Dissertation Defense Schedule
Academic Excellence
Sharing original dissertation research is a principle to which the University of Delaware is deeply committed. It is the single most important assignment our graduate students undertake and upon completion is met with great pride.
We invite you to celebrate this milestone by attending their dissertation defense. Please review the upcoming dissertation defense schedule below and join us!
PROGRAM | Art History
The Beauty of the Bough-Hung Banks: William Morris in the Thames Landscape
By: Sarah Leonard Chair: Sandy Isenstadt
ABSTRACT
ABSTRACT
This dissertation reexamines the work of the Victorian polymath William
Morris (1834-1896) through his relationship with the landscape of the River Thames.
Morris passed his whole life within the Thames’s system of streams and gentle valleys,
and the river flows through his intertwined roles of designer, author, political thinker,
and factory owner. Employing strategies of historic landscape studies, material culture
studies, and ecocriticism, this project uncovers the centrality of the Thames in Morris’s
life and works and thereby reveals new information about his inspiration and impact.
Morris was a Londonder, but he eschewed the Victorian metropolis’s modern
landscape of change and pollution, focusing instead on a pastoral vision grounded in
the rural landscapes of the Thames and its tributaries. This pastoral manifested across
his writing – from poetry and romantic fantasies to speeches on aesthetics and politics
– but, this project argues, it can also be clearly seen in his designs, particularly the
printed repeating patterns of textiles and wallpapers for which he is so well known
today. The close connection between Morris’s most beloved countryside landscape,
Kelmscott, and his patterns shows how the ecosystems and traditional agriculture of
the Thames valley manifested in his visual style. Meanwhile, an inspection of the
production history of those patterns – and especially the nine printed textiles which
Morris named after tributaries of the Thames – uncovers the material inseparability of
Morris’s works and his native river system. While the visual content of the patterns
calls upon the rural landscape Morris idealized, their production demanded extensive
engagement with the Wandle, the Thames tributary which ran through the middle of
the Morris & Co. factory premises. The river’s water was used in every step of the
textiles’ production process, and the associated waste products would have entered the
stream. Thus, Morris’s relationship with the Thames and its tributaries reveals how he
drew inspiration from the rural landscapes of the river and rejected London and modern
systems of industry and pollution – but it also uncovers his inextricable place within
those same systems.
The Process
Step-by-Step
Visit our “Step-by-Step Graduation Guide” to take you through the graduation process.From formatting your Dissertation to Doctoral Hooding procedures.
Dissertation Manual
Wondering how to set up the format for your paper. Refer to the “UD Thesis/Dissertation Manual” for formatting requirements and more.
Defense Submission Form
This form must be completed two weeks in advance of a dissertation defense to meet the University of Delaware Graduate and Professional Education’s requirements.
