New Guidelines for Art History Senior Theses

Art History majors will now take two thesis classes their senior year, ARTH 465 (Thesis research) in the fall term and ARTH 466 (Thesis writing) in the spring.

Rules for students:

  1. Students must choose thesis topics within fields taught in the department (strongly urged to be in areas of the core four faculty, with the possibility of allowing for consultation with other faculty).
  2. In addition to the primary thesis advisor, each student must consult with a second research topic advisor regarding his or her thesis topic. (The primary thesis advisor runs the thesis seminar; the second research topic advisor serves as the consultant with expertise in the area of the research topic.)
  3. Students must have taken at least one class in the topic field.
  4. Subject to faculty approval, one or more objects from the university's museum collection may be a thesis topic.
  5. Students must fill out a thesis application form by April 10 of their junior year for faculty approval, so that research can commence during the summer. The forms should be submitted to the art history majors advisor.
  6. University summer research grant applications are due at the start of the spring semester of the junior year. Beginning in 2012, students who plan to apply for funding to support their summer thesis research should consult with their research topic advisor and submit their thesis forms to the art history major advisor by early February.

Application for students:

  1. After consultation with the appropriate faculty members, each student submits a form listing both a selected research topic and an alternative topic (in an area different from the first topic), as well as the names of the faculty members who agree to serve as secondary advisors for each project.
  2. The form asks which classes the students have taken in the fields, as well as whether the topics might require a foreign language, and if so, whether the student has skills in that language.

Guidelines for Faculty:

  1. No one shall be a 2nd reader for more than three theses.
  2. The professor who teaches the two thesis classes (ARTH 465 and 466) is not generally the one who has taught Theories and Methodologies (ARTH 365) the year before.