Arts and Humanities Commons^™

(End)Zones And (Out)Fields Of Production: Contemporary Conditions Of Labor And Artistic Critique, Stephanie G. Anderson

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

In a 2013 exhibition publication titled It’s the Political Economy, Stupid!, John Roberts made the observation that “Over the last ten years we have become witness to an extraordinary assimilation of art theory and practice into the categories of labor and production.” Whereas once art claimed for itself a critical capacity in relation to the larger system of capitalist domination by its status as a putatively ‘autonomous’ sphere of production from which it leveraged its difference and critique, today it is largely acknowledged that there is no longer any such ‘outside’ to be aspired to. If, in the recent …

The Habits Of Settlement: A Critical Phenomenology Of Settlerness, Deanna L. Aubert

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This thesis investigates the role of settlers in maintaining settlement in Canada. I problematize settler bodies to deliberate on their potential for performing decolonization. My discussion seeks to complicate theoretical approaches that position the onto-epistemological stance of the settler as their impediment to decolonizing action. Drawing from the fields of phenomenology and affect theory, I discuss habit formation in bodies. I use case studies that discuss settler-Indigenous land relations to ground these theories of habit. I look to Indigenous leaders, artists and scholars, who offer valuable insights into the habituations of settlement as an institutionalized arrangement and a mode of …

Undocumented Migration And Political Community In Susan Meiselas's Crossings Photographs, Sarah Bassnet

Visual Arts Publications

In 1989, Magnum photographer Susan Meiselas (b. 1948) photographed irregular border crossings in southern California. At the time, it was relatively easy for undocumented migrants from Central America and Mexico to cross between ports of entry, even as there was growing pressure on American officials to address border security.1 One photograph in Meiselas’s Crossings series depicts a border patrol officer apprehending a migrant off the interstate near Oceanside (fig. 1). Two torsos fill the center of the image. The officer grasps the man’s clothing, propelling him toward the nearby vehicle. With heads cut off by the frame and backs turned, …

Indisciplined Ceramic Outhouses And Blob-Like Glass Bunnies: Four Case Studies On Canadian Prairie Ceramics And Glass, Julia Krueger

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The field of craft has been dominated by debates surrounding types of objects and material, how-tos, lists, and genealogies, and today there is an increasing turn towards craft theories which do not necessarily address an object. This study brings the object back into craft discourse. “Indisciplined Ceramic Outhouses and Blob-like Glass Bunnies: Four Case Studies on Canadian Prairie Ceramics and Glass” is an object-inspired study of the work and craft-related practices of Victor Cicansky (Saskatchewan), Ione Thorkelsson (Manitoba), Marty Kaufman (Alberta), Altaglass (Alberta), and Mireille Perron (Alberta).

Part one of this dissertation focuses on Cicansky and part two focuses on …

Encountering Others: Degeneration, Distortion, And Disability In Interwar German Visual Culture, 1918-1933, Kathryn Carney

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This thesis project examines the interrelationships of Weimar Körperkultur (“body culture”), interwar photographic practices broadly known as “Neues Sehen,” and Verist “Neue Sachlichkeit” painting to interrogate visual representations of bodily difference in Weimar media and art. Through close analysis of select case studies in Weimar film, photography, and painting, I argue that the lines between aesthetic, sociopolitical, and bodily deviance are blurred by many artists of the period. Such focus on the body as the site of an intermedial, interdisciplinary debate about aesthetic, social, political, and national “values” has historically been overlooked by scholars. I ultimately …

Experiential Learning: Museum Of Ontario Archaeology And The Vindolanda Field School, Victoria Burnett

SASAH 4th Year Capstone and Other Projects: Presentations

Focusing first on the Museum of Ontario Archaeology, the slides are meant to illustrate the program PastPerfect that I had learned how to use during my time there, as well as a snippet of the Maple Harvest blog post I had written, wherein I would explain the value I had found in writing it and the comments that the Curator made in returning it to me before publishing it. After that is a slide where I would explain the Google Arts and Culture page, what the plans were for me to contribute to it a bit as well as the …

Report On The Museum Of Ontario Archaeology Cel And The Vindolanda Field School, Victoria Burnett

SASAH 4th Year Capstone and Other Projects: Publications

In this report, Burnett discusses her experiences as an intern with the Museum of the Ontario Archaeology, and the opportunities she received taking part in the Vindolanda Field School. Having worked in the heritage field in various capacities for six years, Burnett found it to be immensely valuable to build upon her skills of research, critical thinking, and collaboration. Specifically, in the case of archaeology and museum-based conservation, Burnett focused her analysis on the differences between the practices in Ontario and in England as she experienced them at a variety of institutions and sites. Aside from this, the informational and …

Duration And Depravity: Religious And Secular Temporality In Puritanism And The American Gothic, Taylor Kraayenbrink

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Duration and Depravity identifies a temporality of “sinful feeling” operating in the archive of Puritan writings of personal piety, such as diaries, autobiographies, conversion narratives, and sermons, and persisting into early American gothic literature. This temporality of sinful feeling is an attempt to discipline the self through temporal projection oriented towards the theological fact and religiously experienced feeling of sinfulness. Duration and Depravity engages with the proliferation of postsecular criticism in American literature studies generally, and Puritan studies more specifically. Postsecular criticism in literary studies is a style of historicism that reconsiders its primary archive’s position in newly complicated narratives …

Experiential Learning: Sasah Final Report, Elora Sinnott

SASAH 4th Year Capstone and Other Projects: Publications

Elora Sinnott revisits both her experiential-learning opportunities, one as a research assistant at Western and the other with Art 4 All Kids in London, ON. In describing her opportunities and the results, Elora focuses on the skills she developed, the impact the opportunities had on her career path, and the importance of instilling a love of the arts in children.