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What An Interesting Video To Put On The Internet (An Amusing Economic Indicator), Dahlia S. Bloomstone Dec 2022

What An Interesting Video To Put On The Internet (An Amusing Economic Indicator), Dahlia S. Bloomstone

Theses and Dissertations

My exhibition reconciles representations of domesticity, labor, and morality through the lens of sex-work (SW). It consists of video work, a video game, and free-to-take objects, where donation, the strip club, and the fish tank converge. My work concludes that SW is a timeless construct that will always exist even after reimagining multiple worlds.


"This Is The Way": Gender Representation In Disney's The Mandalorian, Brooke Solorio Dec 2022

"This Is The Way": Gender Representation In Disney's The Mandalorian, Brooke Solorio

Theses and Dissertations

When Disney released The Mandalorian, it quickly became the top show on its highly popular streaming platform. As with all media wielding this level of exposure, it is important to closely examine its content for depictions of peoples including females. In accordance with Sandra Bem's gender schema theory, the implicit messaging in this series can influence the formation of people's mental shortcuts about what it means to be female. This study employs content analysis to illuminate the portrayal of physical and non-physical attributes of the women present in the two seasons existing at the time of this study. Results reveal …


A Hug For Humanity: Metamodernism And Masculinity On Television In Ted Lasso, Kennedy Lesley Koford Dec 2022

A Hug For Humanity: Metamodernism And Masculinity On Television In Ted Lasso, Kennedy Lesley Koford

Theses and Dissertations

The Apple TV+ sports comedy Ted Lasso has been a hit among fans, who flock to the show and its positive messages. The show offers a refreshing tone, one that promotes positivity and optimism even when faced with the reality of a cynical world. By using the analytical perspective of metamodernism to understand its popularity, scholars and fans alike can gain a deeper understanding of core message of the show, which mimics the oscillation between the cynical and the sincere. Fundamental scholars in the emerging study of metamodernism, such as Robin Van Den Akker, Timotheus Vermeulen, and Alison Gibbons will …


Return, Leilani Bascom Dec 2022

Return, Leilani Bascom

Theses and Dissertations

Return is a video-based installation which includes sound, performance, and textile elements. Leilani Bascom is the lone actor navigating the water and where the water meets the land in this personal project exploring concepts of the life cycle from birth to death and rebirth. Life's paradox of struggle and release unfolds with imagery of battling through waves to swim deep underwater, fighting a river current and then surrendering to the flow, and carving a hole in the sand to climb into and be held. Viewers are immersed in the movement and sounds of water to witness the power and meaning …


Audience And Mockingbird: A Narrator's Guide, Charisse Baxter Dec 2022

Audience And Mockingbird: A Narrator's Guide, Charisse Baxter

Theses and Dissertations

While adaptation research possesses longstanding applications and ample material for study, seldom has a data set proven to be as iconic and culturally relevant as the various iterations of To Kill a Mockingbird. Novel to film to stage play, and then nearly 60 years later to a second stage play, the story has resonated with audiences in a range of performative variations. A defining characteristic of Harper Lee's tale is her use of a narrator; this characteristic provides an effective entry-point in examining the two stage adaptations by way of their interpretation of the narrator. A study of the respective …


Examining The Effects Of Eating Behaviors On Mental Health And Internalization Of Weight-Based Messaging, Avery E. Bollinger Aug 2022

Examining The Effects Of Eating Behaviors On Mental Health And Internalization Of Weight-Based Messaging, Avery E. Bollinger

Theses and Dissertations

The current study sought to explore the effects of eating behaviors on mental health and the internalization of attitudes toward one's appearance. This was performed through a survey distributed through a global online market research firm, Dynata, and gathered 495 eligible participants. Of those, 78 represented the plant-based group, and 417 represented the non-plant-based group. Each completed the survey containing sections with the Mizes Anorectic Cognitions Scale (MACS) to assess if they were at low or high risk for having/developing an eating disorder, a section determining if participants were plant-based (defined as a regimen that encourages whole, plant-based foods and …


