John T. Paoletti Travel Research Fellowships
in Art History

Funds are available to support student research and travel in the summer following the junior year that will result in a senior thesis project. Only current juniors who are working with art history faculty and who will complete a senior thesis are eligible. These funds are made available through a gift from Judith Gurewich P'05, P'10 to the Art History Program at Wesleyan University in honor of John T. Paoletti, Kenan Professor of the Humanities, Emeritus and Professor of Art History, Emeritus. Paoletti Research Travel Fellowships are intended for advanced students who have demonstrated a commitment to art historical study and a strong aptitude for writing and research. In addition to a solid background in art history and knowledge of relevant foreign languages, students must have formulated an original, coherent, and methodologically informed research project related to the study of art objects, material culture, cultural sites, and/or architecture. Applicants must demonstrate that travel to archives and to specific collections and/or sites is necessary in order to complete successfully the proposed project. 

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The 2026 John T. Paoletti Travel Research Fellowship Recipients: 

“Engraved Encounters: Visualizing Whaling, Industry, and Empire in New England Scrimshaw, 1830-1860”

The art of scrimshaw– carving on whale bone– offers a unique insight into the labor and leisure of sailors on whaling voyages. For my thesis, I plan to analyze scrimshaw on whale-teeth depicting elaborate scenes of whale hunting from the mid-nineteenth century, the moment at which the whaling industry was at its peak off  New England’s coast. With the support of the Paoletti Fellowship, I will be able to prioritize first hand engagement with scrimshaw; the grant will enable me to conduct research at New England’s most prominent whaling museums while immersing myself in the material history of the whaling industry for a holistic view of the industry’s aesthetics and craft. I will investigate how scrimshaw’s materiality– such as the scratches, cracks, and pockmarks that occur naturally in whale-bone– impacts its iconography, examining spatial hierarchies created in scrimshaw's scenes of whale hunts. Additionally, this thesis will consider how cross-cultural interactions aboard whaling vessels may have influenced the varying styles of New England scrimshaw, considering the whaling ship as a multiethnic artmaking space of aesthetic exchange. I will question how scrimshaw’s seascapes convey American Empire and nationhood in their images of collective labor, and how themes of ecology and industrial capitalism are treated in the images. Ultimately, my paper will attempt to show how New England scrimshaw reflects a global, industrial ocean.

“The Toledo Cathedral: Ideological Disputes and Reconciliations”

The city of Toledo has been home to Romans, Visigoths, Muslims, and Christians alike, and no monument better embodies the city’s unique cultural identity than the Toledo Cathedral. A mosque-turned-cathedral, the building exhibits a remarkable convergence of late antique, Mudéjar, and high Gothic artistic and architectural traditions. Despite successive attempts by Spanish officials to cleanse it of its Islamic past, evidence of the Cathedral’s multicultural identity remains. Existing scholarship has yet to fully grapple with the fact that despite this centuries-long, state-sponsored campaign to Christianize the Toledo Cathedral and erase its Islamic heritage, that heritage endures visibly throughout the building. I hope to investigate the question of why there is abundant Islamic art in an ostensibly Catholic building. Where can the intersection of Christianity and Islam be seen in the Cathedral, and what conclusions can be drawn about why these motifs continued to coexist?  

Exploring the architecture of Spain is absolutely integral to my research. My research in Toledo will commence with a visit to the Cathedral itself. In Toledo, I will also explore Bāb al-Mardūm (another mosque-cathedral), the Monastery of San Juan de los Reyes, the Museo de los Concilios y la Cultura Visigoda (Visigothic museum), and the Sinagoga de Santa María La Blanca – the oldest standing synagogue in Europe! These sites will be crucial in allowing me to develop a comprehensive architectural vocabulary of Toledo, ensuring that my analysis of the Cathedral is not done in isolation. I will also travel to the Great Mosque of Córdoba to compare the ceiling vaulting to that of the Cathedral’s. In Madrid, the Museo del Prado and the Museo Arqueológico Nacional will add critical historical context about the political, religious, and economic climate of medieval Spain.

“The Survey of Phuntshokling Monastery’s Mural”

In the tumultuous seventeenth century, as the Fifth Dalai Lama consolidated political power across Central Tibet, the scholar and rival Tāranātha (1575–1635) conceived an ambitious vision for his monastic complex in the Jo mo nang Valley, a site where the Jonang tradition had flourished since the thirteenth century. At its heart stands a monumental, human-scale mural depicting the entirety of the Buddha's life, a work as politically charged as it is spiritually profound. I plan to travel to Tibet to encounter this mural in person, to understand how its narrative unfolds not on a page, but across architectural space. My visit will attend to the relationship between image and environment—how the painted world coexists with the surrounding landscape, and how the physical experience of moving through the temple shapes one's comprehension of the story. Through comparative study of other murals depicting the same narrative tradition, I hope to situate this work within the broader visual culture of Tibetan Buddhism. Despite its remarkable scale and historical significance, this mural remains largely understudied. By bringing together close visual analysis and direct engagement with the site, this project seeks to develop a theoretical framework attentive to both the work's Buddhist context and its distinctive pictorial logic.

