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Indominable, Kathleen A. Fox

CGU MFA Theses

INDOMINABLE, Kathleen A Fox

The reformation of the feminine portrait from that of idealistic sexual beauty into a portrait of strength, community, longevity, transformation, and inane human foundational essence of societal value. This collection of portraits illustrates the uniqueness that is often overlooked for the fast, idealistic and instantly read images of women hailed as beautiful. These women contain a space they have earned with their strength of character, spirit, and unwillingness to be moved from their places of significance. Created with an expressive abstractive edge to traditional portraiture, these female portraits refuse to be easily glossed over, for their …

Hot, Water, Mud: Some Attachments, Dianne Dillingham

CGU MFA Theses

The works in my thesis show came out of an investigation into what it means to really know something. To have such intimate familiarity with a place or object that the shape, smell, and touch becomes unforgettable; the dirt under your nails, smell easily recalled, the carved outline of a bedpost after years of touch. These things are unremarkable in their everydayness; but they can also hold power over time. They can become attachments – motifs that resurface and repeat - that have agency.

Quiet Moments, Deitra Charles

CGU MFA Theses

I am a figurative artist who focuses on ordinary people and everyday objects. I paint moments. A moment of peace, a moment of tranquility, a moment of contemplation. It is my hope that my paintings will incite a feeling of warmth, presenting the possibility of thoughts that take you away from the stresses of day-to-day life – that they give you the opportunity to experience life differently, stirring within you some sense of peace.

It is my hope that my paintings will incite a feeling of warmth, presenting the possibility of thoughts that take you away from the stresses of …

The Standard Model, Manny Llanura

CGU MFA Theses

Photography is my medium. “The Standard Model” is a body of work created from photographs of the Los Angeles Fashion Week Spring/Summer 2019 Collection runway.

Each final work starts with over a thousand photos that become the raw materials from which I eventually produce my final piece. Deep in the final piece are the lights, shadows, hues, tones of a themed shoot.

I believe that the ability to focus on what is in front of you is not directly proportional to how detailed the image is. My goal is to incite appreciation of what humans have done or …

Muted, Cindy Ruiz

CGU MFA Theses

Dolls inspire me because of the mysterious place they occupy in human affection, conveying playfulness but at the same time expressing the vulnerability of being alive. They don’t need a verbal language, for they have a strong gaze that looks back. I see them as a substitute for humans. As subjects for paintings, they are a cross between a figure and a still life. They don’t move when I paint them. I paint these dolls as realistically and as honestly as I can because I want to be true to the individual doll. I paint what I observe.

Unseen Forces, Rebecca Rich

CGU MFA Theses

My work belongs to a discussion of awareness and presentness. The foundation of the unconscious is the primary influence. The questions I am asking concern selfexamination and self-reflection. I am working from a place that relates to the other and identities that would intersect with something and someone else: interobjectivity. My art-making practice demands accountability with something greater than the personal. My work demonstrates that there is a shared space we intersect with. It sits between the end and the beginning, intuitively understanding that change is a constant with or without one's involvement or influence. My work is about connections …

The Threshold, Jonathan Yacoub

CGU MFA Theses

The Threshold is a place that forms a nuanced duality on what is authentic and artificial.

Carbon 碳, Mengyuan Li

CGU MFA Theses

Death is the one certainty in life. This fascinates me and I cannot stop thinking about it. When it comes to life and death, the cemetery is a more realistic place than heaven and hell, and it is also a place to feel life and death more directly. A simple gravestone separates life from death. Cemeteries let people come face to face with life, death, and even love.

In a cemetery, there is a tranquility that is different from the city or nature. In a cemetery, people take off their masks and face their emotions. I believe that when we …

Autopathography, Aurora Berger

CGU MFA Theses

For centuries the stories of disabled people were not our own to tell. We were silenced by politics and power dynamics beyond our control, and when we succeeded it was “in spite of” our disabilities. I am interested in the reframing of this narrative and discovering my place in this historic trajectory.

I am a disabled artist. I have claimed this identity. It is critical that this identity remains tied to my work as I navigate the worlds of fine art, academia, and critical theory. My art is intrinsically tied to my academic work. They are inseparably bonded through my …

Para Ti, Ashley Lothyan

CGU MFA Theses

This group of work draws from family photos that are over 15 years old, chosen from when I was born to the age of ten. Torn, wrinkled, and discolored, these photographs influence how I paint immediate family members, locations I grew up in, and myself.