Exploring Perceptions Of New Media Among The Lakota Nation, Isabelle C. Kramer Aug 2022

Exploring Perceptions Of New Media Among The Lakota Nation, Isabelle C. Kramer

Theses and Dissertations

Since its inception, the worldwide web has fundamentally altered our understanding of communications. With the rapid adoption of new media around the globe, individuals are increasingly able to communicate with people on the other side of the planet in real-time--traditional boundaries like time and space are no longer relevant barriers to intercultural communication. As such, scholars are scrambling to recognize and understand the broader implications of social media, videoconferencing, blogging, etc on more traditional definitions of culture. Additionally, researchers are beginning to study the ways in which minority cultures are utilizing new media, and the way that new media impacts …


Ambiguity Of Vision: Reimagining The Hypervisible Void, Kiwha Lee Blocman May 2022

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 …


Between The Garden And The Gardener, Sara Lynne Lindsay May 2022

Between The Garden And The Gardener, Sara Lynne Lindsay

Theses and Dissertations

My work uses plant material and soil as a record of personal, cultural, and ecological history. History is not only held in the buildings and monuments, but in the soil itself. I gather this soil and foliage from both cultivated and uncultivated locations for my artwork. Using traditional domestic techniques of drying and canning, I preserve the materials that I have gathered. These will then be sewn together, cooked, and encrusted into objects. Despite my labor of preserving, these organic art supplies are transient. When made into works of art, they can be viewed in their vulnerable state, fighting against …


New Animals, Alina Iakirevitch May 2022

New Animals, Alina Iakirevitch

Theses and Dissertations

To transfer the rhythms of the body into the earth, in Lippard’s language, one has to engage in a non verbal, illogical action. Art is the sphere of this action. Staying engaged with the unpredictable in us, the random, the primal, is the core of art making and encountering art.


Break Time, Quinlan Maggio May 2022

Break Time, Quinlan Maggio

Theses and Dissertations

In this graduate thesis artist Quinlan Maggio describes their two-part art project in which they create site-specific private/public spaces and encounters within a larger public, specifically, that of the Hunter MFA community and its art-viewing audience.


Scene By Scene, Katita Miller May 2022

Scene By Scene, Katita Miller

Theses and Dissertations

Katita Miller’s paintings and drawings depict quotidian scenes through the filter of an overactive mind. Populated by spectral figures and swirling portals, her interiors and landscapes fluctuate between the mundane and the fantastical. This paper explores the parallels between painting and theater and the context and process behind five paintings.


A Parar Para Avanzar: To Stop/To Stand/To Strike To Advance, Christina N. Barrera May 2022

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.


The Screen To Desire, Joseph Parra May 2022

The Screen To Desire, Joseph Parra

Theses and Dissertations

Joseph Parra reflects on our often embellished online personas and their effect on our desires. Through luscious 3-dimensional painting Parra translates the seductive desire of the hypermasculine male-presenting figure through glorification and criticality. The tactile painting also acts as a rebellion to accurately represent “real” life on the digital screen.


Buzz Buzz, Sarah Heinemann May 2022

Buzz Buzz, Sarah Heinemann

Theses and Dissertations

Taking the form of a series of notes and notations, this document serves as an account of color in my painting practice as it intersects through personal memory, research, and my studio and professional practices.


Head, Shoulders, Knees, And Toes, Pol Morton May 2022

Head, Shoulders, Knees, And Toes, Pol Morton

Theses and Dissertations

My work explores ideas of transness, chronic illness, and injury. Through assemblage and repetition, my larger-than-life paintings address the dissociation and fragility of a body that is unmapped by society. These autobiographical works attempt to locate the self when it is trapped, whether in a bed, in the home, or within the body itself.


