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Gentleman Death In Silk And Lace: Death And The Maiden In Vampire Literature And Film, Emily Wilson

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis contains an examination in the psychosocial significance of Hans Baldung Grien’s “Death and the Maiden” art motif, created during the Renaissance period following the Black Death, and its resurgence in the vampire fiction genre of both literature and film. I investigate the motif in Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897) and Anne Rice’s Interview with the Vampire (1976) as well as their film adaptations by Francis Ford Coppola (1992) and Neil Jordan (1994), respectively. By examining the presence of the motif in art, literature, and film, I found that the common threads across all investigated works were the dominant social …

Other Oceans, Other Skies, Sharlene Lee

MFA in Visual Art

I create immersive installations, performances, and time-based media artworks that delve into stories of belonging, feminism, and language as power. These stories offer a potential for transformation from viewer to participant and a shift in how our world is seen and experienced. Through an exploration of perception and affect, I challenge dominant narratives, prompting a contemplation of contemporary power struggles for control.

In this text, I examine the impact of historical borders and migration on my life while also investigating questions of home, shared values, and rituals that contribute to one’s sense of belonging. I also highlight my commitment to …

Skin Echoes, Andreia Santana

Theses and Dissertations

Santana’s explores the intersection of biology and identity, incorporating living matter and performative gestures into installations to reflect on social constructs of history and gender. By observing water and its qualities of defying Western dichotomies, Skin Echoes focuses on the material interchanges across bodies and the wider material world.

Manifesting Magic: Occultism And Feminism In The Art Of Leonora Carrington And Remedios Varo, Margaret Dirschl

MA Theses

The artworks of Leonora Carrington and Remedios Varo are replete with
symbolism and evocations of the occult, formulating bodies of work that are charged with magic and mysticism. When studied within the context of their male contemporaries of the Surrealist group, it becomes apparent that this use of the occult operates as a compelling and historically based feminist strategy. Immediately stemming from the occult revival of the previous century and the issues for females presented by Surrealism, the foundations of this idea originate much earlier in the pagan traditions of antiquity and the witch hunts of the 15th through 18th …

The Feminization Of Mexico City In The Late Twentieth Century: Polvo De Gallina Negra, Pola Weiss, And Lourdes Grobet, Alexis N. Corral

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis centers on select artworks in public intervention, photography and video as an exploration of female's relationship to Mexico City's social landscape and urban space during the late 1970s into the early 1990s. In three case studies, I explore historical urban planning, gender relations, and the effects of modernization.

Introverse Arrangements: Rediscovering The Typewritings Of Ruth Wolf-Rehfeldt, Savannah M. Champion

Masters Theses

This thesis aims to understand Wolf-Rehfeldt’s place in the unofficial art world of the GDR by examining her work in light of her status as a clerical worker with social rather than professional ties to the art world. She stands out within the East German Mail Art context, not just for her inventive use of a typewriter to create abstract figurations, but for the way she used it to interject considerations of gender and power into a network of artists overwhelmingly dominated by men with her open-ended Typewritings.”

Through historical research and close readings of her work, this study uncovers …

World Of Water: Betsy Damon’S Ties To Ecofeminism, Colleen Sullivan

Dissertations and Theses

This thesis establishes a critical examination of the evolution of Betsy Damon’s artistic practice as overtime she engages with ecofeminist thought. As a whole, this work extends contemporary scholarship on ecofeminist engaged art to include Damon’s artistic production while amplifying social and critical ecofeminism as necessary ideologies to explore when analyzing art through an ecofeminist lens. Beginning with her first environmentally focused work in the United States the organization of the following chapters reveals Damon’s deepened understanding and exploration of ecofeminist principles and their application to her artistic practice. It goes on to further explore Damon’s pursuit of environmentally sustainable …

The Real And The Digital: Female Agency And Resisting The Male Gaze In Lynn Hershman Leeson’S Works, Kelly Chou

