 , Raffaele Bedarida

The Emergence of the Bird in Andean Paracas Art. c. 900 BCE - 200 CE , Mary B. Brown

The Moving Image in Public Art: U.S. and U.K., 1980–Present , Annie Dell'Aria

Modernism with a Human Face: Synthesis of Art and Architecture in Eastern Europe, 1954-1958 , Nikolaos Drosos

Building in Public: Critical Reconstruction and the Rebuilding of Berlin after 1990 , Naraelle Hohensee

The Bauhaus Wall Painting Workshop: Mural Painting to Wallpapering, Art to Product , Morgan Ridler

Provisional Capital: National and Urban Identity in the Architecture and Planning of Bonn, 1949-1979 , Samuel L. Sadow

Developing Italy: Photography and National Identity during the Risorgimento, 1839-1859 , Beth Saunders

The Photographic Universe: Vilém Flusser’s Theories of Photography, Media, and Digital Culture , Martha Schwendener

Finish Fetish: Art, Artists, and Alter Egos in Los Angeles of the 1960s , Monica Steinberg

Nature and Nostalgia in the Art of Mary Nimmo Moran (1842-1899) , Shannon Vittoria

Dissertations from 2015 2015

A Merchant-Banker's Ascent by Design: Bartolomeo Bettini's Cycle of Paintings by Michelangelo, Pontormo, and Bronzino for His Florentine Camera , Richard Aste

On the Fringe of Italian Fascism: An Examination of the Relationship between Vinicio Paladini and the Soviet Avant-Garde , Christina Brungardt

Let The Record Show: Mapping Queer Art and Activism in New York City, 1986-1995 , Tara Jean-Kelly Burk

Maude I. Kerns: Overlapping Interpretations of Art and Pedagogy in the Northwest and Along the Pacific Coast, 1890–1932 , Mary Helen Burnham

Contemporary Art and Internationalism at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, 1952–1988 , Rachel Chatalbash

Los Grupos and the Art of Intervention in 1960s and 1970s Mexico , Arden Decker

The Hall of Fame for Great Americans: The Evolution of a Forgotten Memorial , Sheila Gerami

Mobilizing The Collective: Helhesten And The Danish Avant-Garde, 1934-1946 , Kerry Greaves

Death and Photography in East Asia: Funerary Use of Portrait Photography , Jeehey Kim

Native American Chic: The Marketing Of Native Americans In New York Between The World Wars , Emily Schuchardt Navratil

The Print Portfolio and the Bourgeoisie in Fin-de-Siècle Paris , Britany Lane Salsbury

A Light in the Darkness: Argentinian Photography During the Military Dictatorship (1976-1983) , Ana Tallone

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Home > FACULTIES > Visual Arts > ARTHISTORY-ETD

Art History Theses and Dissertations

This collection contains theses and dissertations from the Department of Art History, collected from the Scholarship@Western Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Theses/Dissertations from 2022 2022

“Literally, a Game-Changer”: Renegotiating the Aesthetics of the Real , Moira McKee

Low Resolution .JPGs and Collaborative Networks: Dreaming a Sustainable Digital Archive , Imogen G. Wilson

Theses/Dissertations from 2021 2021

no, not forgot - were unable to reach: literary readings of desire in land art , Ioana Dragomir

The Embroidered Tablecloth: How Locale Influences Eastern European Jewish Textile Production , Elena Solomon

Theses/Dissertations from 2020 2020

(End)Zones and (Out)Fields of Production: Contemporary Conditions of Labor and Artistic Critique , Stephanie G. Anderson

Clothed in History: Costume and Medievalism in Fantasy Film and Television , Avery Lafortune

Theses/Dissertations from 2019 2019

Sanaugavut: Art from Kinngait , Nakasuk Alariaq

Affective and Sensuous Critique in the Undergraduate Art Classroom , Claire Bartleman

Theses/Dissertations from 2018 2018

Animated Art History: A Look into Disney’s Representation of Artwork in Film , Brianna Lagacé

Theses/Dissertations from 2017 2017

Remembrance as Presence: Promoting Learning from Difficult Knowledge at the Canadian Museum for Human Rights , Kelsey Perreault

Theses/Dissertations from 2015 2015

In Time But Not Of Time: Jessica Eaton and Erin Shirreff's Counterpoints of View , Ruth Skinner

Theses/Dissertations from 2014 2014

A Wishy-Washy, Sort-of-Feeling: Episodes in the History of the Wishy-Washy Aesthetic , Amy Gaizauskas

A Space Without Memory: Time and the Sublime in the Work of Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller , Margherita N. Papadatos

Presenting the Fashion Object: Analyzing the exhibition Fashioning the Object: Bless, Boudicca, Sandra Backlund , Elyse N. Tsotsos

