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Building Columbia, Lawrence Lane

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis analyzes the research from a project on the builders who helped build Columbia, South Carolina from 1890 to 1940, a dynamic time of growth as the city moved from post-Civil War recovery through industrialization and into modernization.1 Previous research of Columbia’s architectural history often focuses on the few architects with national recognition, like Robert Mills, the architect of the Washington Monument. Frequently omitted from the city’s architectural story are the lesser-known developers, builders, contractors, brick masons, and other tradesmen from inside and outside of Columbia who contributed to the shaping of the city by helping build vernacular architecture …

Ordinary Disorder, Jonathan S. Tracy

Theses and Dissertations

The pictorial spaces in my paintings are found through many drawings, based on memories. In these drawings I use the architectural technique of paraline drawing, in pointed contrast to one or two point perspective. With a fixed point of view unavailable, the viewer or reader becomes the writer too. This is what I intend. The paraline method also engages specific corners of art history to which I relate, including woodblock prints of Japanese interiors, Chinese brush painting landscapes with houses, and the shifting, rotating perspectives found in Baroque painting. My intensely personal memories/drawings are transfused into highly material finished paintings. …

Jared French's State Park: A Contextual Study, Emily Sachar

Theses and Dissertations

Jared French's State Park (Whitney Museum of American Art, 1946) uses the language of magic realism in mid-20th-century America, the egg tempera technique of the Quattrocento, and the theories of Carl Jung to explore a variety of themes: homosexuality, family and power. This thesis considers State Park within the contexts of the artist's circle and liaisons with Paul Cadmus and George Tooker; his photography work with Pajama; his friendship with E.M. Forster; and homophobia at mid-century.

Rupture, Dionis Ortiz

Theses and Dissertations

I am an interdisciplinary artist working in painting, photography, printmaking, sculpture, video and installation. I employ these mediums to create a coming of age story as a Dominican New Yorker, exploring masculinity, vulnerability, the supernatural, family, and religion, as well as how culture plays a role in my community and in my life.

Iran At The Venice Biennale 1956–1966: A Rediscovery Of The Country’S Participation And Its Role In The Development And Legacy Of Iranian Modernism, Lauren Pollock

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis reconstructs Iran’s participation at the Venice Biennale from 1956–1966. In examining the trajectory of artists represented, art works exhibited, and the critical reception, I argue that Iran’s presence at Venice during these years is crucial to an understanding of the development and legacy of Iranian modernism.

“A Desperate Pioneerism:” Laura Márquez’S Art And Social Engagement In 1960s Paraguay, Susan Breyer

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines the art and social engagement of Laura Márquez in 1960s Paraguay. Despite the challenging economic, political, and social contexts that Márquez encountered throughout the decade, she acted as an invaluable “transmitter” – both carrying international artistic forms and concepts into Paraguay, and diffusing her experience of local reality.

Purism And The Object-Type: Tradition And Modernity, Art And Society, Jamie Morra

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines the Purist object-type as a formal and social tool in interwar Paris. It’s establishment, definition, and use is analyzed through the work and writings of Amédée Ozenfant, Charles-Édouard Jeanneret and Fernand Léger, via painting as the primary practice, and its further conceptual applications in architecture and film.

Franz Roh And Visual Juxtaposition In Foto-Auge, Irini Zervas

Theses and Dissertations

This study of Foto-Auge (1929) is grounded on the approach of Franz Roh and aims to unlock the book’s meaning through an analysis of layout and visual sequence. This thesis also demonstrates how Foto-Auge proclaims photography’s ability not merely to record, but to disrupt any sense of reality in images.

Una Sensibilità Scientifica: Giacomo Balla’S Painting Of Light, 1900-1914, Luise Mahler

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines how science shaped Giacomo Balla’s pioneering style of abstraction. A reconsideration of his oeuvre from 1900 to the advent of Italian Futurism demonstrates that his artistic vision of light—indebted to popular scientific imagery and what might be called "prosthetic" visual technologies—anticipated the emergent Futurist aesthetics.

The Twilight Zone: The Confluence Of Childhood Scenes And Future Anxiety, Jongwon Bae

Theses and Dissertations

Jongwon Bae’s paintings reflect his childhood memories as an archive that is to be repressed until it manifests itself in uncertain ways as it becomes confluent with the anxiety about the future.

