Romanesque architecture and sculpture, twelfth-century Gothic art, and American twentieth-century commercial design.

Art and decolonization, race and space, placekeeping, cultural geography, critical pedagogy, environmental racism, interdisciplinary methodologies, narrative and research, cartography, critical and comparative Ethnic Studies, Indigenous Studies

Pre-Columbian art and archaeology; cultural heritage; conservation; collecting histories; cultural landscapes; culture contact; frontiers; metalworking and ancient technology; craft production.

Areas of Concentration: Colonial architecture of Western India, Architecture of the Indian Ocean region, Architectural education
Faculty Advisor: Swati Chattopadhyay

Areas of Concentration: Women and Queer Artists; Contemporary Latin American Art; Assemblage Art and the Found Object; Sculpture
Faculty Advisor: Jenni Sorkin
Committee Members: Laurie Monahan, Aleca Le Blanc (History of Art, UC Riverside), and Colin Gardner (Art, UCSB)
Dissertation: "Assembling the Body: South American Assemblage Art, 1960-1996"
M.A. Thesis: "Feminist Practices as Antagonism: Anti-Hegemonic Artistic-political Incursions" (Santa Catarina State University, Florianópolis, Brazil, completed 2014)

Areas of Concentration: Twentieth-Century Architecture in California; Architecture of the Iranian diaspora in Southern California; Modern and Contemporary Iranian Architecture
Faculty Advisor: Volker M. Welter
Committee Members: Jenni Sorkin, Talinn Grigor (Art History, UC Davis)
Dissertation: Persomania, Persophobia, Persophilia: A Century of Self-Fashioning with “Persian Architecture” and Its Reception in California
M.Arch. Thesis: “Disappearing Lives: The Material Culture of Sarā-ye Moshir” (McGill University, Montréal, Québec, Canada, completed 2013)
M.L.Arch. Thesis: “The Eternal Landscapes” (Shahid Beheshti University, Tehran, Iran, completed 2007)

Areas of Concentration: Early modern collecting; history of museums; museum ethics
M.A. Thesis: "Church as Museum, Spolia as Artifact: Reuse in Roman Churches ca. 300-1200" (Cornell University, completed 2023)

Area of Concentration: 12-14th century Eastern Mediterranean
Faculty Advisor: Heather Badamo
M.A. Thesis: "Armeno-Muslim cultural interactions in late twelfth- and early thirteenth-century Anatolia: kumbets and the cross-cultural transmission of architectural knowledge" (Central European University, Budapest, completed 2017)

Areas of Concentration: Feminist Theory, Contemporary Art, Critical Theory, European 20th-century Art, and Visual Culture
Faculty Advisor: E. Bruce Robertson
M.A. Thesis: "Hot Off the Press: Image-Making, Eroticism, Counterculture, and Obscenity in Yayoi Kusama's Underground Newspaper," completed 2018

Areas of Concentration: 20th century European and Latin American art, geopolitics and culture, art theory
Faculty Advisor: Laurie Monahan
Committee Members: Sven Spieker (Germanic and Slavic Studies, UCSB), Cristina Venegas (Film and Media Studies, UCSB), Pamela Radcliff (History, UCSD)
Dissertation: "El arte de América Latina es la revolución: networks of political art between Spain and Latin America during the late Francoist dictatorship (1960-1975)"
M.A. Thesis: "Les difficultés et ambiguïtés politiques d’Antoni Tàpies pendant le Franquisme" (Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, completed 2017)

Areas of Concentration: Sensory and affect studies, material culture in early modern China, literati painting and calligraphy, contemporary Chinese art and visual culture
Faculty Advisor: Peter Sturman
M.A. Thesis: "Exercising for Self-Cultivation: Luohans and Yangsheng in the late Ming" (Faculty Group in Asian Studies, UC Berkeley, completed 2019)

Areas of Concentration: Ancient Greek and Roman artwork, Ancient Roman burial and funerary practices, ancient cults, mythology, witchcraft, magic, human remains in museums, NAGPRA and museum practices
Faculty Advisor: Claudia Moser
Committee Members: María Lumbreras, Christine Thomas (Religious Studies), Stuart McKie (University of Exeter, United Kingdom)
Dissertation: "Ars Contra Naturam: The Liminal Magic of Death in Antiquity"
M.A. Thesis: "I Sing the Body Magical: Baubo and Her Apotropaic Power," completed 2020

Areas of Concentration: Song- and Yuan-dynasty Chinese Painting
Faculty Advisor: Peter Sturman
M.Phil. Thesis: "The Representation of Filial Piety in the Yuan-Dynasty Handscroll Four Stories of Filial Piety” (The University of Hong Kong, completed 2023)

Arts of the Iberian world, sixteenth and seventeenth centuries; interactions of art and science; early modern antiquarianism; early modern art theory; histories of record-keeping and evidence-handling technologies; historiographies of art.

