Senior Theses
The senior thesis represents the most sophisticated original research and writing that you will undertake as an undergraduate at Princeton. In many cases, the area and topic that you select will influence the direction of your future professional career, and the relationship that you establish with your thesis adviser will be important for your admission to graduate and professional school and job placement. Even if you do not pursue a career in art history or archaeology, the skills that you develop in producing a thesis will be immensely useful in writing reports, evaluating data, problem solving, making policy evaluations, and so forth.
The Undergraduate Student Handbook offers advice regarding your thesis including picking a title, working with an adviser, and formatting the paper.
Caught in the Window: A Photographic Study from the Other Side of the Glass
"On One Side of the Barricade": André Breton's Surrealism and the Arts of Africa
Back to the Future: Discourse in Contemporary Architecture and Cultural Identity in Hong Kong since the 1980s
Beyond Le Corbusier's Chandigarh: The Lost Voices of a Frozen City
A Critical Analysis of Mary Ellen Mark’s Ward 81 and Danny Lyon’s Conversations with the Dead
The Effects of War on Youth as Presented in Japanese Animation
From Wheat Paste to the World Wide Web: A Genealogy of Activist Art and the Development of Artist-as-Brand
Painting from the Caves: Joan Miró and Prehistoric Cave Painting
Roughened Language: Four Archetypes of 1970s American Architectural Sculpture
The Golden Mean in Dialogue: Xiao Lu’s Recasting of the Avant-Garde in Contemporary Chinese Culture
Boston's Government Center: The Simultaneous Successes and Failure of Urban Renewal
Places 2 | Do, Things 2 | Be (painting and sculptural assemblage exhibition)
Panama Canal (interactive multimedia installation)
Confronting Death through Appropriation: The Art of Yinka Shonibare
The Face of Painting: Images of the Artist in Early America
Finis Ghetto? Architecture and the Afterlife of the Jewish Quarter in Prague
Chrysalid (multimedia exhibition)
The Humor of the Bayeux Tapestry: It'll Leave You in Stitches
The Development of Views of Church Interiors in the Context of the Dutch Art Market during the 17th Century
Andrew Wyeth and the Matter of Time
Man think thai lady make house clean work love somuch cook everry time smile smile (multimedia exhibition)
Specifically For Us? An Evaluation of Permanent Public Art Installed During the 1970s and 1980s in Lower Manhattan
Entwined: Humans and Plants as Complementary Opposites in Maya Art
Challenging the Edge: Analyzing Trisha Brown's Museum Commissions at the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Walker Art Center
Altar (photography exhibition)
Vanbrugh's Ephemeral Style: Analyzing the Tradition of the English Baroque Country House
"Lack of Location Is My Location": The Impossibility of Black Identity in the Text Paintings of Glenn Ligon
Utopian for Beginners (photography and graphic design exhibition)
The Office of the Digital Age: Contemporary Corporate Campuses as Agents of Organization and Domains of Elite Space
Mirroring Nature: Examining the Idea of Ocular Power in Samuel van Hoogstraten's Trompe L'Oeil Paintings
Artist, Subject, Beholder: Restaging Manet's A Bar at the Folies-Bergère
The Baburi Mosque in Ayodhya: A Study in Religion, History, and Architecture in Sultanate and Mughal India
Beyond the Walls: Locating "Community" in American Muralism Since 1930
Daring to Breed the Horse with the Cow: The Repaint Shan Shui Series by Zhang Hongtu
Avoid Toetal Loss (painting and drawing exhibition)
The Church of Monreale: A Golden Perspective into William II's Rule in Sicily
color | ed (multimedia installation)
An Aesthetic War: The Sino-Japanese War of 1894–95 through Japanese Woodblock Prints
Garry Winogrand’s Women Are Beautiful: Revisiting the Feminist Critique
Inside that thing that is and is and isn't (multimedia installation)
The Crucifix and the Pen: Archbishop Federico Borromeo and the Catholic Reformation
The Quinoa Quandary: A Deconstruction of a Documentary (photography and video exhibition)
The Postclassic Maya Diving Maize God
Art Stronger than Stone: Marble Imitation in the Audience Hall of the Umayyad Palace at Bālis
Envisioning England's Unconscious: An Investigation of the Surrealist Movement and Mass-Observation from 1935 to 1947
Repositioning the Image in Postwar America: Wallace Berman, Andy Warhol, Bruce Conner
A Hidden City Emerges: Picturing the Industrial Identity, Civic Topography, and Urban Ethos of Newark, NJ, from 1800 to 2009
Between Two Worlds: Norval Morrisseau as a Case Study for the Shaman Artist
Queering George Bellows and the Question of "Gay Art"
Between Extremes: The Middle Class in Gustave Doré’s London, A Pilgrimage
Moan: The Monstrous Sublime (photography installations)
N. C. Wyeth’s Kidnapped Illustrations: From Bedtime Story to Fine Art
The Here and Now: How Stuart Davis Painted His Present
Painting the Child of the Neapolitan Streets: Antonio Mancini's Urchins and Entertainers (1865–1885)
Cultural Alliance and Political Display: The Distribution and Function of Ballcourts in the Petén Lakes Region
The Menagerie and Passenger (video, two parts)