Threaded, Madeline Arnault

CGU MFA Theses

This group of works is taken from my drawing practice. I have always been fascinated by the variety of line and color you can play with on fabric. For that reason each piece in this exhibition is image and line centric. I love the way a fabric can blend from color to color in the weave and yet contrast so sharply with a line placed on top. These works are a testament to that love.

To What Extent Do Religious Institutions Provide A Societal Value? Is The Tax-Exempt Status Justified?, Annabel Hou

Scripps Senior Theses

Religious institutions have been tax-exempt from almost all taxes for more than two centuries. The two primary justifications used to protect this ‘status’ is the constitution and the concept that churches provide positive externalities that believers and non-believers all benefit from. This paper examines the relationship between religiosity and five socially important characteristics: high school graduation rate, a divorce rate, incidence of domestic violence, and levels of substance abuse and crime. I run multiple simple and full regressions across 207 counties in Texas. In four of the five analyses, religiosity has a strong statistically significant desirable impact. With the addition …

Shizen Nōhō: Restoring The Relationship Between Food, Nature, And People In Japan, Katharine Graham

Scripps Senior Theses

In Japan’s postwar era, agriculture has become highly industrialized, involving heavy machinery, chemical fertilizers, and pesticides, all in the name of “progress.” Through employing such practices, humans have attempted to improve upon nature’s way of doing things, and in turn have degraded the soil’s fertility, natural ecosystems, and human health. In response to this, Shizen Nōhō has emerged in Japan as an alternative way of cultivating food. Shizen Nōhō practitioners challenge the notion that we need chemical fertilizers, pesticides, and machinery to farm successfully. Rather, they advocate for a way of growing food that functions seamlessly with natural ecosystems. This …

Where Do We Go From Here? A Semi-Autobiographical Performance Exploration Into The Therapeutic Benefits Of Theatre, Emma Elliott

Scripps Senior Theses

My intention in this performance is to create a therapeutic theatrical process for myself and engage the audience with intense emotional vulnerability regarding the combination and validation of the nobody and performative self. I utilized both my vocal and acting training to work through emotional trauma that I have experienced and created a musical performance to demonstrate my journey of therapy and emotional reconciliation within myself and my family. I focused my research on using autobiographical performances to solidify and validate the identity of the performer to an audience. In doing so, this allows the performers to become the …

Camino A La Interseccionalidad: Una Aproximación Al Desarrollo De Ideas Feministas En La España Contemporánea, Kierra Mitchell

Scripps Senior Theses

Esta tesis utiliza la interseccionalidad como lente para hacer un análisis de los textos culturales y activistas para explicar cómo se manifiestan las ideas feministas en estos dos períodos cruciales de avance del feminismo en España: el primer cuarto del siglo veinte y las primeras décadas del siglo veintiuno. La interseccionalidad sirve como una prisma de análisis que permite entender los sistemas hegemónicos de poder. Esta tesis analiza ejemplos de textos y demandas que ilustran las preocupaciones y aparatos ideológicos que sustentan diferentes aproximaciones al feminismo en estas dos épocas. Un interés específico, en especial en la segunda parte, es …

Written In Bone: Damage Patterns In Agonopsis Vulsa Armor, Morgan Stewart

Scripps Senior Theses

Naturally occurring armor has evolved in many different classes of organisms, often in response to predation, although other factors may play a part. In this study, the scales of the benthic armored fish Agonopsis vulsa were examined for damage patterns in order to illuminate the life history and environmental interactions of the fish. Scales from the fish were systematically destroyed in the lab, and observations made from the damaged scales were used to create a categorical damage rating, which was applied to 34 specimens ranging in trunk length from 2.3 cm to 14.2 cm. The specimens were rendered as three-dimensional …

A Matter Of Life And Def: Poetic Knowledge And The Organic Intellectuals In Russell Simmons Presents Def Poetry, Anthony Blacksher

CGU Theses & Dissertations

This dissertation unpacks the poetry, performances, and the production of Def Poetry Jam to explore how a performative art embodied and confronted racial discourses, including stereotypes and also, addressed the racism, patriotism, and imperialist discourses that circulated after 9/11. Def Poetry Jam contributes to the intellectual capacity of spoken word and performance poetry, and poets as intellectuals, where poets produce and disseminate knowledge, ideas, and data, in the form of narratives, that contribute to critical consciousness. The effectiveness of the series lay in the consistent blurring of entertainment, knowledge, anti-capitalism, and capitalism. This research demonstrates how Def Poetry Jam provided …

