Digital Commons Network^™

The Quads, Elmer D. Guevara

Theses and Dissertations

My work attempts to reconcile my familial history. By reconstructing narratives, I am advancing a new sense of our family archive. My goal is to grant the viewer with autobiographical snippets delivered through the piecing and meshing of multiple scenarios and events that derive from family album photos and reimagining spaces.

With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility: Examining The Power And Privilege Of Escapism In Young Adult Literature And Its Culture, Stacey Watson

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis will explore the systematic biases embedded within this genre, highlighting the ongoing battle between tokenism and inclusive storytelling. Thesis will also emphasize the importance of this genre, its tight grasp on popular culture, and showcase positive representations introduced by new creators over the years.

“Paint What You Hate”: Philip Guston’S Hooded Figures And The Postponement Of The Exhibition Philip Guston Now, Thomas Baldwin

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis interrogates the postponement of the Philip Guston Now exhibition, examining the justification for the postponement, the actions taken by the National Gallery of Art, and the effects of the postponement. My research examines the museum’s choice to cite social justice as the main context for understanding Philip Guston.

Women And Dada: Reimagining Dada Through The Work Of Beatrice Wood And Sophie Taeuber-Arp, Violet E. Webster

Student Theses and Dissertations

This paper serves to investigate the relationship between the Dada art movement of the early twentieth century and the progression of the women’s liberation movement through the life and works of female Dada artists Sophie Taeuber-Arp and Beatrice Wood. My thesis combines the emergence of modernism and Dada’s utilization of new industrial materials with the reappropriation of material significance seen in Taeuber-Arp’s multi-media work. The first section “Dada Overview” contextualizes both Dada and the post-Victorian evolution of the early twentieth century. In “Beatrice Wood’s Expansion of the Subject” I show how Wood’s work centered around the subconscious narrative of women …

Hudson Yards: Hybrid Capital's New Home, Massimo D. Scoditti

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis focuses on the material and metaphysical aspects of the Hudson Yards, the largest private development in US History. With its roots in the administration of Michael Bloomberg, the site is representative of neoliberal ideology. It is also one in which cultural production is central. This is in terms of the rationalization and mythos of the building of the space itself and the dreamworlds created to obscure the mechanisms of extraction and accumulation that make such a complex possible. The Hudson Yards is particularly interesting because, as Cindi Katz might suggest, topography lines connect it to transnational capital. And …

Unraveling The Geographies Of The U.S. Public Education System: An Analysis Of Scale, Segregation, And Hegemony, Olivia Ildefonso

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Other than one or two studies that focus on specific state-wide systems of public education, there has been no accounting for how the U.S. public education system came about in relation to space and scale. My dissertation research seeks to fill in this gap. Through focusing on the development of public education in the North and the South, I provide a foundation for understanding the grounded and contested processes of scale production that largely determined the U.S. public education system’s design and function.

In each of the seven chapters, I detail how fights over the structure and purpose of public …

Queer And Trans Prison Voices: A Podcast Archive On Prison Abolition, Josefine Ziebell

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This capstone project is located at the intersection of Critical Prison Studies, Gender Studies, Sound Studies, and American Studies. It highlights the importance of sonic modes of anti-carceral resistance by featuring the recorded voices of incarcerated people through the creation of a sonic archive of prison writings. By integrating that sonic archive into the podcast medium, this project functions as a digital archive for incarcerated voices, consisting of two tracks: a collection of short-spoken readings by queer and transgender incarcerated authors, and podcast-style interviews with activist scholars, organizations, and sound artists working towards prison abolition. In this paper, I establish …

Committed To The Fragment: Feminist Literature And The Promise Of Wellness, Lynne Beckenstein

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

“I have never been able to blind myself” to the cruelty of a world that “destroys its own young in passing…out of not noticing or caring about the destruction,” Audre Lorde tells us in her 1980 “mythobiography” Zami: A New Spelling of My Name. This quality, Lorde says, “according to one popular definition of mental health, makes me mentally unhealthy.” In rejecting psychological self-possession as a sign of wellness, this passage also rejects it as one of sovereignty’s conditions. At the time of Lorde’s writing, this version of sovereignty already dominated the landscape of therapeutic culture in the United States, …