Dissertations and Theses

This thesis focuses on three major feminist works by multimedia artist, Lynn Hershman Leeson (b. 1941), that grapple with the construction and potential of female identity. Considering the works within the context of Laura Mulvey’s seminal text “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” this paper will attempt to elucidate how Hershman Leeson’s works have engaged with the male gaze and its social and cultural implications on female identity in visual spheres. This research demonstrates how Hershman Leeson’s efforts to understand the limitations and boundaries for women reflect the same phenomenons observed by Mulvey within “Visual Pleasure.” Rejecting this, Hershman Leeson also …

Mothers Behind Cameras: Mother-Artist, Mother-Child Dyads In Sally Mann’S Immediate Family And Elinor Carucci’S Mother, Hayley A. Pierpont

Scripps Senior Theses

Women, particularly mothers, are often made invisible within narratives of their own family and domestic spaces, despite their role as creators and maintainers of those spaces. This perpetuation of invisibility is threaded throughout the history of artistic practices, (photography especially). Contemporary mother-artists Sally Mann and Elinor Carucci confront and unapologetically reflect their singular experience(s) with motherhood through their photography, which addresses the symbiotic dyads of mother-child and mother-artist. This thesis focuses on an analysis of four images: Mann’s The Wet Bed and Lee’s Dirty Hands, and Carucci’s Trying to Protect Emanuelle and I Will Protect You. In both …

Contemporary Textiles: Unraveling White Feminist Discourse, Meredith Friedman

MA Theses

In recent decades, attention to textile art has flourished. The growth of contemporary studies committed to revising fiber’s hierarchical categorization represents a discursive turn heavily weighted within feminist inquiry. The interrelation between textile techniques and constructs of femininity and domesticity was at the base of a robust interdisciplinary field of feminist theory developing around the 1970s in the US. Often referred to as the second wave of feminism, this era experienced scholars and artists proposing the medium’s capacity to counter the elusive genre’s marginalization and, by extension, presenting textile’s ability to subvert notions of gender difference. This analysis aims to …

Women Of Pop., Jourdan Cunningham

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The hegemonic values that were represented in 1960s mass media were heavily reinforced by the Pop Art movement. Male Pop artists have often been viewed as genius, while the women were pushed aside to reside within the margins of the Pop canon. This thesis emphasizes the work of four female artists who participated in the Pop Art movement and were largely overlooked throughout Pop’s discourse. By analyzing their “popness” and Feminist viewpoints, it allows for the imbalance that has resulted from women Pop artists neglect throughout Pop’s discourse to be readdressed. In the Introduction I analyze the background of the …

Beyond Movements: Senga Nengudi’S Art Within And Without Feminism, Postminimalism, And The Black Arts Movement, Tess Thackara

Theses and Dissertations

An examination of Senga Nengudi's relationship to Feminism, Postminimalism, and the Black Arts Movement. This thesis argues that, while her work overlapped with those three movements and tendencies, she ultimately expanded each of them to absorb greater sets of cultural references and formal criteria into their makeup.

The Fearsome Femme: A Psychoanalytic Interpretation Of Lorenzo Sabatini's Giuditta Con La Testa Di Oloferne, Brant J. Bellatti

Art and Art History Theses

Lorenzo Sabatini (c. 1530-1576), an Italian artist working in the Mannerist period of art, created a revolutionary bloody rendering of the biblical story of Judith decapitating Holofernes. The Bolognese artist, and his painting Giuditta con la testa di Oloferne (Judith with the head of Holofernes), has not been extensively written on by scholars, therefore, this study suggests an original interpretation of the artwork. Lorenzo Sabatini would likely have borne witness to a number of decapitations in Bologna, because they were typically executed in public urban courtyards. Maturing in this sort of environment can impact an artist’s life. Through Lorenzo Sabatini’s …

The Simultaneous Book: Women's Writing In Contemporary Art, Maryse Lariviere

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Novels written by women authors who don’t adhere to the classification “visual artist” are nonetheless gaining momentum in today's contemporary art world. Yet works by authors such as Chris Kraus or Catherine Millet are often not recognized as artist’s novels because their authors are not or/and do not consider themselves to be visual artists. I contend that we can usefully situate their work within the genre of the artist’s novel by addressing how they invent artistic postures and artistic alter-egos within the autofictional worlds of their texts. My dissertation The Simultaneous Book proposes to open up the definition of the …

