Digital Commons Network^™

Devil In The Details: Witchcraft In Reformation England, Angela A. Luna

Theses and Dissertations

An analysis of the English Reformation’s impact on perceptions of witches and the transformation of witchcraft as a crime prosecutable in courts of law. It demonstrates English diabolism characterized by the use of animal familiars, body markings, and pacts with the Devil, which helped to shape the English witch trials.

Dulce Sueños De Tierra, Sweet Dreams Of Earth, Jordany Genao

Theses and Dissertations

Jordany's paper congregates their archival research into an art practice that examines the decolonial impulse to excavate the self and produce autonomy. Using ceramics to reference and re-animate Taino ritual objects found in museums, resulting in alternative museology, their work seeks to honor Caribbean ancestors by subverting colonial history.

The Language Of Legal Violence: The State’S Role In Silencing Capitalist Dissent, 1877-1915, Jaclene Paolucci

Theses and Dissertations

From the 1870s to the eve of World War I, the United States government enacted a violent and repressive campaign against labor activists and political radicals to protect capitalist interests. The growing alliance between employers and the government threatened American democratic traditions and turned those who challenged the capitalist system into potential enemies of the state.

Children And The Cold War: Race & Hypocrisy Amid Fear Of Nuclear War, Richard D. Mctaggart Jr.

Theses and Dissertations

During the Cold War, American propaganda centered the wellbeing of the child in its messaging warning of atomic attack at the hands of the Soviet Union. However, despite American claims that all children were valued by the United States, this was proven untrue by its unequal treatment of Black children.

Developing Mexico: History, Architecture, Photography, And Esther Born’S The New Architecture In Mexico, Tyler Considine

Theses and Dissertations

Esther Born’s The New Architecture in Mexico (1937) presents the first survey of Mexican modern architecture and documents early works by Luis Barragán, Juan O’Gorman, among other Mexican modernists. This thesis examines Born’s architectural photography alongside that of Lola Álvarez Bravo, Guillermo Kahlo, and other photographers and within discourses of modernity, history, and representation.

“This Little Patch Of Earth Is Inexhaustible”: Ernst Ludwig Kirchner And The Outdoors Movements, Erica Evans

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis focuses on the influence of reform movements and hiking and mountaineering organizations on the life and work of Ernst Ludwig Kirchner. I explore how principles of these outdoors movements, including a healthy mind/body connection and rustic lifestyle, inform Kirchner’s works created while living in Davos, Switzerland.

Pioneers Of Evacuation, Pioneers Of Resettlement: The Photographic Archive Of The Japanese American Incarceration And The Settler Colonial Imaginary, Christina Hobbs

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis reexamines the photographic archive of the Japanese American incarceration during World War II produced by the US government, arguing that these images “restage” the evacuation, incarceration, and resettlement periods through a settler colonial “pioneer” mythology, thereby obscuring the precarity of Japanese Americans' racial positionality between “settler” and “native.”

Ambiguity Of Vision: Reimagining The Hypervisible Void, Kiwha Lee Blocman

Theses and Dissertations

Asking questions about what Painting is in the 21st century and the dominant narratives it can challenge, my paintings complicate the viewer’s reading of pictorial hierarchy and the projection of human relations in the world. I de-hierarchize and decentralize the compositional components that make up a painting by using patterns to create spatial depth, not European perspectival conventions. In dialogue with modernists such as Matisse who drew from the visual vocabulary of “The Orient”, my central forms derived from architecture and ornamental fragments possess a body-like presence. Further, I reinvent ancient Asian printmaking processes with oil paint. Observing the tenets …

At Home Among Strangers, Aleksandra Gorbacheva

Theses and Dissertations

At Home Among Strangers is a character-driven documentary that explores the price of freedom for a gay person in a society that lacks freedom and civil rights. It follows an asylum seeker from Russia, Sasha Smirnov, during a crucial moment of his life: starting over in New York City at 40 as a journalist without English language skills. The film reflects on the choices one makes and the consequences of staying true to oneself.

A Parar Para Avanzar: To Stop/To Stand/To Strike To Advance, Christina N. Barrera

Theses and Dissertations

This paper presents the first fragments of a political framework outlining how I situate my work, which lives between “craft” and “art” models of making and between colonized and colonizing traditions. My writing proposes ways of making and being informed by practices, strategies, and organizing that work towards greater autonomy and liberation under these conditions.