Post-Representational Presence: Disruptive Actions & Visibility Politics In New Media, Christian Hendricks

Theses and Dissertations

This text is a written component to a master’s thesis in the fine arts. It is a research-intensive text that conventionally examines contemporary conditions of politics and modes of representation, and analyzes the most innovative artists and visual producers working in these areas. However, the text also includes exercise modules with “challenges” for the reader, similar to a textbook. In the modules, the examples provided are works of my own. I also include text, images, and documentation of my own work from my MFA thesis exhibition.

Intertidal, Alta Buden

Theses and Dissertations

Master of Fine Arts Thesis by Alta Buden. This paper details her process and research leading up to a body of work focused on our relationship to water, as she creates a series of sculptures about the waterways surrounding New York City beginning with the Superfund site Newtown Creek.

"Nothing Is Wrong With You", Carlos Rigau

Theses and Dissertations

Just as one object can give rise to multiple percepts, so an object may fail to give rise to any percept at all: if the percept has no grounding in a person's experience, the person may literally not perceive it.”

Perception literally guides human understanding as to what reality and truth is. My work intends to ruffle up commonly understood western percepts and their normality. I consistently choose media comprised of static images, moving images and sculpture. These forms are used to convey a singular and independent meaning, as well as a larger collective expression.

High-Di-High-Di-High-Di-High, Low-Di-Low-Di-Low-Di-Low, Daniel Figueredo

Theses and Dissertations

I am a believer in our image culture and its capacity to be liberating, exploratory, and critical. I also believe in its ability to overwhelm. My own work is a reaction to this over saturation. It is equally influenced by childhood exposure to remedial computer graphics and cartoons, as well as formative experiences traveling, an in-depth Art Historical education, and a love for art developed over time.

Maybe That's What It Means, Anael Berkovitz

Theses and Dissertations

Anael Berkovitz explores personal and collective memory through the use of storytelling and interpretation. Focusing on how identity is shaped by stories, her three part video details the nomadic nature of her own family, the obfuscation of language in translation and the incorporation of an invasive species into a culture.

Mythology And The Black Female Body, Zatara Mcintyre

Theses and Dissertations

Mythology and the Black Female Body is an in-depth examination of the work of Zatara McIntyre. In this research, the personal, cultural, artistic, and religious underpinnings of her work are further investigated, with consideration given to a selection of artworks.

Southern Grotesque, Maggie Ellis

Theses and Dissertations

The scenes I paint are submerged in specific landscapes I have encountered in Georgia. Honoring my experiences from this vantage point, I depict the rough and tumble attitude of my upbringing that is at odds with a rarefied New York art world I currently live in.

Pockets Of Proximity, Christian Breed

Theses and Dissertations

My current paintings begin with images of people from the back, wearing hijabs, turbans, saris, kufis, or rasta gauzy shawls. I do not paint my subjects frontally, because I do not have access to them personally or culturally, and because it is their cultural indicators that fascinate me.

Inside The Aviary, Nikki Mehle

Theses and Dissertations

Modularity and movement of energy are two key concepts in the construction of Nikki Mehle's paintings. Painting is an act of both processing and creating reality – the duality of reflection and invention.

Music From The Harpsichord House, Julie Zhu

Theses and Dissertations

Music from the Harpsichord House is an installation and series of concerts that exists in the binary of in and out of performance. During a concert, the harpsichordist is hidden inside the house and his face is live-projected outside. Fifteen new musical compositions were commissioned for the harpsichord house.

A Chair In The Woods, Victoria Dolloff

Theses and Dissertations

Victoria Dolloff's MFA Thesis considers traces of play and perception in the development of her artwork, exploring the idea of reorientation through subtleties of the absurd. Her installation Untitled (Landscape) questions object as place and place as memory utilizing fragmentation as reconstruction.

Invisible Invisibility, Eugina Song

Theses and Dissertations

White America assumes its culture is the default, and Asian culture as foreign and irrelevant. I address Asian invisibility by using canvas structure as a Western framing device of painting, and make this cultural barrier visible by breaking out of the frame. Deriving from Dansaekhwa, I challenge the Western painting structure with materiality.