Mobile Societies, Mobile Religions: On The Ecological Roots Of Two Religions Deemed Monotheistic, Edward Surman

CGU Theses & Dissertations

How do environments affect the generation and development of religions? The investigation taken up in this dissertation is one attempt to address this question. This work focuses on one comparative case study: the potential causal relationship between agriculturally marginal landscapes and the two oldest religions deemed monotheistic. This dissertation argues that the respective origins (and early development) of communities of worship centered around Ahura Mazda and YHWH were affected by similar environmental contexts. The dearth of literature concerning the effects of environments on religions extends to established theoretical and methodological approaches on the topic. The framework for approaching this research …

Louis De La Forge On Mind-Body Interaction And The Case Against Occasionalism, Melissa Kalaee Gholamnejad

CGU Theses & Dissertations

Fidelity to the Cartesian philosophy requires a defense of dualism as well as mind-body union and interaction, all the while keeping to some form of the causal likeness principle. Each of these positions are ones that Descartes maintained throughout his writings. Yet, successors and scholars alike have noted the inconsistencies that arise from defending these views conjointly and have argued that one or more of them should be abandoned. Even the first generation of Cartesian successors whose fidelity to the Cartesian principles was especially steadfast, such as Louis de la Forge, have been interpreted and characterized as giving up causal …

A Critical Comparative Scriptural Analysis Of Genesis 1:1-5 Based On Hebrew, Aramaic, Syriac, Greek, And Coptic Manuscripts, Edens Elveus

CGU Theses & Dissertations

A translation of Gen. 1:1-5 may seem to be both close and far at the same time from the original Hebrew text because of historical, geographical, theological, cultural, philological, and linguistic reasons. The scribes who translated the biblical narrative of the creation of light from Hebrew to a lingua franca of their time had a translation technique. They knew what they were doing. They provided a translation that the people of their time (d’alors) could understand, depending on a consideration of the milieu where they lived, and the jargon used to express their ideas – straight or in a zigzag …

Intimate Stranger, Strange Intimacy: Towards The (Sinthôm)Ethics Of Transference Love In Lacan’S Analyst’S Discourse, Jung-Hsien Lin

CGU Theses & Dissertations

This dissertation explores one of the four fundamental concepts of psychoanalysis, as suggested by Jacques Lacan (1901-1981), which is transference. Broadly defined, transference refers to the relationship between the analyst and the analysand transpiring during the analytic process. Although Sigmund Freud and Lacan have presented contrasting views with regards to the term, both of them share one common ground, that is, taking transference to be the aim of the psychoanalytic practices. Due to its theoretical divergences and convergences, debates about transference have focused on whether or not such an analytic aim is truly ethical. What complicates the discussion of ethics …

Fragile Oceans, Synthetic Flotsam And Microbial Collaboration – Explorations In The Visual Communication Of The Plastic Crisis, Ivan Langesfeld

Pomona Senior Theses

Scientific evidence that the ocean plastic crisis is larger in scale and more sinister than previously thought continues to mount, but the rate of plastic production is only rising. What will it take to decisively turn the tide against plastic? We need scientists, politicians, and industry changemakers to continue producing knowledge and positive change in the industry, but we need to go further still. This thesis explores art as an alternative visual communication strategy with the capacity to encourage curiosity, empathy, and positive engagement with the issue of ocean plastics. The series of work explores bacterial bioluminescence as an artistic …

The Legalization Of Street Vending In Los Angeles: Exploring The Impact On Vendors And Their Livelihoods, Karen Alpuche Caceres

Pomona Senior Theses

This thesis aims to unpack the impact the legalization of street vending and the subsequent regulation had on sidewalk vendors. Although legalization occurred state-wide through Senate Bill 946 in September of 2017, the rules and regulations for vending were passed at a city-level, and I am focusing on the City of Los Angeles specifically. Through interviews with government officials, non-profit partners and advocates, and vendors from different parts of the City, I analyze information around the policy itself, its history, and the impact it has and is expected to have on vendors and their businesses. While vendors have been central …

"Woven Into The Deeps Of Life": Death, Redemption, And Memory In Bob Kaufman's Poetry, Peter Davis