“Imaging Politics: Mount Fuji as a Site for National Ideation during the Japanese Empire”

Mount Fuji was utilized in modern Japanese commercial art, primarily print work, during a period of massive cultural upheaval as an intentional iconographic tool for the creation of the formal politics of the empire. As a symbol of the national body, Japanese racial excellence, and imperial triumph, Mount Fuji was nationally charged then and continues to be so now. While the Japanese empire has funded many visual campaigns and influenced the production of visual culture, the extent of the empire’s influence remains unanswered. Through this project, I aim to assess the degree of involvement that political sentiments had in the creation of Mount Fuji, whether it be an explicit effort through propagandistic campaigns, or implicitly through broader popular sentiments. The Paoletti funds will bring me to the National Museum of Asian Art in DC to conduct archival research on the prominent American patrons and collectors of Japanese print work alongside Japan. In Japan I will visit Mount Fuji, museums, and libraries to support my research. I aim to experience what drew artists to Mount Fuji during the twentieth century when I visit. While recent scholarship touches on the role and importance of print work during the empire, there is currently no comprehensive work on the iconographic trends across artists that illustrated the empire. By visiting Mount Fuji, museums, and archival sources, I hope to explore how and why Mount Fuji became a symbol of the empire and the associated implications.

Recipients since the fellowship's founding in 2012:

2025: Annie Hedgepeth
"Spatializing Memory: Geography and Diaspora in the Sculptures of Melvin Edwards"

2025: Lucy Schwalbe
"Crafting National Identity: Olga de Amaral’s Social Fabrics"

2024: Valerie Gottridge
"'Jane in Peepland': Re-presenting Jane Dickson's Times Square, 1992-1993"

2024: Emily Petersdorf
"Theorizing Textiles: Dorothy Liebes and Her Contributions to Modern Architecture"

2024: Sophie Raiskin-Wood
"Practices of Care: Reproductive Labor in Simone Leigh's Social Sculptures"

2023: Olivia Andrews, Art History Major
"The Emergence of Cape Verdean Visual Culture Post-Independence"

2023: Bailey Chapin, Art History and French Double Major
"Joan Mitchell in Paris and Vétheuil"

2023: Emma Flaherty, Art History Major
"The Artist as Cultural and Religious Pilgrim: Dutch Artists in Renaissance Italy"

2023: Sabrina Tian, Art History and Double Major
"Between Japan and America: On Kawara's Personal Conceptualism"

2022: Gabby Farina, Art History and English Double Major
"The Aesthetic of the Feminine: Female Spaces in the Art and Architecture of Al-Andalus"

2022: Sarah Hale, Art History and Italian Studies Double Major
"Engravings of Dante's Commedia in Wesleyan’s 1481 Incunable"

2022: Mim Pomerantz, Art History and Art Studio Double Major
"Surrealism, Ethnography, and Photography" 

2021: Josh Merkin, Art History Major and Social, Cultural, and Critical Theory Certificate 
"The Body and the Archive: Contemporary Performance Art as Institutional Critique"

2021: Ann Zhang, Art History, Psychology, Science in Society Triple Major
"1920’s Shanghai, Reimagined & Recreated in 2020: Preservation & Gentrification of Wukang Mansion and the Surrounding Area in Former French Concession"

2020 Maya Hayda, Art History and English Double Major
"Reshaped and Reframed: Art, Industry, and the Changing American Landscape"

2020 Riley Richards, Art History Major and History Minor
"Newcomb Pottery: Women and Enterprise in the American Arts and Crafts Movement"

2019 Emma Frohardt, Art History Major, Hispanic Literatures and Cultures Major
Project title: "Art as Cultural Critic: Surveillance, Authorship and Collectivism in the Oeuvre of Equipo Crónica, 1964-81"

2019 Olivia Samios, Art History Major, French Studies Major
"The Nordic Home as a Total Work of Art: Codifications of Nationalism in Norwegian Home Design, 1880-1905"

2018 Sara Kim, Art History Major, College of East Asian Studies Minor and Data Analysis Minor
"The Impact of Jesuit Missionaries on the New Visual Culture in Japan: Namban Byōbu in the 16th and 17th Centuries"

2018 Rachel Rosin, Art History and English Double Major
"Mary Cassatt & the Impressionist Exhibitions: Defining 19th Century 'Girlhood'"

2017 Nicole Boyd, Art History and Italian Studies Double Major with a Writing Certificate
"Compositional Cross-Dressing: The Figures of Guido Cagnacci, the Pursuit of Invention, and the Construction of Artistic Identity in 17th Century Italy"

2017 Emily Furnival, College of Letters Major
"Fictitious Friars, Reconstructed Romans: The Architecture and Experience of the Getty Villa and Met Cloisters"

2017 Juntai Shen, Art History and College of Social Studies Double Major
"Modern vs. Rural: The Chinese Rural Architecture & Modernization since 1978--Three Case Studies"

2016 Nathan Johnson, Art History and College of Letters Double Major
"Purvis Young, Lonnie Holley, and Thornton Dial: When Outsider Artists Become Insiders"

2016 Sharifa Lookman, Art History and College of Letters Double Major
"Non finito: Botticelli and the Status of Drawing in the Italian Renaissance 'Here It Behoves Us, Use A Little Art'"

2015 Bryan Schiavone, Art History Major
"The Tree as Cultural Pillar Throughout Indian Art History"

2014 Rachel Hirsch, Art History and French Studies Double Major
"Mughal Illustrations of Hindu Epics: Tracing Iconographic Sources of the Razmnama and the Ramayana to the Indic Visual Landscape"

2013 Grace Kuipers, Art History Major
"The Philosophy Behind the Wall: Modernism, Industrialism, Primitivism and Albert Barnes' Wall Ensembles"

2012 Zoe Mueller, University Major with a Concentration in Urban Studies
"Highway Adaptation and Appropriation: Grassroots Transformation of Visual Culture in the American Rust Belt"