Gendered Subjectivity And Resistance: Brazilian Women’S Performance-For-Camera, 1973–1982, Gillian Sneed

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation considers the work of a group of women artists in Brazil during the period of the military dictatorship (1964–1985), working in the genre of “performance-for-camera” (i.e., performance for film and video, rather than for a live audience). The artists are Lygia Pape (1927–2004), Letícia Parente (1930–1991), Anna Bella Geiger (b. 1933), Sonia Andrade (b. 1935), Anna Maria Maiolino (b. 1942), and Regina Vater (b. 1943). Some of these women were friends and colleagues who collaborated with each other; all of them contributed significantly to the development of film and video art in Brazil. Their works share an impulse …

Panmela Castro: Feminism In Brazilian Graffiti Art, Giulia Chu Ferri

Student Theses and Dissertations

This paper is an analysis on the graffiti artist Panmela Castro and her murals in Brazil and around the world. My thesis emphasizes the importance of feminist subject matter for graffiti art in Brazil, as well as its impact on the public sphere. The paper is separated into four sections: “Formative Years,” describing her biography and the development of her works; “Interaction with the City,” analyzing the interaction between graffiti and the urban environment, and using that discussion as a frame to contextualize Castro’s work; “Feminist Imagery and Ideology,” examining some of her concurrent themes and imageries; and finally “Transnational …

Altar/Installations By Amalia Mesa-Bains In A Feminist Context, Carmen Del Valle Hermo

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores the path-breaking art installations and attendant writing of Amalia Mesa-Bains, who fused the home altar traditions of Mexican and Chicana women with contemporary considerations of identity politics and hybridity, naming the form domesticana. It situates her practice within a trajectory of feminist art.

Trace., Kcj Szwedzinski

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Trace utilizes autoethnography to investigate aspects of Judaism to discover how one decides what to embrace, embody, or deny from inherited legacies. Autoethnography attempts to combine quantitative and qualitative data in order to systematically analyze and describe personal experience. The artist acting as Ba’alei Kushiah, or question bearer, uses Talmudic philosophy as a methodology and approach to art making. This research is self-referential; using Jewish thought to ask questions about Judaism. Judaism, often existing in an in between place with outward characteristics that reflect regional influences, facilitates a dialogue about whether there are relative or absolute delineations within and between …

Deconstructing The Image Of Woman: Video Portraiture And Women’S Performance For The Camera 1972-1980, Olivia Gauthier

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines key examples of video portraiture, a subgenre of 1970s video art in the United States. Through the examples three aesthetic categories are defined: mirroring, masquerade, and disrupting the male gaze. Video portrait works are framed by goals of the Women’s Liberation Movement and Second Wave Feminism.

Subversive Stitch, Kimberly Reinagel

MA Projects

WhiteBox Harlem is thrilled to present Subversive Stitch, a group exhibition featuring female contemporary artists that work in textiles, curated by Kimberly Reinagel. Presented at this show will be works by Eozen Agopian, Alexandria Deters, Zhen Guo, Lisa Kellner, Mariana Garibay Raeke, Kimberly Reinagel, Leila Seyedzadeh, Victoria Udondian and Christina Whitney Wong. This exhibition will look at the societal reassignment of the textile in the art market. Textiles throughout history have been primarily considered a "feminine" medium. Fabrics, fashion, embroidery and tapestry all connote a feminine background, and have thus notoriously not been received with much gravity. This exhibition is …

Un/Dead Animal Art: Ethical Encounters Through Rogue Taxidermy Sculpture, Miranda Niittynen

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Beginning in 2004, the Minnesota Association of Rogue Taxidermists began an art movement of taxidermied animal sculptures that challenged conventional forms of taxidermied objects massively produced and displayed on an international scale. In contrast to taxidermied ‘specimens’ found in museums, taxidermied ‘exotic’ wildlife decapitated and mounted on hunters' walls, or synthetic taxidermied heads bought in department stores, rogue taxidermy artists create unconventional sculptures that are arguably antithetical to the ideologies shaped by previous generations: realism, colonialism, masculinity. As a pop-surrealist art movement chiefly practiced among women artists, rogue taxidermy artists follow an ethical mandate to never kill animals for the …

Painting, Geography, And The Body: Charting The First Two Decades Of Mary Corse’S Art, Sarah A. Meller

Theses and Dissertations

Mary Corse has always maintained her position on the periphery, and her work has generally been excluded from art historical scholarship. This study illuminates the ways in which the first two decades of Corse’s practice were in fact in dynamic dialogue with broader impulses and concurrent trends operating at the time.

