Aesthetics Commons^™

Reflections On “Catching The Ghost: House Dance And Improvisational Mastery”, Renee Conroy

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

Contemporary Aesthetics recommends first reading Christian Kronsted’s article, “Catching the Ghost: House Dance and Improvisational Mastery,” appearing before this article.

This essay is a constructive response to Christian Kronsted’s “Catching the Ghost: House Dance and Improvisational Mastery,” in which he develops three topics introduced in his novel treatment of this club dance form. First, I consider the nature of the relationship between house dancing and house music. Second, I address the significance of “the vibe” in house culture. Third, I apply these reflections to Kronsted’s three puzzles of improvisational agency to demonstrate that an apt, aesthetic analysis of …

Architecture Emerging From Landscape: A Reading Of Spinoza In Landscape Architecture, Gokhan Balik

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

In what follows, Benedict de Spinoza’s ontology of immanence and monism is deployed as a means to launch a rethinking in between landscape and architecture. Public urban landscape, I suggest, is not a static and neutral construction, but a complex system of dynamic relationships within a continuous process of becoming and a generative field of non-oppressive, non-hegemonic power. This study focuses on two temporary structures by different European practices in the Royal Park of Kensington Gardens, in London. This study uses these works to ground a philosophy of radical immanence within our understanding of a contemporary world of landscape architectural …

Catching The Ghost: House Dance And Improvisational Mastery, Christian Kronsted

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

This article received the 2020 Outstanding Student Paper Award from the American Society for Aesthetics. Contemporary Aesthetics recommends reading Renee Conroy’s article, “Reflections on ‘Catching the Ghost: House Dance and Improvisational Mastery,’” following this article.

I interviewed seven expert house dancers regarding their improvisational practice and discovered several intriguing testimonial consistencies. House dancers articulated a feeling of simultaneously being in control and not in control of their movements. Furthermore, in peak moments of improvisation, interviewees were often surprised by their own capabilities. How do we award artistic credit to someone who is seemingly not aware of his or …

Afterlives Of Discovery: Speculative Geographies In The Colombian Political Landscape, Heidi A. Rhodes

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation considers how the temporal remains of the Age of Discovery and its doctrine persist in a racial-geographical ranking of human and non-human, terrestrial and planetary life and worth. Across this work, I interpret a series of historical moments and their objects of speculative geographic cultural production: a state mapping program, a painting, a biomedical project, a de-monumenting protest action. As repositories of codified belief and repertoires of Discovery’s political and affective modes of racialized domination, I read these materials from the Colombian archives of coloniality and liberalism to illuminate their implications for Colombia’s national becoming as a liberal …

What We Owe To Our Audience: The Hermeneutical Responsibility Of Fiction Creators, Kathryn Wojtkiewicz

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The goal of this project is to provide a theoretical underpinning for the belief that creators of fiction should dedicate time to diversifying the cast of characters in their fictions, and to avoiding harmful stereotypes when doing so. I establish this as a hermeneutical responsibility: because of the epistemic influence fictions can wield over their audiences, trafficking in harmful stereotypes of marginalized identities (instances of which I call Bad Representation Problems) or excluding marginalized identities entirely (which I call No Representation Problems) from one’s fictions can reinforce harmful beliefs about real people with those identities. The more popular the fiction, …

Essays On Communication, Shawn M. Simpson

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

One of the central issues of contemporary philosophy and biology is the nature of communication. Early accounts of communication tended to focus on just one side of the communicative divide – the speaker side or the receiver side – and took as their starting point the case of human language. Animal communication, historically, was largely treated as a special case. Now things are different. Now it appears we might have a model that makes sense of sign use in both the human and animal realms and brings together both sides of the signaling divide. It’s still to be seen, however, …

Desde El Fuego Que En Mí Arde: Performance, Literatura Y Cine Afro-Latinoamericano Producidos Por Mujeres Afrodescendientes En Perú, Cuba Y Brasil (1960–2000), Elena Ekatherina Chavez Goycochea