Rethinking Watteau In The Context Of Early Eighteenth-Century Bourgeois Culture, Bronwyn C. Roe May 2022

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 …


Slaying The Dragon: Dances Created During The Time Of The Pandemic, Regina Nejman May 2022

Slaying The Dragon: Dances Created During The Time Of The Pandemic, Regina Nejman

Theses and Dissertations

Regina Nejman’s paper details a dance artist’s negotiation of art-making in a global pandemic. It focuses on her improvisational dance films that were combined with live performance and animation in a gallery-like viewing environment. She situates herself among the many screendances and digital archives shared during NYC’s lockdown.


Bodyverse, Colin B. Stilwell May 2022

Bodyverse, Colin B. Stilwell

Theses and Dissertations

This paper supports the MFA dance thesis film BodyVerse. Exploring the intertwining relationship of body systems with the natural world, it brings somatic principles such as Body Mind Centering and dance improvisation together with film legacies and digital platforms.


Driftbone, Noémie Jennifer Bonnet May 2022

Driftbone, Noémie Jennifer Bonnet

Theses and Dissertations

My multidisciplinary work is premised on the idea that the contemplation of mortality can foster life-affirming redirections beyond the self. My explorations include ethereal abstract paintings, sculptural works hybridizing human and nonhuman forms, and meditative sound pieces. The works seek to inspire a heightened awareness of corporeal and ecological dependency.


“Paint What You Hate”: Philip Guston’S Hooded Figures And The Postponement Of The Exhibition Philip Guston Now, Thomas Baldwin May 2022

“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.


Meet And Run, Gia M. Binner May 2022

Meet And Run, Gia M. Binner

Theses and Dissertations

A defense for Gia Binner’s MFA Thesis, Meet and Run, argues that accessible art, known in this paper as commercial dance, is a meaningful vehicle for social change and that it has the ability to dismantle the outdated, European concert dance dominance by modeling the interdependency of both worlds.


Mindfulness And Observational Drawing, Corinne Christopherson Sonderegger Apr 2022

Mindfulness And Observational Drawing, Corinne Christopherson Sonderegger

Theses and Dissertations

Observational drawing has many benefits, yet it can be a difficult and frustrating curriculum for students and teachers alike. As I was teaching elementary and college art classes simultaneously, I noticed a significant discrepancy between my younger and older students. Students in my elementary art classes loved to draw and often expressed how excited they were to make art. However, students in my college art classes were more hesitant and self-conscious about drawing and did not believe they could progress artistically. Many of these students had abandoned drawing in elementary or middle school. This pattern evokes the U curve of …


Mutants, Sentinels, And Cerebro: Messages About Technology And Society In Science Fiction Films, Paige Marie Lee Apr 2022

Mutants, Sentinels, And Cerebro: Messages About Technology And Society In Science Fiction Films, Paige Marie Lee

Theses and Dissertations

Technology plays a significant role in society and in entertainment. People hold an ambivalent attitude about technology that is often illustrated in science fiction films. Much like myth telling stories to teach a lesson, science fiction films caution viewers of the effects of powerful technology usage in culture today. This thesis examines X-Men to show how relevant principles found in myth continue to be relevant to media consumption. Using media ecology to inform the reader about the technological environment (Mumford, 1944), this analysis of technology portrayed in X-Men shows the implications real world technology, such as radiation, weapons, and artificial …


Is This A Line? Visual Literacy, Visual Inquiry, And Visual Communication In The Elementary School Years, Connie J. Broadbent Apr 2022

Is This A Line? Visual Literacy, Visual Inquiry, And Visual Communication In The Elementary School Years, Connie J. Broadbent

Theses and Dissertations

As a mother and public elementary school art teacher, I recognize the impact images have in the lives of children. Our culture is image rich and often image saturated. I believe I can do more to prepare my students to become discerning consumers and creators of images. Art teachers are uniquely qualified to teach visual literacy and visual inquiry. If grade school children can be taught to think more deeply and critically about their visual world, they will be better prepared for responding to it in a healthy, empowering way. This research describes an elementary school curriculum based on teaching …


