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.
2023
Comb Back Home
Across Types: A Reexamination of the Sculpture of Charles Cordier
Boxes and Building Blocks
Suspension
The Exposures of Francesca Woodman
“The Bookkeeper-Magician”: Paul Klee and his Catalogue Raisonné
First Impressions Matter: A New Behavioral Strategy to Model the Evolution of Cooperation in Everyday Trade in Ancient Pompeii and Viking Age Scandinavia
Petty Saint
Lenses of Partition: Remembrance and the Photograph
The Maiden and The Mirror: Considering Epigram and Image in Tandem on the Attic Grave Stele of Pausimache (390–380 B.C.E.)
MOTHER, HEALER, BARBARIC WARRIOR: The Multifaceted Role of Female Representation in Romano-British Religion and the Political Significance of Britannia Under Imperial Rome
Ego Death in Two Battles: 988 (1;800;273;TALK) and Living in the GAP
“There is Nothing New Except in Recollection”: * How Kiefer’s Searing Holocaust Reflections in his Palazzo Ducale Installation Reinterpret Venetian History
“That Perfect Girl is Gone”: Walt Disney Studios’ Post-Princess Era and the Evolving Representation of Animated Disney Heroines
Dompas as Symbolic Object: The Passbook in Contemporary South African Art
Prepared with Plumbum: The Socioeconomics of Lead Production in Pompeii
POST, HUMAN! Stitched Faces, Cyborgian Digital Embodiments, and Trans* Futures
Monsanto as Image Maker: Feeding the World Lies
The Rebellion Of Ali b. Muhammad Reexamining The Zanj Revolt and its Place in Abbasid History
2022
Unicorn
Faith in Flux: Romano-British Religion in Archaeology and Epigraphy
The "Private" Performance: Giovanni Boldini and Artistic Spaces
The Conscious Reflection: Convex Mirrors in Renaissance and Baroque Paintings
Syzygy
"Pittore del Paradiso": Cultural Meanings of Whiteness in The Late Manner of Guido Reni
American Oxygen
The Artist as Financier: Damien Hirst and the Financialization of Art
Folkscraft
This Wonderful Memory
The Twelfth House
My Painting is an Act of Decolonization: Viewing Wifredo Lam’s Vision of a Decolonial Future
JUXTA-POSEUR: The Importance of Contemporary Art in Historical Settings
Chicken Chicken Chicken Chicken Chicken Chicken Chicken Chicken Chicken Chicken Chicken Chicken Chicken Chicken Chicken Chicken Chicken
Of Tigers and Men: Dissecting Narrative Illustration of the Mahāsattva Jataka Paintings in Mogao Caves 254 and 428
Rhythm Interiorized: Mondrian, Color and Swing
2021
The Twilight of the Sublime: Museum Architecture and Identity in Daniel Libeskind’s Denver Art Museum and Jewish Museum Berlin
omg so good
Isis and the Virgin Mary: Pictorial borrowing or religious syncretism?