Representing Struggle: Raquel Forner’S Social And Political Engagement In The 1930s And 1940s, Diana Flatto

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines Raquel Forner’s engagement with current events in her paintings from the 1930s and 1940s. Uncovering her realist style, each chapter focuses on a thematic area of her work over these years: the female figure and representation, religious iconography, and wartime.

Skin Portraiture: Embodied Representations In Contemporary Art, Heidi Kellett

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

In recent years, human skin has been explored as a medium, metaphor, and milieu. Images of and objects made from skin flesh out the critical role it plays in experiences of embodiment such as reflexivity, empathy, and relationality, expanding conceptions of difference. This project problematizes the correlation between the appearance of the epidermis and a person’s identity. By depicting the subject as magnified, fragmented, anatomized patches of skin, “skin portraiture”—a sub-genre of portraiture I have coined—questions what a portrait is and what it can achieve in contemporary art. By circumnavigating and obfuscating the subject’s face, skin portraiture perforates the boundaries …

Consciousness Engendered Throughout Lena Dunham's "Girls" : Female Subjectivity Vs The Problem Of Post-Feminism, Heeyeon Kim

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

The inequality between genders is an idea still endorsed in everyday life throughout media, political discourse, and relationships. Gender discrimination spurs feminists to strive for equity and has become the motivation for the changing and progressive message in their writings and artworks. Lena Dunham’s HBO TV series Girls is such a work and is distinctly unique when compared to Hollywood’s presentation of the standard image of women, and thus, has been used as an initiation into the study of post-feminism and the contemporary media. Dunham’s attitudes and ideas shown in Girls has the same vigorous feminist movement resembling the rebelliousness …

Gynecologists, Bureaucrats, And Stoners: The Rise Of Women In Television Comedies And Critiquing The Postfeminist Perspective, Victoria Montecillo

Scripps Senior Theses

This thesis looks to explore the rise of women in television comedy and the accompanying implications of this phenomenon. Using a historical framework, this thesis looks at the progression of representations of women in television comedies beginning in the 1950s up to today. Considering factors such as the rise of social media, as well as online television streaming services such as Hulu and Netflix as more legitimate avenues to distribute content, this thesis traces women’s place within television comedy, and argues that shows such as Parks and Recreation, The Mindy Project, and Broad City serve as examples of the progress …

Iconoclastic Fervor : Sally Hazelet Drummond, Abstract Expressionism And Curatorial Practice., Hillary Sullivan

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Sally Hazelet Drummond is an iconoclastic artist situated within the revolutionary movement of Abstract Expressionism. Drummond is the first female to graduate from the Hite Art Institute, earning a master’s in painting in 1952. During her study at the University of Louisville she explored Abstract Expressionism. In 1953 Drummond joined the Tanager Gallery, one of the Tenth Street artists’ co-ops. In the midst of Willem De Kooning, Ad Reinhardt and Mark Rothko, Drummond refined her work into a simplified, contemplative style that she continued to develop over the course of her life. Drummond described Abstract Expressionism as a kind of …

Tammy Rae Carland's Queer Riot Grrrl Zine"I ( Heart ) Amy Carter": A World Of Public Intimacy, Annah-Marie Rostowsky

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis analyzes Tammy Rae Carland's queer Riot Grrrl zine I (heart) Amy Carter as a counterpublic sphere engendered by acts of public intimacy that make visible the intersectional complexities of gender, sexuality, class, and race that insidious traumas continually work to conceal. It looks to Ann Cvetkovich's inquiries into the positive aspects of public cultures in the book An Archive of Feelings: Trauma, Sexuality, and Lesbian Public Cultures (2006) as well as Mimi Thi Nguyen's investigation of the Riot Grrrl race crisis in the article "Riot Grrrl, Race, and Revival" (2012) as frameworks to critique Carland's visual and textual …