​​​​From Repression To Appropriation: Soviet Religious Policy And Reform, 1917-1943, Andriy Dyachenko

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis analyses the dynamics of religious reform in the USSR from 1917 to 1943. It argues that the early Bolshevik policy of persecution was increasingly substituted by state co-optation. This dynamic was shaped primarily by Stalinist concerns with state security and problems of ideology.

Rethinking Watteau In The Context Of Early Eighteenth-Century Bourgeois Culture, Bronwyn C. Roe

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis reexamines the work of Antoine Watteau through a social-art historical lens. Traditionally, Watteau's fêtes galantes have been closely aligned to the culture of the French nobility. However, a closer look into the artist's background, training, social milieu, and the class identity of his primary buyers reveals an alternative class alignment, inviting new interpretations for Watteau's most elusive work. This thesis challenges the close association between Watteau and the French nobility and aims to broaden the socio-visual landscape from which Watteau was drawing, namely that of a burgeoning bourgeois consumer culture. In particular, the culture of emulation, with its …

Original Intent: Brown Vs. Board Of Education, White Backlash, & The Enduring Power Of De Facto Segregation, Aaron Brand

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines the factors and outcomes surrounding Brown v. Board of Education of 1954. The events that predated it and the resistance that followed determined the chain of consequences from this perceived victory over racial bias. The calculated and persistent backlash against integration obscured Brown’s intent of educational opportunity.

From Half-Free To Property: The Evolution Of Slavery In Dutch New Netherland And English New York, 1621-1712, Sarah E. Hendrickson

Theses and Dissertations

Between 1621 and 1712, Dutch and English colonists imported African slaves to present-day New York to help create a profitable colony. This thesis explores why the Dutch created a society with slavery and how the English transformed New York into a slave society during this period.

The Inconspicuous Lives Of Dr. Susan Smith Mckinney Steward And Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell, Alexandra W. Bogdanovich

Theses and Dissertations

This paper examines trailblazing American female doctors of the nineteenth century in New York. Through the lives of Dr. Susan Smith Mckinney Steward, who is black, and Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell, who is white, this analysis tries to understand what motivated these women and how they succeeded in spite of the confines of women’s prescriptive role in nineteenth-century America.

“Matrimonio”: Italian Brides, Grooms And Birthplaces At Our Lady Of Pompei In Greenwich Village, 1924-1933, Brendan O'Hagen

Theses and Dissertations

This study analyzes marriage patterns at Our Lady of Pompei (OLP), an Italian Catholic parish in New York City, during the 1920s and 1930s. It investigates whether intermarriage increased at OLP, but also links changes in marital practices to forces including government policies and demographic changes in the local community.

Power Dressing: Feather Fans And The Visual Language Of Female Portraiture, Charlotte Svetkey

Theses and Dissertations

Feather fans in sixteenth-century portraiture not only allowed the female sitter to express her own claims to wealth, status, and power but also acted as a visual indicator of changes that were occurring on the global stage. Both fans and sitters will be evaluated through ideas of gender and class.

Yankee Go Home: Roci In Latin America, Vitoria Hadba

Theses and Dissertations

In 1984, at an event hosted by the United Nations, American artist Robert Rauschenberg announced his most ambitious and controversial project to date: the Rauschenberg Overseas Culture Interchange—or ROCI. Blending primary source documents with social art history, I retrace the artist’s steps—and missteps—during the first leg of his tour through Mexico, Chile, and Venezuela. This thesis investigates the convoluted political implications of ROCI in Latin America during the transitional period in which binary Cold War politics were ebbing amidst the rise of a global free-market economy.

An Infinite Horizon: Space, Time, & Mind In The American Imaginary From Thomas Cole To Agnes Pelton, 1825-1961, Jason Friedman

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines how artists, intellectuals, spiritual seekers, and industrialists represented the American horizon across the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The purpose of this inquiry is to show how art transmuted ideological and religious beliefs across time and to demonstrate the interdependence of esoteric self-perceptions and American hegemonic power.

Kinstitution: A Topia Between Archive And Proposal, Christopher Lineberry

Theses and Dissertations

Situating Topher Lineberry's work, this paper offers a primer on institutional critique, preliminary developments of "kinstitutional critique," and the cultivation of family-derived art history through the work of the artist's grandmother, Helen Lineberry. Feeding into a working understanding of family-and-kin-as-institution, the paper ultimately locates Topher Lineberry's work between relations to place, historical archives, and speculative proposals.