From Cholera to COVID-19: A Framework for Analyzing the Visual Media of Communicable Disease Outbreaks
POSTAL
Piece of Pieces
Seeing Through Google’s Eyes: Jon Rafman, Michael Wolf, and the Impact of Google Street View
“VROOM. VROOM.” - A Short Film Production Plan
Chaff & light trash
Conceptualizations of the Indigenous Body in Response to the Columbus Quincentenary
Performing healing: rituals & repetition
The Last Noel
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
The Missing Form of Asclepius: An Analysis of the Remaining and Rare Material Culture Pertaining to the Ancient Greek God of Medicine
refractory planes
Reassembling a Nation Through Art: Korea’s Political and Institutional Approaches to Cultural Heritage, from 1945 to the Present
2020
A Sculptural Affair: How the Sculptures on the Theaterama at the 1964–1965 New York World's Fair Flourished as Public Art
(Mis)Understanding Hannah Wilke
From the Left
The Art History of Damien Hirst's Natural History
nebraska warp/weft
Talking Heads: What Zoocephalic Figures in the Tripartite Mahzor Say About Gender and Jewish-Christian Relations in Medieval Germany
Live long, Madelief
Both/And Compositions: Reconciling the Contradictions of Georges de La Tour
as luck would have it
Constructed Topographies and Ecologies of Slavery: An Examination of 19th-Century Plantation Landscapes in British Jamaica and the United States South
2019
Re-Visions of Violence: Taboo and Transformation in the Paintings of Contemporary French-Algerian Artist Dalila Dalléas Bouzar
Landscape Painting, Urbanization, and the California Imaginary
Holy
Canaries in a Coal Mine
Made in Milan: Corporate Sponsorship in the Restoration of the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II
The Making of a Magdalene: Caravaggio's Reconfiguration of Mary Magdalene's Image in Counter-Reformation Painting
Dazzle Camouflage / Cloak Cloak
"The Camera Speaks": Aaron Siskind, The Feature Group, and the Production of the Harlem Document
The Lady's Room
Perceptions and Rejections of Pop, Pornography, and Americanization in the Art of Tom Wesselmann
"The Devil Wears Dada": Commentary on Fashion and the Fashion System in Dada
Elephant
The Art of the Toilette by Manet, Morisot, and Seurat
Carmesí
Are We Postmodern?: The Architectural Exhibition in Late Twentieth-Century France
From Patchwork to Plane: The Quilts and Quilters of Gee's Bend
A Curated Life: Adolph De Meyer's Self-Fashioning into a Celebrity
origen
Mortal Structures
Van Gogh's Japan: Picturing an Unseen Land
"Where the Universe Sings": An Assessment of Lawren Harris's Nationalism and Spirituality in His Art
The Midnight
Unsaid
2018
I'm all Talk
$1.85
The Incorruptible Body
Surface Anxieties: Vulgarity in the London Paintings of James Tissot
Somatoscapes
Ambitions
By the Many Protectors: Apotropaic Layering in Ancient Egyptian Fertility Objects
Ancient Greek Sculpture: How Has the Image Been Used in the Building of Societies?
Fishing the Short Run
Continuous Reward
From Pottery to Polygons: A Reconstruction and Exploration of the Gigantomachy
Ibeji
i have to be a lonely warrior, tonight
Can You Taste It?
Proconnesian Marble: Power Dynamics and Industry in Early Byzantium
"The Fire and Vapour of Flame Within": Pozzolana from the Campi Flegrei in Roman Maritime Concrete
Collecting Alaska: Sheldon Jackson, Louis Shotridge, and the Pursuit of Northwest Coast Artifacts, 1879–1932
"To be Great is to be Misunderstood": Reframing Gwen John's Portraits of Women from 1900–1914
"A PHENOMENAL PRESENCE THAT IS UNEQUIVOCALLY BLACK AND BEAUTIFUL": Redefining Beauty Through the Art of Kerry James Marshall
From Pedestal to Playscape: Isamu Noguchi's Playground Designs as an Expanded Field of Sculpture
Ground
More than Fashion: The Early History of the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute
Continuing Chinese Shanshui Paintings in the West: 21st century artists Arnold Chang, Zhang Hongtu, and Xu Bing's Exploration and Transformation of Tradition
Winslow Homer and Cullercoats
2017