Healthy People Are Bad For Capitalism, Eri King

Theses and Dissertations

Healthy People are Bad For Capitalism is a four part installation that creates an alternative space for the chemicals, Red 40 and Monosodium Glutamate. Presented as a holistic center that offers healing services and remedies, Center for the Red 40 and MSG Healing explores the homeopathic doctrine of Like Cures Like (what make a human ill also cures them) through the relationship between Traditional Japanese Healing Practices, and Western Capitalism.

Healthy People are Bad For Capitalism presents Red 40 MSG Apothecary, Red 40 Zen MSG Healing Rock Garden, Theta Wave Eternal Flame Meditation and Red 40 MSG …

The Posers: Instinctual Simulation Across Time, Kathryn Mccarthy

Theses and Dissertations

The Posers is a video about the occlusion of the self in history and in love. This paper explores methods of laminating historical moments with contemporary experience to explore the passage of time and the ongoing marginalization of women.

Between The Alarm Clock And The Cell Phone, Sam Bornstein

Theses and Dissertations

The temporal-cultural matrix of fantasy refers to the relationship between the artist’s use of fantasy, and the sense of time and culture that is particular to their experience. It also refers to the way in which fantasy and the Fantastic can provide a space for critique, escape, relief, or commentary on those conditions.

Everything I Thought I Was Supposed To Do, Jeff Conefry

Theses and Dissertations

It is within the liminal space between traditional mediums that my creative practice deconstructs the materiality of painting to subvert historical expectations. The irony associated with this deconstruction, excavates one medium to generate the building blocks for something inimitable. These blocks are most easily re-categorized into Words, Limits, and Power. It is these three themes that are the foundation of my thesis exhibition.

How President Barack Obama Reshaped The Rhetorical Presidency By Slow Jamming The News, Preston Haycock Wittwer

Theses and Dissertations

The rhetorical presidency encompasses all the ways a president communicates and acts. These rhetorical elements of the job are not prescribed in the Constitution and as a result it is the presidents themselves who help shape the cultural understanding of presidentiality, of what it means to be president. When President Barack Obama participated in a "Slow Jam the News" comedy sketch on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon in 2012, he took the rhetorical presidency to a place it had never been before. This choice established a new genre of presidential rhetoric that President Obama would rely on throughout his time …

"What More Could I Have Done?" A Graduate Student's Experience Teaching Writing About Writing, Lena May Harper

Theses and Dissertations

As writing about writing (WAW) research enters its "second wave," characterized not only by an increase in data-driven studies that theorize and assess the effectiveness of WAW curricula (Downs) but also by an increase in its prominence and adaptation, particularly among emerging writing studies scholars and teachers (e.g., Bird et al.), a space has opened for more and varied types of research, especially empirical research, to determine its effectiveness and to produce more solid recommendations for training and curriculum development, especially for those who are new to the field. This case study, which highlights how a novice teacher responds to …

How President Barack Obama Reshaped The Rhetorical Presidency By Slow Jamming The News, Preston Haycock Wittwer

Theses and Dissertations

The rhetorical presidency encompasses all the ways a president communicates and acts. These rhetorical elements of the job are not prescribed in the Constitution and as a result it is the presidents themselves who help shape the cultural understanding of presidentiality, of what it means to be president. When President Barack Obama participated in a œSlow Jam the News comedy sketch on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon in 2012, he took the rhetorical presidency to a place it had never been before. This choice established a new genre of presidential rhetoric that President Obama would rely on throughout his time …

The Rhetoric Revision Log: A Second Study On A Feedback Tool For Esl Student Writing, Natalie Marie Cole

Theses and Dissertations

A common pattern in teacher feedback to ESL writing is to provide students feedback on primarily grammar, often sidelining content (Ferris, 2003). This research is a second study of an original study done by Yi (2010) on a rhetoric revision log. This Rhetoric Revision Log (RRL) helped teachers and students track content errors in writing. This research further studies the success of the RRL with some minor changes made based on previous research results. Data consists of the Rhetoric Revision Log (RRL) given to 42 students in three different ESL writing classes at the same level with four different teachers. …