Below is a list of submitted qualifying projects from the past four years. For a complete list of MA theses and qualifying projects, visit our library website.

Class of 2023

They Sound Different When They Break: The Scientific Struggle to Produce English Porcelain, 1672–1821
Ballowe, Heath

Comprehensive Stewardship: Responsibly Reconciling the Past
Chamberlin, Daniel

Seeing Women: The Rise in Popularity of Women’s Vision Aids in Nineteenth-Century America
Harvey, Emily

Spiral Ornament in Shang Dynasty China
Law, Jeffrey

The Splendor of Silk in Clay: Mongol Luxury Textiles and Yuan Dynasty Blue-and-White Porcelain
Lui, Louise

“A Poppet-Queen, Drest up by me”: Dolls, Propriety, and Girlhood in Early Modern Europe
Margi, Isabella

“To choose and be surrounded with the finest creations”: Assembling Value in the Ben-Zion House
Massey, Joshua

Rooftop Fancy and Folly: Tudor Chimney Stack as Device and Discourse
Perry, Talia

The New Promethean: Modernism and the Occult in Claude Fayette Bragdon’s Projective Ornament
Porsella, Madeline

Crafting Stories of Value: Commodity Paths for Herati Glass
Riley, Anna

“Facing Determinedly Toward the Future”: Maxwell Shieff’s Involvement and Innovation within the Entertainment Industries of Canada and California, 1946–1959
Tangum, Maura

Imagining the French “Self” and Its “Others” Through the Display of Dress in Late Nineteenth-Century Paris
Volpa, Zoe

Class of 2022

a satin scarf, and its many uses
adeogun, mary

(Mis)fitting Taliesin: The Women of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Taliesin Fellowship
Bartal, Bridget

Fashioning Equality, Independence & Freedom for Women in the Nineteenth Century: Madame Demorest’s Business Empire
Billingslea, Grace

Loud Jewelry, Loose Women: Sex, Power, and Adornment in Storyville, New Orleans, 1880-1920
Bishop, Ariana

“What a motley Creature I was become”: Hester Piozzi’s “Demi-Naturalization” Materialized
Carabatsos, Julia

Totem and Anti-Totem: Dual Signification and the Contentious History of Richmond’s Robert E. Lee Monument
Cox, Marion

Adorned in Gold: Religion, Personal Display, and Women’s Agency in Ancient Macedonia
Enderle, Ellen

Timeless Dispositions: Devotional Objects as Non-Mimetic Portraits
Lanza, Katherine

Challenging the Status Quo: Unsettling Dominant Narratives in MoMA’s Gallery 412
McCool, Kristin

The Foreign-born Mother and the Materiality of Americanization: Photography and the Creation and Documentation of Americanization by the Educational Committee for Non-English Speaking Women
Mogulescu, Laura

“May I be deaf at the Opera”: Dress and Voice of Macaroni and Castrati
Snodgrass, Samuel

“One Sheds One’s Sickness in Books”: Illness, Uncertainty, and the Book as Creative Intervention
Supavarasuwat, Pim

Class of 2021

Perfumed Air and Scented Bodies: Materializing the Philosophy of Scent in Sixteenth-Century Padua
Clyburn, Madison

“A Little World of Themselves”: Women and the Cultivation of Fern Cases in the Nineteenth Century
DeQuarto, Natalie

Comfort & Convalescence: Fauteuils de Malade in Eighteenth-Century France
Dubay, Noah

Seafaring Treasures: Latin America and the Transpacific Trade
Fagua-Arias, Juliana

Imitating the Flower: Nineteenth-Century Artificial Plants and Gendered Botanical Education
Isakson, Emily

Tonsorial Transformations: Women’s Sokuhatsu in Nineteenth-Century Meiji Japan, 1868-1912
Murphy, Daria

The Afterlife of Lacquer Panels: Transforming Chinese Luxuries into French Furniture
Qu, Weixun

The Lives of Berenike: A Port City and Its People
Sidamon-Eristoff, Constantine

Dehua Porcelain Figures of Budai: Models of Adaptivity in Seventeenth and Eighteenth-Century China and “Europe”
Volk, Cynthia