Eagle Eye Vs. Gear Jammer, Jessica Danielle Ellis

Theses and Dissertations

Where similarities in class struggle have historically operated as a unifying force globally, the American crafted mythos isolates the individual and dehumanizes those that do not fall within the parameters of the cowboy archetype. The national protagonist is turned into a class traitor and an extension of government power.

Morkovcha [Korean Carrot Salad], Lidiya A. Kan

Theses and Dissertations

Morkovcha, Korean Carrot Salad is a short documentary that tells a story of ethnic Koreans from Russia and the post-Soviet territories making their new home in New York City. The history of the diaspora is told through conversations with my mother, personal stories, fragmented memories, and my family photo archive. This very personal film is my attempt to revisit the 160-year history of the Russian Korean diaspora and to record and preserve our unique fusion of cultures in the melting pot that is the United States. Its purpose is to help to process and accept the tragic past of my …

Article 6.21, Tatiana Stolpovskaya

Theses and Dissertations

Article 6.21 is a short documentary film that aims to examine the state of censorship around queerness in Russia today and its effects on personal lives in the queer community.

Twenty years after Russia decriminalized homosexuality, on June 30th in 2013, President Vladimir Putin signed Article 6.21 "for the Purpose of Protecting Children from Information Advocating for a Denial of Traditional Family Values", also known as the "Gay Propaganda Law". Its broad and ambiguous wording allows the government significant leeway in deciding what kind of public queerness is punishable.

In 2020 Russia passed multiple constitutional amendments that affect many areas …

The National Interest And The Roots Of American-Saudi Diplomacy, Oliver B. Wiegel

Theses and Dissertations

This paper analyzes the beginnings of diplomacy between the United States and Saudi Arabia during the interwar years and World War II. It explores how national interest was decided upon, how oil companies affected American foreign policy, and the American government’s strategic interest in Saudi oil reserves.

Us, Abundantly: From Africa To The Americas, Karisma Jay

Theses and Dissertations

"Us, AbunDantly," a Live theatrical dance performance and film, delves into the African Diaspora and its influences. An artistic and academic project built upon the amplification of Black excellence and Black pride, this paper contextualizes a work within the oral histories and contemporary dance studies of a powerfully ancestral community.

Model Minorities: Asian Americans And The White-Black Racial Paradigm, Jason Tom

Theses and Dissertations

This paper examines the racial wedge driven by Whites between Blacks and Asian Americans during the Cold War on to the present. Model minorities is a term coined by whites in the 1960s to suppress Civil Rights protests and Black demands. By elevating a minority group through success stories, whites constructed a means to suppress Black people’s organizing for change against systemic racism and oppression.

Prohibition And Religion: William H. Anderson, The Anti-Saloon League, And The Rise And Fall Of A Protestant Evangelical Crusade Against Alcohol In New York, Lionel Benavidez

Theses and Dissertations

The Prohibition Era of the 1920s was a social and political condition created and designed by a nineteenth-century rural Christian Protestant crusade against alcohol. Evangelical Protestant activists took a very personal and spiritual approach to the issue of alcohol consumption and turned it into a far-reaching and long-lasting nationwide campaign aimed at changing American culture. The Prohibition Era which resulted was a brief noble experiment remembered more for its sensational news stories of organized crime, political corruption, and popular culture than for the religious crusade that produced this episode in American history. The untold story of Prohibition involves a social …

Pratiquer Ou Incarner La Vertu? L'Agentivité Des Femmes Chez Marie De France Et Christine De Pizan, Kathe Blydenburgh

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis studies the treatment of women in Medieval literature as active agents in their roles of upholding the virtues of the societies in which they live. This study focuses on works written by the female authors Marie de France and Christine de Pizan.

Time Machine Research And Approach, Tarek Bouraque

Theses and Dissertations

Time Machine is a hybrid documentary that explores the logics of enslavement, colonialism, eurocentrism and their interconnectedness in our globalized world. Mustapha Azemmouri, born in 1502, undertakes a journey to the 21st century to recount his own story of enslavement and exploration, and reflects on a collective puzzle of 500 years of hidden history.

Divorce As Liberation: Marital Expectations Among The Working-Class In The 1950s, Kristin M. Catrone

Theses and Dissertations

Divorce was a remedy employed by working-class Americans in the 1950s when their marital expectations went unmet. Spouses left emotionally, physically, or sexually abusive marriages. Expectations for marriage also centered around assumptions based on gender. Working-class women showed how divorce could be used as a tool of liberation and empowerment.