Photography, 20th century US; War and Trauma Studies; Visual and Material Culture.

Surrealism; French art (interwar period); European 20th-century Art; American Post-WWII Art; Visual Culture; Critical Theory.

Areas of Concentration: Modern and Contemporary Art, Studio Craft, Material Culture, and Museum History; Digital Media Art and Technology; Feminist Art and Theory
Faculty Advisor: Jenni Sorkin
Committee Members: Laurie Monahan, Jason Weems (History of Art, UC Riverside), Cécile Whiting (Art History and Visual Studies, UC Irvine)
Dissertation: "Clay Bodies: Figurative Ceramics and the Crafting of Identity in Postwar Sculpture"
M.A. Thesis: "Crafting Autonomy: A Reevaluation of the Pedestal in the Sculpture of Arlene Shechet, Nicole Cherubini, and Francesca DiMattio" (San José State University, completed 2017)

17th- and 18th-century art and architecture in Italy; history of collecting and museums.

Contemporary art; Japanese art (1868 to present); Global Surrealism; Museum Studies.

Areas of Concentration: 20th Century German Art and Visual Culture; Weimar Republic and Interwar Avant-Gardes; Cold War-Era Performance Art in Central and Eastern Europe; Histories and Theories of Mass Media, Materiality, Performance, and Photography
Faculty Advisor: Laurie Monahan
Committee Members: Laurie Monahan, Sven Spieker (Germanic and Slavic Studies, UCSB), Patrice Petro (Film and Media Studies, UCSB)
Dissertation: "Photography, Pictograms, and Pedagogy: The Worker in Weimar Art and Visual Culture, 1919-1933"
M.A. Thesis: "Deconstructing the War Monument, Redefining the War Hero: Antimilitarism in Berlin Dada, 1920" (The Courtauld Institute of Art, completed 2018)

Areas of Concentration: Eighteenth and Nineteenth-century European Architecture and Public Spaces; History of the Mediterranean; Mechanically Reproducible Mediums; Greco-Roman Reception
Faculty Advisor: Richard Wittman
M.Litt Thesis: "Roman Holiday: Constructions of National Identities in John Shaw Smith’s Environs of Rome" (University of St. Andrews, St. Andrews, Scotland, completed 2023)

Areas of Concentration: Modern/Contemporary Art
Faculty Advisor: Laurie Monahan
Committee Members: Jenni Sorkin, Cristina Venegas (Film and Media Studies, UCSB)
M.A. Thesis: "Censored Ambiguity: María Izquierdo’s Tribute to Mexico," completed 2022

Areas of Concentration: Australian colonial material culture and landscape; penal and revival architecture; Aboriginal cultural landscapes and agriculture; postcolonial theory and decolonial practice; African art and performance of the colonial period
Faculty Advisor: Swati Chattopadhyay
M.A. Thesis: "Materialising Mythologies: Shaker Chairs and the 'Transcendent Good'" (Curtin University, Perth, Western Australia, completed 2014)

Areas of Concentration: 18th and 19th century European architectural history and theory; monuments and public space; ephemeral architecture; urbanism
Faculty Advisor: Richard Wittman
Committee Members: Swati Chattopadhyay, Manuel Covo (History, UCSB)
Dissertation: “Ephemeral Monuments, the Modern French State, and the Parisian Public, 1789-1848”
M.A. Thesis: "Moralizing Utopia: The Virtues of Collectivity and Happiness in Ledoux’s Ideal City of Chaux" (Tufts University, completed 2016)

Modern architecture; domestic architecture; émigré architects; patronage; histories of modernism, revival styles, and sustainable architecture.

As of Fall 2023, Professor Welter is currently not accepting new graduate students.

Cultural history of European architecture and town planning, 17th - 19th centuries; theory and historiography of architecture.

Areas of Concentration: Modern and contemporary art; 20th & 21st century art magazines; feminisms and intersectionality; arts publishing; alternative art sites; collaborative art practices; photography; theories of gender, memory, and the archive; arts education and pedagogies
Faculty Advisor: Jenni Sorkin
M.A. Thesis: “Chrysalis: a magazine of women’s culture, the magazine as medium, and as catalyst for feminist thinking” (The Courtauld Institute of Art, completed 2016)