How did you narrow down your research topic?

[Beek2023]

Hi all, I’ve been taking a break from applications to build my museum career (best of luck to those currently in the thick of it!). I’ll be applying again next year though, and I’m having trouble narrowing down my research interests to produce a digestible dissertation idea or even to choose professors I’d like to work with. Probably owing to working in a museum, my research interests are much broader than when I last applied, and I can’t really find any specific throughline. I’m interested in the 18th century to mid-20th; American, German, British, south Asian; prints, drawings, architecture & design; women’s artistic labor, art as nation building, artists’ materials, ecocriticism, romanticism, modernism, the Bauhaus, etc. I’ve done work on several of these topics, although some remain unexplored from a research/writing point of view. 
 

All this is to say, to those with wide-ranging interests and experience, how did you narrow them down when application time came? Did you develop different dissertation ideas for different departments based on faculty? How baked of an idea are you even expected to have in your application?

 

Thanks in advance for any wisdom!