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation examines different films, literary, and performance art pieces created by contemporary afro-descendant women from Peru, Cuba, and Brazil after the sixties with emphasis on the most relevant works of Conceição Evaristo, Sara Gómez, Victoria Santa Cruz, and Lucía Charún-Illescas. I focus my research on the crucial role these artists played in the cultural identity formation of Latin America when inserting ‘race’ as a category of socio-political analysis and cultural production. How did their films, performances, and texts challenge national narratives and imaginaries after 1960? Although in the sixties, women improved their civil rights in different countries, the ‘mujer …

Mozart And Genius: Music And Philosophy, Aidan Witvoet

Undergraduate Student Research Internships Conference

This output poster serves as an overview to my efforts and responsibilities throughout the duration of the internship. Here I also showcase a brief sample of the concepts and areas of exploration within which I have been immersed, both in regards to the the content of the book I am helping to prepare for publishing as well as accompanying readings and discussions.

中國古典美學範疇之“淡”, Zhou Cao

Lingnan Theses and Dissertations (MPhil & PhD)

上個世紀七十年代，羅蘭·巴特（Roland Barthes）以“平淡的場域”表達了對中國的整體感觀，而後荷蘭漢學家余蓮（François Jullien）以“淡”總論中國思想與美學，兩位學者從跨文化的視野指出了“淡”在中國古代美學思想體系中的重要性。若從“淡”的歷史流變來看，不同理論流派與藝術門類的論述跨越了數個研究場域，而非限於範疇體系中“風格”論的一種表現。故此，本文嘗試超越以往視“淡”為“審美風格”的局限，著重研究“淡”在不同理論之間的流動，探尋“淡”如何從味覺現象發展為哲學、道德概念並演變為文藝美學範疇，從材質、心性、詩歌、詩歌批評、詩學理論五個角度梳理其理論漸進的過程與發展史的重要節點；同時，鑒於古代範疇隨步移行的特點，本文在微觀細讀的基礎上深入辨析一些由“淡”構成的重要概念或術語，界定它們的內涵與外延，並以文史哲結合的方法釐清其各自的理論語境與淵源，進而反思“淡”在不同時期意涵變遷的歷史文化原因。本文通過重要節點勾勒“淡”的發展史，透視古代美學思想各個場域之間的會通，希望能夠重新描繪“淡”在整個範疇體系中的位置，發現“淡”成為古典文藝審美理想的深層原因。

Baking As A Means Of Non-Verbal Expression: An Aesthetic Inquiry On Conventual Pastry, Maddalena Borsato

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

The aim of this essay is to philosophically explore the domain of conventual pastry by understanding baking as a form of aesthetic expression. I intend to investigate the aesthetic meaning of making sweets, both for the specificity of this taste and for the link between tacit knowledge and the meaning of gift through cloistering. From the very beginning of its production in the monasteries, pastry developed not only as an economic livelihood but also as a way to create a meaningful language beyond the so-called intellectual activities. The philosophical interest lies in the relationship of food practice with intimate …

Dissonant Forms: Landscape, Nature-Love, And Art, Taylor F. Benoit

Masters Theses

As artists continue the long and storied lineage of Landscape, are there aesthetic responsibilities that come with representing the forces that afford you the capacity to do so? As we delineate spaces into places, endless interconnectivity into knowable “systems”, and living matter into thing based taxonomies, who do these delineations serve and with what intentions do we proceed? My studio art practice explores what it means to give form to our Former—the Former being that from which we came, the here and now, our explicit ecological reality, the stuff of what we call nature. …

The Emotional Illusion Of Music: Contemporary Western Musical Aesthetics In Dialogue With Ancient Eastern Philosophy, Yin Zhang

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This project aims to examine whether music has an emotional nature. I use the ancient Chinese text Music Has No Grief or Joy to construct three arguments for the illusion view, according to which music has no emotional nature and the emotional appearances of music are illusory. These arguments highlight representational inconstancy, expressive incapability, and evocative underdetermination as three ways to problematize the idea that music has an emotional nature. I draw on the Confucian tradition to formulate three responses to the illusion view from representational reliability, expressive sincerity, and evocative appropriateness. These responses are shown to be inadequate. To …

Religious Mega-Events And Their Assemblages In Devotional Pilgrimages: The Case Of Círio De Nazaré In Belém, Pará State, Brazil, José Rogério Lopes, André Luiz Da Silva