Pomona Senior Theses

The scholars who have taken up the task of writing about Bob Kaufman have most often done so in response to a perceived demand: the lack of Kaufman scholarship, readership, anthology, publicity, canonization. The basis of this need is clear: Kaufman is almost never included as even a third-string Beat, a fringe Surrealist, or an underappreciated Jazz performer. To the committed readers of Kaufman – and almost all of his readers seem to be committed ones – it’s unforgivable. These various canons, major (mid-century American poets, Beat poets) and minor (Jazz poets, American Surrealists), are clearly missing one of their …

Towards A Critical Understanding Of Deepfakes: Developing A Teaching Module And More, Wentao Guo

Pomona Senior Theses

Recently, computer-generated and computer-altered videos known as deepfakes have raised widespread concerns about the harms they may cause to democratic elections, national security, people’s reputation, and people’s autonomy over their words and actions as represented in videos and other media. How can we build towards a critical understanding of not only deepfakes, but also photos, videos, and the role of many other media objects surrounding us that inform us about the world? In this thesis, wanting to take a historical approach and noting the newness of deepfakes, I first investigate a historical case study regarding a manipulated photo from a …

“Stepsons And Stepdaughters”: Chosen Communities, Religion, Faith, And Lgbt Liberation, John Michael Erickson

CGU Theses & Dissertations

This dissertation explores the new roles the LGBT movement took on in place of religious and faith-based communities. The new discourse behind the LGBT rights movement’s recent popularity and credibility in popular culture in the U.S. created a generation of activists who grew up both within and outside of religious communities that affirmed an individual’s sexuality as an important part of their identity rather than a sinful one. While newer generations of both closeted and open LGBT individuals and religiously affiliated men and women grew up knowing about the fight for and against gay marriage, equal rights, and fair and …

A Matter Of Life And Def: Poetic Knowledge And The Organic Intellectuals In Russell Simmons Presents Def Poetry, Anthony Sean Blacksher

CGU Theses & Dissertations

In December of 2001, Russell Simmons Presents Def Poetry (Def Poetry Jam) turned HBO viewers into audience members of a televised poetry reading, featuring spoken word and performance poetry. Over six seasons, actors, rappers, comedians, and the host, Mos Def, joined poets in a unique representation of counter-public open mic poetry readings and poetry slams. This dissertation unpacks the poetry, performances, and the production of Def Poetry Jam to explore how a performative art embodied and confronted racial discourses, including stereotypes and also, addressed the racism, patriotism, and imperialist discourses that circulated after 9/11. Def Poetry Jam contributes to the …

A Phenomenology Of Flesh: Heidegger, The Body, And The Work Of Art, Trisha Famisaran

CGU Theses & Dissertations

This dissertation begins by asking, what is the body, and how does one develop an understanding of the body? In this study, I aim to rework the notions of discursive practices and material phenomena, seeking to examine the relationship between the two in light of the work of art, so conceived within the philosophy of Martin Heidegger, in an attempt to deal with the question: “what is the body?” This dissertation avoids reifying certain normative descriptions of the body or constraining the matter of the body as strictly the effect of discursive power. I attempt a phenomenological observation about subjectivity …

Growing Up Gay And Latino, Sharon Wyatt Saxton

CGU Theses & Dissertations

This dissertation examines the experiences of LGBT students attending high school in a predominantly Latino area to determine if their experiences are different in a Latino-inflected environment than those of students in a predominantly Anglo environment. Although the experiences of LGBT students are well documented in academic journals and popular press, this dissertation insinuates that those experiences are inflected by the Anglo setting in which students attend school. This study investigates the experiences using a multiple choice and open-ended survey and a personal interview with the investigator. Certain experiences appear to be common among LGBT students who attend Anglo-inflected high …

Ethics, X-Phi, And The Expanded Methodological Toolbox: How The Think Aloud Method And Interview Reveal People’S Judgments On Issues In Ethics And Beyond, Kyle Thompson

CGU Theses & Dissertations

Ethics isn’t a conversation exclusive to philosophers. There is value, then, in not only understanding how laypeople think about issues in ethics, but also bringing their judgments into dialogue with those of philosophers in order to make sense of agreement, disagreement, and the consequences of each. Experimental philosophers facilitate this dialogue uniquely by capturing laypeople’s judgments and analyzing them in light of philosophical theory. They have done so almost exclusively by using face valid quantitative surveys about philosophically interesting thought experiments. Based on high participant support for this or that response, researchers conclude that a given theory is more or …