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The Other's Other: Negotiating "Normativity" In Contemporary Photography From The United States, Corey Dzenko

Art & Art History ETDs

Despite all of the recent attention paid to issues of identity in art history, mainstream ideals of normativity have yet to be fully analyzed and reclaimed as subject positions from which artistic examinations begin. As a symptom of larger culture, there often remains a lack of what sociologist Ruth Frankenberg refers to as cognizance' about the continuing role of normative ideals as they are assumed to be unmarked, or transcendent, positions. While all four of the case studies in this project visually challenge assumptions of normativity, the reception of the work and/or the artist's own descriptions negate some of the …