Past-Futures Of Harlem: Black Urban Space At The Limits Of Spatial Justice, Dane C. Ruffin

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The racial capitalist development of the U.S. metropolitan landscape has been shaped by the involuntary displacement and dispersal of Black communities. From the dispossession of the Half-Free Negro Lots around the Fresh Collect pond in the seventeenth century to the clearing of Seneca Village to build Central Park in the nineteenth century to the turn of the twentieth-century police-facilitated “race riot” in the Tenderloin district of Manhattan, which fueled the move to Harlem, the four-hundred year history of Black Manhattan alone provides substantial evidence of this and is in no way unique in this regard. Incomplete, yet ongoing, is what …

Cherokee Abstract Artist Leon Polk Smith: A Convergence Of Traditions, Danielle Montanino

Dissertations and Theses

This paper analyzes how Leon Polk Smith's Indigenous roots and upbringing in Indian Country had a significant impact on his artistic practice in a time of discrimination and segregation in the United States. Through examination contextualizing his work within the history and political events of the Cherokee, Chickasaw, and Choctaw Nations it is revealed how Polk Smith developed a formal language that could navigate both worlds and be viewed through a pure abstraction lens or a lens embodying his Indigenous traditions. In addition to his Indigenous philosophies, Mesoamerican Inca Nation’s cultural motifs further ground Polk Smith’s Indigenous aesthetic, and avant-garde …

Further Toward Minor Literatures, Aaron Hammes

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Minor literature is literatures of the minoritarian, not simply that produced by (cultural, ethnic, racial, gender-expressive, sexual, ability, age) minorities. Further Toward Minor Literatures operates from this decisive distinction to trace the contours and potentialities of one minoritarian literature, the contemporary transgender novel in the US and Canada. This study is premised in part on putting the fiction itself on a plane with theoretical and critical sources, creating a dialogue that does not privilege one discourse over the other. Minor literature is self-theorizing, perhaps even authotheoretical, in its expressing and fulfilling the mobile orientations of its minoritarian communities. This study …

Afterlives Of Discovery: Speculative Geographies In The Colombian Political Landscape, Heidi A. Rhodes

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation considers how the temporal remains of the Age of Discovery and its doctrine persist in a racial-geographical ranking of human and non-human, terrestrial and planetary life and worth. Across this work, I interpret a series of historical moments and their objects of speculative geographic cultural production: a state mapping program, a painting, a biomedical project, a de-monumenting protest action. As repositories of codified belief and repertoires of Discovery’s political and affective modes of racialized domination, I read these materials from the Colombian archives of coloniality and liberalism to illuminate their implications for Colombia’s national becoming as a liberal …

Aloof: Black Divas Of Refusal, Kwame K. Ocran

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

“Aloof: Black Divas of Refusal” studies performers Lena Horne and Billie Holiday as the progenitors of a new tradition of authentic representation of Black female interiority in the entertainment arts. As interiority denotes the wide-ranging amalgamation of human expression, these divas equipped themselves with a sense of refusal and aloofness to strategically posture themselves in conditions that suited their personal predilections best and considered their status as representatives of the Black community. Lena Horne’s evolution as an aloof diva successfully saw the singer and actress escape classist thought of racial uplift to the full embracing of the totality of Black …

"Never Forget": Embodied Absence And Extended Relations Of Care After 9/11, Sophie L. Riemenschneider

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation is a reflection on how loss was articulated in the wake of 9/11. The terror attacks engendered a memorial style that sought to give shape to grief, acknowledging it without filling it in or erasing it. This new style, which I term embodied absence, exists across a range of mediums, from literature to architecture. It is such a potent memorial form because it also captures the traumatic process, which is prolonged, layered, and potentially open-ended. However, despite their ability to mirror the nature of trauma, instances of embodied absence never verbalize the attacks’ root trauma—the disconnect between our …

