Areas of Concentration: twentieth-century Chinese architecture and urbanism; historiography of Chinese architectural history; vernacular architecture; heritage preservation
Faculty Advisor: Swati Chattopadhyay
M.Eng. Thesis: “‘明长城防御体系’再思——以辽东镇东部沿边堡城为例” (“Rethinking the Ming Great Wall Defense System: The Border Fortresses in Eastern Liaodong,” School of Architecture, Southeast University, Nanjing, completed 2020)

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), Abigail Lapin-Dardashti (Art History, UC Irvine), and Colin Gardner (Art, UCSB)
Dissertation: “Un/folding the Body: Assemblage Art in Argentina, Brazil, and Colombia, 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: 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)

Areas of Concentration: Modern and contemporary art; Craft history, materiality and practices; queer and transgender art practices; the relationship of queerness and craft
Faculty Advisor: Constance Penley
Committee Members: Mark Meadow, Jenn Tyburczy (Feminist Studies) and Andy Campbell (Critical Studies | Roski MA Curatorial Practices and the Public Sphere, USC).
M.A. Thesis: "Artificial Nature and Total Indulgence: Queer Craft in the Works of Arch Connelly, Nicolas Moufarrege and Greer Lankton" (The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, completed 2020)

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: Artistic exchange between Northern Europe, Spain, and Colonial Latin America during the sixteenth century; history of print and book production; Early Modern epistemologies
Faculty Advisor: Mark A. Meadow
Dissertation: “Locating Childhood: The Visual Culture of Children in Early Modern Antwerp and Mexico City”
M.A. Thesis: “A Lost Eyckian Painting and a Possible Fifteenth-Century Prototype for Quentin Metsys’s The Moneylender and His Wife” (The Pennsylvania State University, completed 2015)

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)

Area of Concentration: Early modern Netherlandish jewels and jewelry
Faculty Advisor: Mark A. Meadow
M.A. Thesis: "‘Wat men veerst haelt, dat smaeket soetst’: De pomander en de wisselwerking met buiten-Europese culturen" (History, Art History and Classics, Radboud University, completed 2024)

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)

Area of Concentration: Northern Renaissance
Faculty Advisor: Mark A. Meadow
Dissertation: "Visual Constructions and Assertions of Community in the Early Modern Towns of the German Erzgebirge"
M.A. Thesis: "Intriguing Relationships: An Exploration of Early Modern German Prints of Relic Displays and Reliquaries" (UC Riverside, completed 2013)

Areas of Concentration: Medieval Mediterranean; British Empire, Visual & Material Culture, Landscape, Foodways
Faculty Advisor: Swati Chattopadhyay
Committee Members: María Lumbreras, Erika Rappaport (Department of History, UCSB), Romita Ray (Department of Art and Music Histories, Syracuse University)
Dissertation Title: "Social Clubs, Country Clubs and the Making of the Colonial Landscape in India, 1820s to 1960s"
M.A. Thesis: "Lajja: Contesting Ideal Womanhood in Contemporary Hindi Film" (University of Texas at Austin, completed 2002)
M.A. Thesis: "Photographs by Tseng Kwong Chi: Diaspora and Self-Representation" (University at Buffalo, completed 2001)

Areas of Concentration: Twentieth-century American Art, Craft, and Material Culture; the Relationship Between Race and Modernism; Histories of Folk and Self-Taught Art; Artist-Built Environments; Artists' Homes, Studios, and Gardens; Exhibition Histories
Faculty Advisor: Jenni Sorkin
Committee Members: Laurie Monahan, Jeffrey Stewart (Black Studies, UCSB), Katherine Jentleson (Merrie and Dan Boone Curator of Folk and Self-Taught Art, High Museum of Art)
Dissertation: “Build/Live/Work: Artist-Built Environments and the Expanded Vernacular in the Twentieth Century”
M.A. Thesis: "Claude Cahun, Marcel Moore, and the Collapse of 'Surrealist Photography'" (Hite Art Institute, University of Louisville, completed 2016)

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)