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Destabilizing Identity: The Works Of Dorothy Cross, Aileen Dowling

Honors Undergraduate Theses

This thesis aims to analyze Dorothy Cross’s sculptural, installation, and video works in relation to Ireland’s Post-Conflict struggle with its cultural and global identity. Throughout the course of history, Ireland’s identity has always been in question, sparking new interest over the last thirty years in producing an Irish identity discerned by “hybridity, multiplicity, and mobility.”[1] Declan McGonagle states that the traditional Irish constructs of gender and sexuality were primarily challenged by Dorothy Cross during this period of rapid sociopolitical change.[2] Cross consistently deconstructs pre-Christian Mother Ireland and patriarchal Catholic Ireland in her early sculptural works, and ultimately transitions …