Theses/Dissertations from 2013 2013

Reminiscences: The Medievalisms of Wassily Kandinsky , Stephanie Wittich

Theses/Dissertations from 2012 2012

Narrative Brought to Life: The Wizarding World of Harry Potter , Stefani Klaric

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Sounding the climate crisis: time and the more-than-human in contemporary folk music in scotland and england , indigenous landscapes in caspana: exploring a ch'ixi epistemology , new pulsar generator (nupg): compositional practice, digital sound synthesis model and their temporalities , 'we are such stuff': shakespeare and material culture in eighteenth-century england , wellbeing as a decision making criterion in urban park design: assessing urban parks on their effect on user wellbeing , forgotten images still resisting time: writing the london bomb damage photograph archive 1940 - 1945 , medicine and modernity: fifty years of nhs hospital building in scotland, 1948-1998 , farc musicians' musical identities and political identities through their music: analysis of their narratives, musical practices and songs in the colombian peace post-agreement , drawing-with eye-tracking technology: an exploratory art-based research investigating the adaptation of eye-tracking methodology as a contemporary artistic drawing practice , staging the carnivalesque: seditious strategies in print and performance from simplicissimus to berlin dada, 1896-1920 , differential space in underused town centres: community appropriation of space through creative practices of arts-led urban regeneration , spatial narratives of happiness in everyday environments , humour in fifteenth-century france: a study of visual evidence , policing as material form: public works and local government in the transition from colony to nation in chile, 1786-1833 , diversity on display: a study on gentry-class women and their painting practice in the jiangnan region of high qing china , untangling collaboration: a critical study on the relationship between natural fibres artisans and designers in chile , incorporation of polyphony into russian sacred music , transmuting values in artificial intelligence: investigating the motivations and contextual constraints shaping the ethics of artificial intelligence practitioners , archive of gestures , architecture of error: matter, measure and the misadventures of precision .

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Home > Fine Arts and Communications > Visual Arts > Theses and Dissertations

Visual Arts Theses and Dissertations

Theses/dissertations from 2014 2014.

A Maoli-Based Art Education: Ku'u Mau Kuamo'o 'Ōlelo , Raquel Malia Andrus

Accumulation of Divine Service , Blaine Lee Atwood

Caroline Murat: Powerful Patron of Napoleonic France and Italy , Brittany Dahlin

.(In|Out)sider$ , Jarel M. Harwood

Mariko Mori's Sartorial Transcendence: Fashioned Identities, Denied Bodies, and Healing, 1993-2001 , Jacqueline Rose Hibner

Parallel and Allegory , Kody Keller

Fallen Womanhood and Modernity in Ivan Kramskoi's Unknown Woman (1883) , Trenton B. Olsen

Conscience and Context in Eastman Johnson's The Lord Is My Shepherd , Amanda Melanie Slater

The War That Does Not Leave Us: Memory of the American Civil War and the Photographs of Alexander Gardner , Katie Janae White

Theses/Dissertations from 2013 2013

Women and the Wiener Werkstätte: The Centrality of Women and the Applied Arts in Early Twentieth-Century Vienna , Caitlin J. Perkins Bahr

Cutting Into Relief , Matthew L. Bass

Mask, Mannequin, and the Modern Woman: Surrealism and the Fashion Photographs of George Hoyningen-Huene , Hillary Anne Carman

The End of All Learning , Maddison Carole Colvin

Civitas: A Game-Based Approach to AP Art History , Anna Davis

What Crawls Beneath , Brent L. Gneiting

Blame Me for Your Bad Grade: Autonomy in the Basic Digital Photography Classroom as a Means to Combat Poor Student Performance , Erin Collette Johnson

Evolving Art in Junior High , Randal Charles Marsh

All Animals Will Get Along in Heaven , Camila Nagata

It Will Always Be My Tree: An A/r/tographic Study of Place and Identity in an Elementary School Classroom , Molly Robertson Neves

Zofia Stryjeńska: Women in the Warsaw Town Square. Our Lady, Peasant Mother, Pagan Goddess , Katelyn McKenzie Sheffield

Using Contemporary Art to Guide Curriculum Design:A Contemporary Jewelry Workshop , Kathryn C. Smurthwaite

Documenting the Dissin's Guest House: Esther Bubley's Exploration of Jewish-American Identity, 1942-43 , Vriean Diether Taggart

Blooming Vines, Pregnant Mothers, Religious Jewelry: Gendered Rosary Devotion in Early Modern Europe , Rachel Anne Wise

Theses/Dissertations from 2012 2012

Rembrandt van Rijn's Jewish Bride : Depicting Female Power in the Dutch Republic Through the Notion of Nation Building , Nan T. Atwood

Portraits , Nicholas J. Bontorno

Where There Is Design , Elizabeth A. Crowe

George Dibble and the Struggle for Modern Art in Utah , Sarah Dibble

Mapping Creativity: An A/r/tographic Look at the Artistic Process of High School Students , Bart Andrus Francis