Journal of Global Catholicism

The article presents a typological categorization of contemporary mega-events and their characteristics, in order to interpret the assemblages mobilized by sectors of the Catholic Church in traditional devotional pilgrimages in the northern region of Brazil. It uses ethnographic accounts of the Círio de Nazaré feast, in Belém, Pará state, Brazil, considered the largest Catholic procession in the West, in order to analyze how the promotion of this event is organized through institutional and market logics that overlap with the religious phenomenon, evincing a contemporary trend. These assemblages open a field of possibilities for institutional religious reproduction and generate concentric flows …

Young Brazilian Catholics Reaffiliating: A Case Study In The City Of Campos, Rj, Brazil, Cecilia L. Mariz, Wânia Amélia Belchior Mesquita, Michelle Piraciaba Araújo

Journal of Global Catholicism

Through a case study in Campos, a northern city of Rio de Janeiro state, Brazil, this article analyzes reports from young people who state that they have undergone a process of revival or reactivation of their Catholic faith. They all declared to have participated in the “St Andrew’s School of Evangelization.” They also mentioned having experienced an "encounter with God." Their narratives were similar to conversion accounts reported by practitioners of other religious traditions. The interviewees describe faith as a personal choice, and emphasize the need for religious study and the value of religious knowledge. To what extent these values …

Contemporary Brazilian Catholicism And Healing Practices: Notes On Environmentalism And Medicalization, Juliano F. Almeida

Journal of Global Catholicism

Anthropological studies on Brazilian Catholicism traditionally focused on popular variants of this religious practice and their relationship with the official Catholicism. Encouraged by recent anthropological perspectives, which highlight the relevance of devoting researches not only on the margins, but also on the center of social practices, this paper analyzes contemporary practices of Brazilian Catholic friars and priests on health promotion. The analysis of their publications (books that include practices and tips on health and that became best sellers etc.), as well as interviews, allows us to perceive a process of environmentalization on the contemporary Brazilian Catholicism. This process seems to …

Editor's Introduction, Marc Roscoe Loustau

Journal of Global Catholicism

No abstract provided.

The Role Of Aesthetics In Classroom Design: Implications For Engagement And Equity, Giuliana Barraza

Master's Theses

The desire for achieving greater equity in education has been a prevalent topic of research, with many studies indicating that the current education system in this country is designed in a way that exacerbates initial inequities and has a negative impact on student motivation and engagement (EOCD, 2012). While existing scholarship mostly discusses equity and engagement through the lens of curriculum and instruction, the power of physical classroom environments and aesthetic elements present in those environments is less explored. With student populations becoming more diverse, there is a greater need for new tools for teachers to utilize in pursuit of …

Placing God: Defining “Post-Christianity” For Contemporary Japanese Christians, Leryan Anthony Burrey

Master's Projects and Capstones

This work suggests that we consider a new, working definition of post-Christianity. This new paradigm is in response to Western Christian thought being too dominant a force that fails to take into enough account other global experiences— like those of Japanese Christians. These reflections are based on scholarly opinions claiming that Christianity is a “global culture,” and ultimately argues for more international inclusivity in Western Christian thought and institutions, especially regarding the Asia-Pacific. Moreover, this paper illuminates how iitoko dori allows Christian thought to peacefully coexist in Japan’s greater society. The research also explores specific Japanese cultural practices that make …

The Feeling Of Foam & Other Essays, Ryan Erickson

Graduate School of Art Theses

I create conceptual drawings, collages, sculptures, and installations to humorously destabilize and ultimately question how human language, formal methodologies, and social institutions function. While seemingly embracing an aesthetic of rationality, I undermine it with absurdity. In my work, I take a fundamentally dialectical position by skewering the rational to the illogical as neither can exist without the other.

Cultivating Eliot's Historical Sense: Eliotic Time And The Waste Land's Response To Alienation, Thomas Ball

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In this dissertation, I argue that T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land marshals his account of historical sense as a response to the problem of alienation in modernity. Eliot’s historical sense depends upon an awareness of the endurance of the past, demanding a reorientation to the structure of temporality. I interrogate the temporal ramifications of Eliot’s account, arguing that it resonates with Henri Bergson’s durational theory of time. I ultimately investigate Eliot’s relationship to Bergson, suggesting that Eliot intervenes in the Bergsonian framework by establishing duration as a cultural, rather than individual or ontological, reality.