Completed Honors Projects 2008 - Present

According to standard interpretations of the Tibetan diaspora, with the incorporation of Tibet into the People’s Republic of China in the 1950s, all art in Tibet itself is degenerate, and the Tibetans in exile are framed as the sole custodians of their imperiled traditions. However, is it accurate to portray the 5.4 million Tibetans who still live in Chinese-occupied Tibet as having utterly repudiated their “culture”? This study seeks to answer this question through a comparative study of the parallel developments in diaspora of Tibetan Buddhist sculpture, based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in workshops in exilic Dharamsala, India and in Chengdu, the major Chinese city closest to geographic Tibet.

A critical analysis of the literature on sustainable architecture through Sir Norman Foster's use of water technologies.

Barnett Newman's "Stations of the Cross" series consists of fourteen abstract paintings created between 1958 and 1966, and is one of the artist's most unique works. This essay advances a new understanding of the "Stations" as concerned with destabilization of visual perception and the nature of human suffering, incorporating the elements of seriality and content which have been overlooked by pervious scholars. This is accomplished through direct dialogue with previous arguments, discussion of the Christian devotion after which the series was named, in-depth consideration of Newman's writings and statements, and a rigorous analysis of the fourteen paintings themselves. It is found that the "Stations of the Cross," while abstract and stark in appearance, are complex and full of meaning.