Joseph as Father in Guido Reni's St. Joseph Images , Alec Teresa Gardner

Student Autonomy: A Case Study of Intrinsic Motivation in the Art Classroom , Downi Griner

Aha'aina , Tali Alisa Hafoka

Fashionable Art , Lacey Kay

Effluvia and Aporia , Emily Ann Melander

Interactive Web Technology in the Art Classroom: Problems and Possibilities , Marie Lynne Aitken Oxborrow

Visual Storybooks: Connecting the Lives of Students to Core Knowledge , Keven Dell Proud

German Nationalism and the Allegorical Female in Karl Friedrich Schinkel's The Hall of Stars , Allison Slingting

The Influence of the Roman Atrium-House's Architecture and Use of Space in Engendering the Power and Independence of the Materfamilias , Anne Elizabeth Stott

The Narrative Inquiry Museum:An Exploration of the Relationship between Narrative and Art Museum Education , Angela Ames West

Theses/Dissertations from 2011 2011

The Portable Art Gallery: Facilitating Student Autonomy and Ownership through Exhibiting Artwork , Jethro D. Gillespie

The Movement Of An Object Through A Field Creates A Complex Situation , Jared Scott Greenleaf

Alice Brill's Sao Paulo Photographs: A Cross-Cultural Reading , Danielle Jean Hurd

A Comparative Case Study: Investigation of a Certified Elementary Art Specialist Teaching Elementary Art vs. a Non-Art Certified Teacher Teaching Elementary Art , Jordan Jensen

A Core Knowledge Based Curriculum Designed to Help Seventh and Eighth Graders Maintain Artistic Confidence , Debbie Ann Labrum

Traces of Existence , Jayna Brown Quinn

Female Spectators in the July Monarchy and Henry Scheffer's Entrée de Jeanne d’Arc à Orléans , Kalisha Roberts

Without End , Amy M. Royer

Classroom Community: Questions of Apathy and Autonomy in a High School Jewelry Class , Samuel E. Steadman

Preparing Young Children to Respond to Art in the Museum , Nancy L. Stewart

DAY JAW BOO, a re-collection , Rachel VanWagoner

The Tornado Tree: Drawing on Stories and Storybooks , Toni A. Wood

Theses/Dissertations from 2010 2010

IGolf: Contemporary Sculptures Exhibition 2009 , King Lun Kisslan Chan

24 Hour Portraits , Lee R. Cowan

Fabricating Womanhood , Emily Fox

Earth Forms , Janelle Marie Tullis Mock

Peregrinations , Sallie Clinton Poet

Leland F. Prince's Earth Divers , Leland Fred Prince

Theses/Dissertations from 2009 2009

Ascents and Descents: Personal Pilgrimage in Hieronymus Bosch's The Haywain , Alison Daines

Beyond the Walls: The Easter Processional on the Exterior Frescos of Moldavian Monastery Churches , Mollie Elizabeth McVey

Beauty, Ugliness, and Meaning: A Study of Difficult Beauty , Christine Anne Palmer

Lantern's Diary , Wei Zhong Tan

Text and Tapestry: "The Lady and the Unicorn," Christine de Pizan and the le Vistes , Shelley Williams

Theses/Dissertations from 2008 2008

A Call for Liberation: Aleijadinho's 'Prophets' as Capoeiristas , Monica Jayne Bowen

Secondhand Chinoiserie and the Confucian Revolutionary: Colonial America's Decorative Arts "After the Chinese Taste" , Kiersten Claire Davis

Dairy Culture: Industry, Nature and Liminality in the Eighteenth-Century English Ornamental Dairy , Ashlee Whitaker

Theses/Dissertations from 2007 2007

Navajo Baskets and the American Indian Voice: Searching for the Contemporary Native American in the Trading Post, the Natural History Museum, and the Fine Art Museum , Laura Paulsen Howe

And there were green tiles on the ceiling , Jean Catherine Richardson

Four Greco-Roman Era Temples of Near Eastern Fertility Goddesses: An Analysis of Architectural Tradition , K. Michelle Wimber

Theses/Dissertations from 2006 2006

The Portrait of Citizen Jean-Baptiste Belley, Ex-Representative of the Colonies by Anne-Louis Girodet Trioson: Hybridity, History Painting, and the Grand Tour , Megan Marie Collins

Fix , Kathryn Williams

Theses/Dissertations from 2005 2005

Ideals and Realities , Pamela Bowman

Accountability for the Implementation of Secondary Visual Arts Standards in Utah and Queensland , John K. Derby

The Artistic and Architectural Patronage of Countess Urraca of Santa María de Cañas: A Powerful Aristocrat, Abbess, and Advocate , Julia Alice Jardine McMullin

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A History of Art History (table of contents and Introduction)

2019, A History of Art History

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How the Founding Fathers' concept of 'Minority Rule' is alive and well today

Terry Gross

A voter leaves a voting booth in Concord, N.H., the during primary election on Jan. 23, 2024. Timothy A. Clary/AFP via Getty Images hide caption

A voter leaves a voting booth in Concord, N.H., the during primary election on Jan. 23, 2024.