Finding Ground: Exploring the American Terrain of the Center for Land Use Interpretation
Knot Knot
Lumpy Projector
MADAME CITRON, a film by Chanyoung Park
us, in part
View from a Balustrade: Martín Rico's Orientalist Vision in Spain, Venice, and France
Painting as Metaobject: Reading Meaning in Seventeenth-Century Dutch Still Life
Atlas of the Impossible: Mapping Commodity Forms in Still Life and Photography
Untitled
Eden
Uncovering Devotion: Interactive Flap Prints and the Crafting of Experiential Space in the Descrizione del Sacro Monte della Vernia
Resistance Performed: Politics and Aesthetics in Myanmar
은별
EXCESS
Privacy Settings
"Full of Company": The Cultivation of Social Identity and Structure in Thomas Gainsborough’s The Mall in St. James’s Park
“Tell Them Everything”: Three Women Artists and the Northern Irish Conflict
Martens Monoprint: Graphic Design as a ‘Ghost Discipline’
Culture Complex: Territory and National Memory in the Films of Roy Andersson
Chasing Georgia
G(oo/ew)
“objects w/feelings” with Simon Wu
Place, Performance, and Possibility: Interconnectivity in William Sidney Mount's The Power of Music
Talking to You is Exhausting
2016
Loving Lenses: Photography and the Erotic in Duchamps's Oeuvre
Content and Discontent: Locating the Viewer in the Work of Francis Bacon
Hagiography as History: Creating Authority and Identity through Images of Anglo-Saxon Saints
Meaningful Beauty: Understanding Alfred Stevens’ Paintings
The Natural Devolution of Man in Response to The Modern World: Technology and Nature in the Work of Lee Alexander McQueen
Understanding the Unfinished: An Investigation into the Value of Leonardo Da Vinci’s Incomplete Works and Drawings
William Mills Ivins, Jr., and the Creation of the Prints Department at the Metropolitan Museum of Art
Rip the Dream
It’s Lit: Light Sculpture in the 1960s and 1970s
Seriously Funny: Humor and Medium in William Wegman’s Videos, 1970–1999
Bulking is a Feminist Act
Modern Art in Modern Markets: Pablo, Paul, and the Marketing of the Avant-Garde
Beautiful, Memory, Desserts
Ruins of the Revolution: Egyptian Archaeology in the Wake of Arab Spring
For Your Eyes Only: The Integration of Monastery and Museum at Meteora, Greece
Petrichor
Time is a floating point number
Sturtevant’s Feminist Reversals
Engaging Dubois’s Veil as a Site of Black Agency from Ethnography, to Film, to Photography, and to Fashion
"A Redeemed City": The Plans, Politics, and Progress of Washington, D.C.’s Architecture and Urban Planning from 1790–1910
The Development of Early Ceramic Traditions in the Americas: The Economic and Social Contexts of Valdivia, Ecuador; Monagrillo, Panama; and Puerto Marques, Mexico
2015
Social Surrealism in the 1930s and 1940s: Locating Atypical Bodies in the American Scene
Labor Against Waste
BENCH
All My Things Are Hymns
Nature and Artifice in the Arts of Japan
Yangon's Heritage: Between Nostalgia and Critique
Black Balance
an exhibition
War Posters: The Definition, Evolution, and Modernization of American Visual Propaganda
I'm Not Sure How I Got Here
Disorientations
The Context and Legacy of Michelangelo’s Genius of Victory
Maurice Denis: Mythology and Modernity
If Boiseries Could Talk: A Comparative Study and Museological Debate of the Contemporary Period Room Display Through the Lens of Eighteenth‐Century French Decorative Interiors
An Architecture of Relations: Typology and Narrative Art in Early Christian Rome
Akhenaten and Two Daughters: A Fragment of an Amarna Period Column in the Princeton University Art Museum
2014
The Golden Mean in Dialogue: Xiao Lu’s Recasting of the Avant-Garde in Contemporary Chinese Culture
A Critical Analysis of Mary Ellen Mark’s Ward 81 and Danny Lyon’s Conversations with the Dead
Andrew Wyeth and the Matter of Time
Finis Ghetto? Architecture and the Afterlife of the Jewish Quarter in Prague
Boston's Government Center: The Simultaneous Successes and Failure of Urban Renewal
The Effects of War on Youth as Presented in Japanese Animation
Caught in the Window: A Photographic Study from the Other Side of the Glass
Chrysalid
Places 2 | Do, Things 2 | Be
