Please join us in celebrating the 2025 MA graduates as they present their qualifying papers at this year’s symposium.
To see the program brochure, click here.
Schedule
12 pm Welcome
Susan Weber, Director and Founder
Andrew Morrall, Professor
12:15 pm: Connecting Worlds: Transglobal Encounters, Transcultural Connections
Introduction by Prof. Freyja Hartzell
Jacqueline Mack, Thinking in Blue and White: Sino-Portuguese Porcelain at the Intersection of Imperial Politics and Design, 1513–1620
Ev Christie, Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap: Gift and Commodity Exchange in the Golden Age of Piracy
Brielle Pizzala, Admiration and Amnesia: Chinese Inspirations of Royal Worcester Porcelain’s “Japanese Style” in 1872–73
Lauryn Elise Bolz, Knowing Nervenkunst: Exoticism, Eroticism & Einfühlung in Vienna 1900
Lucy Linnea Haskell, Seasonality and the Souvenir at Niagara Falls
Q&A—Break
1:30 pm: Gestures of Modernity
Introduction by Prof. Meredith Linn
Allegra Chapman, Fluid Ontology: A Study of Drink-and-Wet Dolls
Nicolas Cattelain, “An Experimental Lever for the Elevation of the Masses”: The 1872 Exhibition of the Wallace Collection at Bethnal Green
Michael C. McCorry, Collecting Dust: Artifacts & the Artist in the home of Ben-Zion
Vega Shah, “This is our world; we think this is beautiful”: Finding Brand Identity through Surrealism in SIX Magazine by Comme des Garçons
Daniela Díaz Blancarte, A “Bright New World” of Plastic: The Filament Wound House and the Cold War Politics of Housing and Development
Elana Neher, Ceramic Use-Wear: An Online Archaeological Resource
Q&A—Break
3 pm: Materialities of Religion, Ritual, and Magic
Introduction by Prof. Drew Thompson
Nishtha Dani, Talismans and Tails: Medieval Bronze Mirrors from China to Anatolia
Abby Lynne Kizirian Myers, Unraveling the Vishap: Sacred Landscapes and Magic in an Armenian Liturgical Staff
Anna Van Lenten Crowley, Books of Gold: Portable Prayer Books for Women During the English Protestant Reformation
Clara Grey Murphy, From Textile to Text: Revisiting Alexander Shaw’s 1787 Barkcloth Catalogues
Eugene Manning, Royal Feathers and Problematic Gifts: A Divine Genealogy of Hawaiian Feather Cloaks
Q&A—Break
4:15 pm: Materialities of Race and Colonization
Introduction by Prof. Ittai Weinryb
Mya Rose Bailey, A Sense of Enslavement: Constructed and Contested Sensory Experiences at Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello and Poplar Forest
Keelin Pogue, Common Ground: Re-Imagining Reciprocity on the Oregon Trail
R.J. Maupin, Illuminating the “Gillway”: Concealment of Black Women’s Labor at Gill Glass Company
Janelle Williams, Black Neoclassicism: Sculpting Power Figures
Beatrix Henry, As Above, So Below: Colonization as Ideology and Practice in Space Colonies and NASA’s Spinoff 1976
Q&A
5:15 pm Closing Remarks