Suicidality As A Discourse Of Safety In The Queer Youth Movement, Robert M. Cleary

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In November 1991, a group of queer teenagers gathered to rally at the Massachusetts State House in Boston. Two years later, the state passed the first law in the nation adding sexual orientation to the list of protected classes in the state's schools. The November rally was the first public expression of what became the safe schools movement, which went on over the following decade to transform the landscape in public education for LGBTQ students. A notable feature of the rally was the staging by the youth of a mass performative act of queer suicide. This paper uses Foucauldian concepts …

The U.S.–Mexican War: Visualizing Contested Spaces From Parlor To Battlefield, Erika Pazian

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The U.S.-Mexican War[1] (1846-1848) was a watershed event that transformed the North American continent politically, socially, and ideologically. With the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848, Mexico lost approximately half of its national territory in the north, and the United States acquired the modern states of California, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah, and portions of Colorado and Wyoming. Both nations were plagued by internal conflicts after the war, and each was plunged into civil war within fifteen years of its conclusion.

During this time of turmoil, Mexican and U.S. artists created and recreated myriad images …

Sacred Music In Colonial Era Hispaniola: The Evangelization Of The Taino People, Tito J. Gutierrez

Student Theses

During the 15th-18th centuries, the major European religious orders; the Franciscans, Dominicans, Jesuits, and Jeronymites, journeyed to the newly colonized American territories in an attempt to convert the multitudes of natives peoples living there. Along with prayer books, crucifixes, and religious images, these missionaries brought sacred European music to American shores in an attempt to attract the native people to the Catholic faith.The use of music as a tool for conversion of native people in places such as Mexico, South America, California, and the South West United States, have been well researched and documented. However, the research of the spiritual …

Fantasies Of Representation: Methods Of Feminist Literary Analysis, Alexandra Johnson

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The push for diversity in media and literature has resulted in an increase in representation, at least on the surface. While the range of representation may have broadened in terms of subject identity – gender, sexuality, race, ability, etc. – the way this diversity has occurred has not necessarily encouraged ethical or allied development. The aim of my thesis is to develop and deploy five methods of feminist critique and analysis of representation in popular media. I begin by laying out the five methodologies, in a manner that allows for the use of these methods on other examples. Then, I …

Inevitable Associations: Art, Institution, And Cultural Intersection In Los Angeles, 1973–1988, Liz Hirsch

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Inevitable Associations: Art, Institution, and Cultural Intersection in Los Angeles, 1973-1988 considers alternative institutions and cultural intersections in bicentennial-era Los Angeles. I look at the spatial, social, and artistic convergence of Los Angeles artists rarely seen as allied, through close examination of alternative cultural infrastructure that came out of a federal jobs program called the Comprehensive Employment and Training Act (CETA) and cohered around a building located at 240 South Broadway in downtown. I use the model of association—alliance through shared purpose—to demonstrate moments of convergence and interconnection. Through an analysis of the formation of Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (LACE), …

Skin Worlds: Black And Indigenous Science Fiction Theorizing Since The 1970s, Lou Cornum

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation unfolds along two trajectories, the first following from an ascendant interest in minoritarian traditions in speculative and science fiction and the second following the reiterative conversations across Black and Indigenous Studies. Science fiction theorizing is introduced as a frame for thinking these two trajectories together, with science fiction texts by authors Nalo Hopkinson, Octavia Butler, Gerald Vizenor, Leslie Marmon Silko and Samuel Delany providing a paraliterary mode of imagining the planetary from which to understand the interconnected processes of settler colonialism and trans-Atlantic slavery. Science Fiction theorizing across these texts disrupts notions of linear progressive time, human/alien boundaries, …

Writing Not Writing: Transdisciplinary Poetics, Institutional Critique, Miriam L. Atkin

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation is an exploration of transdisciplinary creative practice as a means of institutional critique. The artists I have chosen as my primary focus—Robert Kocik, Eleni Stecopoulos, Zora Neale Hurston, Jimmie Durham, Leslie Scalapino and Lyn Hejinian—employ multiple mediums and fields of discourse to address the presumptions and exclusions that are structurally integral to the institutions that house them. They enact “architextural” interventions through their use of forms that move between the page and three dimensional space, incorporating architecture, sculpture, drawing, painting, film, performance, poetry and prose. My work aims at a renewed understanding of critique as such, and therefore—though …

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.

