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Ana Mendieta, The Iowa Years: A Critical Study, 1969 Through 1977, Julia P. Herzberg

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation investigates the artistic development of Ana Mendieta (born Cuba, 1948; died United States, 1985) from 1969 to 1977 when she lived in Iowa City, attended the University of Iowa, worked as an art teacher, and established herself as an artist. Mendieta is known for her early performance pieces and earth-body sculptures. From the late 1980s her work has been increasingly included in the contexts of feminist art history, performance, photography, work in nature, body art, self-representation, Cuban art, and transcultural identity. Collected by major museums throughout the United States, her work has begun to be included in surveys …

Ghosts In The Machine: The Black/Africanist Presence In The Sea Novels Of Edgar Allan Poe And Herman Melville, Peter F. Decataldo

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The attempt to situate historically the connections between African blacks and the sea represents just one aspect of the broader effort to assess how the presence of blacks operated to determine the language, choices, representations, and directions of the narratives that Poe and Melville set at sea. What is proposed here is a rethinking of American sea fiction from the unique perspective of its racial dynamics, especially with regard to what Toni Morrison has called the "Black/Africanist presence" in American literature, a presence that she justifiably claims to have been silenced, degraded, and distorted in American criticism. This work examines …

The Ideal Catalogue House: Mail-Order Architecture And Consumer Culture, 1914–1930, Evie T. Joselow

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation explores the mail-order house and its relation to aspects of consumer culture, establishing a context for understanding its popular appeal and its notable presence in the competitive housing market between 1918 and 1930. Fueled by a demand for housing, and widely promoted during a period of economic prosperity which ushered in an interest in consumerism associated with home ownership, the mail-order house, assembled from pre-cut lumber and sold by mail-order suppliers, represented an affordable and appealing means for consumers to acquire the aesthetic and material elements associated with the ideal house and home.

The dissertation articulates the popular …

Tanbou Lwen Tini Bon Son: L'Oral Comme Reconstitution Historique Dans L'Oeuvre De Simone Schwarz-Bart, Frances J. Santiago Torres

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In an effort to reconstruct a History that has been marked by discontinuity and displacement, Simone Schwarz-Bart–a woman writer from Guadeloupe–has written two novels that are infused by the oral tradition of the Caribbean. This dissertation studies the diverse manifestations of the oral genres (such as songs/chants, sayings, proverbs, riddles, etc.) within the novels Pluie et vent sur Telumee Miracle and Ti Jean L'horizon. This author has given a new dimension to the written French language, even though the Creole language is not transcribed into the texts, it is nevertheless the material out of which the texture of these novels …

The Calamus Root: American Gay Poetry Since World War Ii, Walter Ralph Holland

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation argues that there is a clear gay poetic tradition dating back to nineteenth century Europe, and it describes an historical taxonomy for gay poetry in America since 1945 by reference to its characteristic themes, influences and leading figures. After a brief discussion of early precursors such as Paul Verlaine, Arthur Rimbaud, Walt Whitman, C. P. Cavafy, Hart Crane, Langston Hughes and W. H. Auden, the dissertation traces, through close explication of texts, the works of Harold Norse, Allen Ginsberg, Tennessee Williams, Frank O'Hara, Adrian Stanford, Richard Howard, Alfred Corn and Essex Hemphill. The influences on such poets of …