From Wheat Paste to the World Wide Web: A Genealogy of Activist Art and the Development of Artist-as-Brand
"On One Side of the Barricade": André Breton's Surrealism and the Arts of Africa
The Humor of the Bayeux Tapestry: It'll Leave You in Stitches
Panama Canal
Painting from the Caves: Joan Miró and Prehistoric Cave Painting
Back to the Future: Discourse in Contemporary Architecture and Cultural Identity in Hong Kong since the 1980s
The Development of Views of Church Interiors in the Context of the Dutch Art Market during the 17th Century
Confronting Death through Appropriation: The Art of Yinka Shonibare
Roughened Language: Four Archetypes of 1970s American Architectural Sculpture
Beyond Le Corbusier's Chandigarh: The Lost Voices of a Frozen City
Man think thai lady make house clean work love somuch cook everry time smile smile
The Face of Painting: Images of the Artist in Early America
2013
Artist, Subject, Beholder: Restaging Manet's A Bar at the Folies-Bergère
Vanbrugh's Ephemeral Style: Analyzing the Tradition of the English Baroque Country House
color | ed
The Baburi Mosque in Ayodhya: A Study in Religion, History, and Architecture in Sultanate and Mughal India
"Lack of Location Is My Location": The Impossibility of Black Identity in the Text Paintings of Glenn Ligon
Specifically For Us? An Evaluation of Permanent Public Art Installed During the 1970s and 1980s in Lower Manhattan
Beyond the Walls: Locating "Community" in American Muralism Since 1930
The Office of the Digital Age: Contemporary Corporate Campuses as Agents of Organization and Domains of Elite Space
Entwined: Humans and Plants as Complementary Opposites in Maya Art
Daring to Breed the Horse with the Cow: The Repaint Shan Shui Series by Zhang Hongtu
Utopian for Beginners
Challenging the Edge: Analyzing Trisha Brown's Museum Commissions at the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Walker Art Center
Avoid Toetal Loss
Mirroring Nature: Examining the Idea of Ocular Power in Samuel van Hoogstraten's Trompe L'Oeil Paintings
Altar
The Church of Monreale: A Golden Perspective into William II's Rule in Sicily
2012
A Hidden City Emerges: Picturing the Industrial Identity, Civic Topography, and Urban Ethos of Newark, NJ, from 1800 to 2009
Conquering the Wall: The Impact of David Alfaro Siqueiros's 1932 Los Angeles Mural
The Quinoa Quandary: A Deconstruction of a Documentary
Chinese Armorial Porcelain for the British Market
The Here and Now: How Stuart Davis Painted His Present
Between Two Worlds: Norval Morrisseau as a Case Study for the Shaman Artist
The Postclassic Maya Diving Maize God
Warp Time: Amateurs and Obsolescence in the Digital Art of Cory Arcangel and Olia Lialina
An Aesthetic War: The Sino-Japanese War of 1894–95 through Japanese Woodblock Prints
Painting the Child of the Neapolitan Streets: Antonio Mancini's Urchins and Entertainers (1865–1885)
Queering George Bellows and the Question of "Gay Art"
Art Stronger than Stone: Marble Imitation in the Audience Hall of the Umayyad Palace at Bālis
A Celtic Knot: Unraveling the Presentation of Irish Ringforts in Archaeology, Museums, and Sites
Garry Winogrand’s Women Are Beautiful: Revisiting the Feminist Critique
Cultural Alliance and Political Display: The Distribution and Function of Ballcourts in the Petén Lakes Region
Between Extremes: The Middle Class in Gustave Doré’s London, A Pilgrimage
Envisioning England's Unconscious: An Investigation of the Surrealist Movement and Mass-Observation from 1935 to 1947
Beakers for the Dead: Glass Unguentaria from Nemea
Inside that thing that is and is and isn't
The Menagerie and Passenger
Moan: The Monstrous Sublime
Repositioning the Image in Postwar America: Wallace Berman, Andy Warhol, Bruce Conner
The House of Tomorrow That Never Was: American Postwar Modern Houses in Promotion and Defeat
The Crucifix and the Pen: Archbishop Federico Borromeo and the Catholic Reformation
The Art of Collaboration: An Analysis of the Group Studio Model in Kampala, Uganda
N. C. Wyeth’s Kidnapped Illustrations: From Bedtime Story to Fine Art