Science in the Study and Authentication of Catholic Relics
Williams, Madison

On Anne Wilson and Winding the Warp: Embodied and Tacit Knowledge in Contemporary Textile Art
Young, Jessica

Class of 2020

Fashioning the Northwest Coast: 200 Years of Indigenous Dress
Allen, Laura

The Head and the Hand: Hospitality and Collaborative Craftsmanship
Birkett, Jordane

Playing Tourist: The Grand Tour and Cartographic Board Games of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries
De Cola, Christina

“Shoulders down; arms back; chest open; and waistband properly HIGH up”: Dandyism, Fashion, and the Perception of Masculinity in Late-Georgian Britain
Dee Collins, Nicole

The Crafting of Skins and Laws: Legislative Rhetoric, Handicraft Production, and Indigenous Alaskan Identity
Hayflick, Emily

Designing Destruction: Archizoom Associati’s “Superonda” Sofa as Radical Critique
Koehn, Elizabeth

Make It Real: Fantasy and Development of Interwar Japanese Girls’ Culture
Lin, Chi-Lynn

Understanding Tao and Ci: The 1908 Ceramics Exhibition in Late Qing Shanghai and the Emergence of Modern Chinese Cultural Nationalism
Liu, Jinyi

A Taste for Death: Love, Humor, and Suicide in an Eighteenth-Century English Recipe Book
Mazzone, Jacqueline

Logic, Nervousness, and Architecture in Vienna: Two Studies in the Unhomely
Neibergall, Will

Fashion Playground: The Relation between Fashion and the Body in the Spaces for Comme des Garçons
Rong, Yi

Ghostly Traces and Haunted Labor: The Sincere Craft of Janine Antoni
Schwabe, Rachael

Space Sells: The Life and Times of a “Tin” Toy Mars Gun Made in Japan
Warner, Madeline

I Have Seen Her in the Mirror: Elsa Schiaparelli, Surrealist Fashion, and Female Agency
Weindling, Danielle

Photography and the Roycroft Press: Photogravures, Halftones, and Mythmaking in East Aurora
Weintraub-Weissman, Caleb

“A Few Diamonds, Judiciously Worn”: Jewelry, Etiquette, and Feminine Virtue in the Gilded Age
Winkler, Alice

Ecology by Design: Biosphere 2 and Closed-System Design in the Space Age
Zhou, Coco

Class of 2019

Setting the Modern Table: American Flatware and the Domestication of Stainless Steel
Boven, Jessica

Dressing the Strange Artist: Fashion and Fame in Georges Clairin’s “Portrait de Sarah Bernhardt
Brekka, Dylan

Buttons to Banners: The Material Culture of Museum Marketing
Clary, Taryn

“Grandeur Now Departed”: Race, Nationalism, and the Aesthetic of Nostalgia in the Brooklyn Museum Southern Period Rooms”
Goldsher, Tessa

Morbid Consumption: The Commodification of Mummies in Victorian England.
Jaffe, Bates

Sensing Sassafras: Materia Medica Exchange in the British Atlantic
Jepson, Drew

Very Much American: The Education, Travels, and Legacy of Thomas Gold Appleton, 1812–1884
Johnson, Sybil

Elizabeth Robins Pennell’s Cookery Book: A Symphony in the Gender Politics of Nineteenth-Century Dining
Outcalt, Leela

Lacing a Nation: Renaissance Lace Revivalism and the Scuola Merletti di Burano in Post-Unification and Fascist Italy
Puton, Clara

Familiar Narratives and Clothing Caricatures: The Realities of Tex Avery’s Imaginary Universe.
Smith, Skylar

Plush: Wall-to-Wall Liberation
Swanson, Sophie

Voices in Stone: An Exploration of the Use of Pounamu in the Contemporary Jewelry of Aotearoa New Zealand
Teague, Christianne

Rose Slivka and the Crafting of Craft Horizons, 1955–1979
Terrell, Collen

Conspicuous Cataloging: An Investigation of Collections Management in the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth-Century Museum
Tichenor, Bailey

European Turned Ivories at the Court of the Kangxi Emperor: A Study in Early Modern Cross-Cultural Relations
Zhou, Joyce