In my first art history course as a sophomore at Reed College, I was exposed for the first time to TJ Clark's Olympia's

Choice, and realized the potential to com ine my udding lo!e of art with my predilection for social and intellectual history" #t around the same time, incidentally, I was introduced to $alter %en&amin and his #rcades 'ro&ect, which went on to e the topic of my senior thesis, the third chapter of which is ser!ing as my writing sample in this application" I was taken with %en&amin's procli!ity for reading history through the physical, !isi le, and tangi le" (y thesis, which examines what I call %en&amin's philosophy of !isual cultural history, deals with his hermeneutics as well as his fierce re&ection of the notion of historical progress" Though I was undertaking interdisciplinary studies in )istory and *iterature, it was always with an eye to my future in art history" $orking through my thesis, I came to wonder if %en&amin's re&ection of +once,upon,a,time,+ teleological progress in the tradition of uni!ersal histories could e connected to Clark's definition of modernity as the demystification or disenchantment of the world, and how that process of secularization manifests itself within art" (y thesis reaffirmed my inclination toward examining social history !ia art and art o &ects, as %en&amin identifies the +sites+ of history in the !isual and physical manifestations of culture" That his Arcades Project focuses on nineteenth,century 'aris was another aspect that drew me to it, as my primary scholarly interests lie in mid,nineteenth century -rench painting in drawing, particularly (anet and the Realists" (y lo!e affair with (anet egan while studying in 'aris, where I took a course on nineteenth,century -rench painting with .icolas %audouin" That I encountered (anet within the context of late eighteenth and early nineteenth,century painting, I think, is the root of my interest in (anet's citations of his predecessors rather than his supposed role as the father of modernism" I am particularly interested in the relationship etween (anet and Cour ert, as well as the rest of the