Senior Independent Work

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.

Independent Work offers advice regarding your thesis including picking a title, working with an adviser, and formatting the paper.

Senior Theses and Portfolios

Independent work including History of Art Theses and Practice of Art Portfolios

2023

“The Bookkeeper-Magician”: Paul Klee and his Catalogue Raisonné
Prepared with Plumbum: The Socioeconomics of Lead Production in Pompeii
The Rebellion Of Ali B. Muhammad Reexamining The Zanj Revolt and its Place in Abbasid History
The Maiden and The Mirror: Considering Epigram and Image in Tandem on the Attic Grave Stele of Pausimache (390–380 B.C.E.)
Comb Back Home
“That Perfect Girl is Gone”: Walt Disney Studios’ Post-Princess Era and the Evolving Representation of Animated Disney Heroines
Monsanto as Image Maker: Feeding the World Lies
Suspension
Across Types: A Reexamination of the Sculpture of Charles Cordier
The Exposures of Francesca Woodman
Lenses of Partition: Remembrance and the Photograph
Petty Saint
“There is Nothing New Except in Recollection”: * How Kiefer’s Searing Holocaust Reflections in his Palazzo Ducale Installation Reinterpret Venetian History
Ego Death in Two Battles: 988 (1;800;273;TALK) and Living in the GAP
Dompas as Symbolic Object: The Passbook in Contemporary South African Art
Boxes and Building Blocks
First Impressions Matter: A New Behavioral Strategy to Model the Evolution of Cooperation in Everyday Trade in Ancient Pompeii and Viking Age Scandinavia
POST, HUMAN! Stitched Faces, Cyborgian Digital Embodiments, and Trans* Futures
MOTHER, HEALER, BARBARIC WARRIOR: The Multifaceted Role of Female Representation in Romano-British Religion and the Political Significance of Britannia Under Imperial Rome

2022

The "Private" Performance: Giovanni Boldini and Artistic Spaces
JUXTA-POSEUR: The Importance of Contemporary Art in Historical Settings
The Twelfth House
Rhythm Interiorized: Mondrian, Color and Swing
The Conscious Reflection: Convex Mirrors in Renaissance and Baroque Paintings
American Oxygen
This Wonderful Memory
Chicken Chicken Chicken Chicken Chicken Chicken Chicken Chicken Chicken Chicken Chicken Chicken Chicken Chicken Chicken Chicken Chicken
Unicorn
The Artist as Financier: Damien Hirst and the Financialization of Art
Faith in Flux: Romano-British Religion in Archaeology and Epigraphy
Of Tigers and Men: Dissecting Narrative Illustration of the Mahāsattva Jataka Paintings in Mogao Caves 254 and 428
My Painting is an Act of Decolonization: Viewing Wifredo Lam’s Vision of a Decolonial Future
Folkscraft
"Pittore del Paradiso": Cultural Meanings of Whiteness in The Late Manner of Guido Reni

2021

Isis and the Virgin Mary: Pictorial borrowing or religious syncretism?
The Last Noel
Performing healing: rituals & repetition
“VROOM. VROOM.” - A Short Film Production Plan
POSTAL
omg so good
Reassembling a Nation Through Art: Korea’s Political and Institutional Approaches to Cultural Heritage, from 1945 to the Present
Drawing Connections and Sculpting Identities: Exploring the Effect of Art Therapy on Mental Illness and Disability Through Case Studies of Adolf Wolfli and Judith Scott
refractory planes
Conceptualizations of the Indigenous Body in Response to the Columbus Quincentenary
Chaff & light trash
Piece of Pieces
Seeing Through Google’s Eyes: Jon Rafman, Michael Wolf, and the Impact of Google Street View
From Cholera to COVID-19: A Framework for Analyzing the Visual Media of Communicable Disease Outbreaks
The Twilight of the Sublime: Museum Architecture and Identity in Daniel Libeskind’s Denver Art Museum and Jewish Museum Berlin

Theses and Senior Shows (films, exhibitions, etc) sorted by year.  Use the Advanced Filter to choose a year to view.