Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Photography, Architecture, And Environment: An Architectural Analysis Of Edward Ruscha’S 26 Gasoline Stations, Rebecca Tonguis

Belmont University Research Symposium (BURS)

This presentation explores Edward Ruscha’s photobook 26 Gasoline Stations through an architectural lens. Specifically, it treats Ruscha’s work as historic evidence of how consumption, industry, and commodity have infiltrated all kinds of environmental contexts through architectural manifestations. Known for being the first artist’s book, 26 Gasoline Stations ambiguously exists as both fine art and documentation of everyday conditions, with the overall graphic character highlighting its perceived focus on overarching narrative. Since gasoline stations are the primary subject of each of the 26 photographs, the subject of this work is arguably architecture, suggesting that the historic relationship between mass gas consumption—or …

“These Are Our Saints:” A Lourdes Shrine, The St. Coletta School For Exceptional Children, And The Catholic Remaking Of Cognitive Disability, Andrew Walker-Cornetta

Religion

This chapter appears from the book American Patroness: Marian Shrines and the Making of US Catholicism by Katherine Dugan and Karen E. Park, Editors.

"'These Are Our Saints:' A Lourdes Shrine, the St. Coletta School for Exceptional Children, and the Catholic Remaking of Cognitive Disability" focuses on a Lourdes shrine on the campus of what was once perhaps the most celebrated institution in the United States for persons with cognitive disabilities. It takes this site as a window onto mid-twentieth century Catholic efforts to re-imagine cognitive difference and highlights the importance of Marian devotional grammars to those efforts.