Performing Italian Identity: Through The Plays Gemini And A View From The Bridge, Angela Dicarolo Moser Apr 2022

Performing Italian Identity: Through The Plays Gemini And A View From The Bridge, Angela Dicarolo Moser

Theses and Dissertations

"Italian Identity"is the set of values and beliefs performed daily, that are markers of what it is to be "Italian,"whether those carrying those beliefs live in Italy or not. The latter point became evident in the United States following the vast wave of Italian immigration during the late-19th and early-20th centuries. Italian identity has been greatly influenced by Catholicism and its centering of values and beliefs on the family, heavily defined Italian life in America. One principal mode for constructing and disseminating these values and beliefs among Italian Americans was through the theatre. This thesis provides a close reading of …


Always Running At Sunset, Amelia O'Neill Apr 2022

Always Running At Sunset, Amelia O'Neill

Theses and Dissertations

My thesis show includes paintings that depict scenes of the trails that my dog and I frequent in Utah. These paintings are a response to experiences I have in nature and explore my relationship with my dog and the surrounding flora and fauna along the local trails. The paintings include images of rocks, sticks, dirt, trails, dogs, clouds, and dried sunflowers in the wind. In addition to realistic depictions of nature, my paintings reflect on the psychological and emotional state of being in nature. The title of the show is Always Running at Sunset, which is meant to be taken …


The Intersection Of Fashion And Politics: A Semiotic Analysis Of Vogue Magazine Covers Surrounding Election Seasons, Megan M. Vincent Apr 2022

The Intersection Of Fashion And Politics: A Semiotic Analysis Of Vogue Magazine Covers Surrounding Election Seasons, Megan M. Vincent

Theses and Dissertations

This study explores the political messages framed within the cover of Vogue magazines by reviewing the published issues that surround election season. By focusing on the intersection of politics and fashion through the visual representation provided by a prestigious, globally known fashion magazine, the research will observe the potential increase and growth of political involvement within influence of the fashion industry. This study will begin with the October, November, and December covers from the 2016 and 2020 presidential election. These will be accompanied by the January, February, and March covers of the following years. Guided by semiotic analysis and visual …


Narrative Archetypes And Paratextuality: Analysis Of Three Films By Christopher Nolan, Alycia Burnett Mar 2022

Narrative Archetypes And Paratextuality: Analysis Of Three Films By Christopher Nolan, Alycia Burnett

Theses and Dissertations

Nonlinear films display unconventional narratives that leave ambiguous endings that create rewatchability, making audiences want to rewatch and review the films. These films also create conversation on social media outlets and infiltrate discussion on popular culture. This rhetorical analysis examines narrative structure, narrative archetypes, and paratextuality of three nonlinear Christopher Nolan films: Inception, Interstellar, and Tenet. By examining how these different forms of narrative display the moral messaging and structure within each film, this analysis provides context in how nonlinear narratives promote rewatchability and create continuous paratexts. Through Nolan's films, nonlinear film styles create more than rewatchability as Nolan specifically …


An Eye To The Sky: Describing Characteristics Of Weather App Users Through Q Method, Danielle Wardinsky Hallows Mar 2022

An Eye To The Sky: Describing Characteristics Of Weather App Users Through Q Method, Danielle Wardinsky Hallows

Theses and Dissertations

The world revolves around weather information - whether the need is to understand, prepare for, or navigate weather. Although traditional television viewership of weather forecasts are on the decline, mobile weather applications are becoming the new media medium for weather information. In fact, the total number of app downloads in the weather market reached 69.5 million at the end of 2021 (Statista, 2021). As a result, understanding the characteristics of weather app users and what those users are looking for is pertinent to research regarding weather communication. While weather is an ongoing phenomenon sought to be understood by people for …