It's a fundamental tension in a democracy: How do you have majority rule in a way that also protects minority rights? Journalist Ari Berman says the Founding Fathers struggled with that question back in 1787 — except, for them, white male landowners were the minority in need of protection.

"Most of the founders were skeptical of the public's ability to elect the president directly," Berman says. "So they created this very complicated situation in which electors would elect the president instead of the people electing the president directly."

In his new book, Minority Rule , Berman connects the debates and compromises of the country's founders to contemporary politics. He says the founding fathers created a system that concentrated power in the hands of the elite and that today, institutions like the Electoral College and the Senate — designed as a check against the power of the majority — are having much the same effect.

Berman notes that in the country's first presidential election, in 1789, only a small fraction of the population was eligible to vote — and in certain states, voters were only allowed to vote for electors, not the candidates themselves.

A Growing Number Of Critics Raise Alarms About The Electoral College

Though the right to vote has since been expanded, Berman says the democratic process remains deeply flawed. He points out that in 2000 and again in 2016, the presidential candidate who won the popular vote did not win the electoral vote. Additionally, he says, because the Constitution stipulates that each state gets two senators, regardless of its population, "smaller, whiter, more conservative states have far more power and representation in the Senate then larger, more diverse, more urban states."

Biden Transition Updates

Electors across the country vote for president: what you need to know.

"What we see right now is the same kind of thing, in which a privileged, conservative, white minority is trying to suppress the power of a much more diverse multiracial governing majority," Berman says. "And that's a very dangerous situation for American democracy."

Interview highlights

Minority Rule, by Ari Berman Farrar, Straus and Giroux hide caption

Minority Rule, by Ari Berman

On the Constitution as a flawed document

We venerate the Constitution as a civic religion. I think we would be much greater served to look at the Constitution as a whole document and say, there are some remarkable parts of this document, but there's also some really flawed parts of this document that we still haven't corrected. Because the really remarkable thing is that even as America has democratized in the centuries since — and nobody would argue that America isn't more democratic now than it was back then — some features of the Constitution have become more undemocratic.

On the creation of the Electoral College to uphold minority rule

Most of the founders were skeptical of the public's ability to elect the president directly. They felt like the public would be uninformed, or it would be chosen by the largest states, or would be chosen by free states in a way that would hurt the South. So it's interesting, one of the themes that runs through the book and runs through the founding is that these smaller minorities wanted protection. And when I may say smaller minorities, I don't mean minority groups. I mean the small states wanted protection, the slave states wanted protection, and they felt like they would get that protection in the Electoral College. So they created this very complicated situation in which electors would elect the president instead of the people electing the president directly.

On how representatives from Delaware scuffled the initial plan to have Senate representation being based on population

James Madison and other prominent framers wanted the Senate to be based on proportional representation, so they wanted it to be based on population. So larger states like Virginia would have more representation than smaller states like Delaware. But the smaller states rebelled. And there's this amazing moment at the Constitutional Convention where the attorney general of Delaware gets up and he tells the likes of James Madison, if you don't give us the same representation, we're going to find a foreign ally who we're going to join with instead, and we're going to leave the United States of America. And that was a stunning demand. The idea that they would go rejoin England or they would join France instead, if they didn't have the same level of representation, meant that the larger states had no choice but to give in to the demand of the smaller states to ratify the Constitution.

But what Madison worried about is that it would allow what he called a more objectionable minority than ever to control the U.S. Senate, because if the smaller states had the same level of representation as the larger states, that was inevitably going to lead to minority rule. And Madison worried that would get worse as more states join the union. And, of course, that's what's happened today, where the gap between large and small states is dramatically larger than it was back in 1787.

On how the two Senator per state representation affects minority rule

Just to give you one really stunning stat , by 2040, 70% of the population is going to live in 15 states with 30 senators. That means that 30% of the country, which is going to be whiter, more rural, more conservative, is going to elect 70% of the U.S. Senate. So the trend in the U.S. Senate is becoming more imbalanced and more undemocratic. And what's really interesting to me is a lot of conservatives want to go back and they want to quote the framers, but they ignore that a lot of the framers, including James Madison, the architect of the Constitution, had grave concerns about some of the institutions they were creating, particularly the structure of the U.S. Senate.

Lauren Krenzel and Joel Wolfram produced and edited this interview for broadcast. Bridget Bentz, Molly Seavy-Nesper and Meghan Sullivan adapted it for the web.