Some (Im)Material Girls, Living In (Im)Material Worlds, With Seeds, Stars, And Shit, Matthew Weiderspon

Theses and Dissertations

This writing situates material and gestural vocabularies cultivated in my artwork in relation to my lived experience; primarily my rural upbringing in Colorado. Scattered floor dispersals, calling sounds, and bodily movements desire reconsiderations of hope in precarity through a disorientation of place, association, scale, and language.

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.

Silences Of New York History: Legacies Of The New York Slave Revolt Of 1712, Jelissa N. Caldwell

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Silences of New York History is an interactive website project dedicated to the study and uplifting of little-known historical narratives of Black history weaved within the main narrative of New York City history. It is designed to be an accessible platform of primary and secondary sources for 4^th-12^th grade students wanting a supplementary archive of information and histories that may not be directly taught in public school education. This project focuses on the New York Slave Revolt of 1712 because it is the first recorded Black, enslaved uprising in the city’s history. By focusing on this early …

Dancing Through Time: A Biographical Look On The Evolution Of Tap Dance, Jaimie Cranford

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

A uniquely American art form, tap dance has often been misrepresented and under-appreciated when positioned alongside other dance forms. This is largely due to the form’s racialized history, which builds upon contributions from African-American culture. Unlike other dance forms, which stem from white European traditions, tap dance evolved out of a necessity for cultural preservation as enslaved Africans adapted to life in America. As tap dance evolved, its association with slave culture led to it not being taken seriously; if anything, tap dancers were viewed simply as “entertainers” – certainly not as artists. Using a biographical lens, this work looks …

Art After Dark: Economies Of Performance, New York City 1978–1988, Meredith Mowder

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Art After Dark: Economies of Performance, New York City 1978-1988 examines the interwoven social and economic histories of New York City and performance in the late 1970s and 1980s. The dissertation traces the growth and visibility of performance art, moving from the recession of the 1970s and early years of public funding for the arts, to the downtown nightclub scene of the 1980s, the history of the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Next Wave Festival, and artistic experiments with television in the 1980s.Looking closely at the economic conditions under which performance occurred during the late 1970s and early 1980s, this dissertation …

Girl In Action: Junior Bazaar, 1945-1948, Rose D. Bishop

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis provides an overview of Junior Bazaar, a short-lived magazine for teenage girls published by Hearst between 1945-1948. Under the supervision of art director Lillian Bassman the magazine featured a variety of aesthetic devices — such as photomontage, asymmetrical layouts, the selective use of color, and playful placement of graphic forms — in efforts to distinguish itself from other publications on the market and construct a visual space specific to its teenage readers. Bassman’s unconventional stewardship of Junior Bazaar made room for an up-and-coming set of photographers, including Richard Avedon, Robert Frank, Diane Arbus, Louis Faurer, and other …

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.

The Dutch Atlantic And American Life: Beginnings Of America In Colonial New Netherland, Roy J. Geraci

Theses

The Dutch colony of New Netherland was one of the earliest attempts at a non-indigenous life on the east coast of North America. That colony, along with the United Provinces of the Netherlands and Dutch Atlantic as a whole, played crucial roles in the development of what would become the United States. This thesis project examines the significance New Netherland held in American history as well as explores topics which allow for new and inclusive narratives of that history to reach further exploration. Similarly to how individuals from various cultures, ethnicities, and backgrounds all come to exist amongst one another …