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Ivan Puni's Berlin Period: 1920-1924, Elena Kakuriev

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis is dedicated to the work of the Russian Avant-Garde artist Ivan Albertovich Puni (1892-1956): an artist, a theorist and writer, an organizer of exhibition, a teacher of art, and above all, an innovator. This thesis presents an account of the artist's Berlin period (1920-1924), which has so far lacked scholarly attention.

The thesis begins with a close analysis of Puni's Russian period (1914-1919). In this time span,

Ivan Puni demonstrated his ability to adopt a wide gamut of diverse artistic styles. Puni first elaborated works akin to Cubist constructions. However, starting from 1915, the artist became a major …

“Women Of Allah” And “The Book Of Kings:” Shirin Neshat’S Narratives Of Returning Home, Zahra Banyamerian

Dissertations and Theses

Using the framework of nostalgia defined by Svetlana Boym in The Future of Nostalgia, this thesis revisited the series “Women of Allah” and “The Book of Kings,” that Shirin Neshat created twenty years apart. It argues that the photographs of both series became the terrain through which Neshat narrates the relationship between her past, present, and future. She constructs her longing for home in “Women of Allah'' and she visualizes her homecoming in “The Book of Kings.” The central point to this research is Neshat’s personal relationship to an event that caused her a traumatic experience, the experience that interrupted …

Red Sea, White Tides, And Blue Horizons, John P. Devine

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Eric Hobsbawm, in his effort to explain the fundamental divide which produced the Second World War, convincingly argues that “the crucial lines in this civil war were not drawn between capitalism as such and communist social revolution, but between ideological families: on the one hand the descendants of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment and the great revolutions including, obviously the Russian revolution’, on the other hand, its opponents.” This thesis argues that the American Civil War was a “great revolution” that represented a crucial transformative point in the formation of these two waring factions. The struggle was especially influential on the theory …

Paper House: The Revolution, The Disappeared, And The Historicity Of Lebanon, Elsa Saade

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis will be an attempt to reenact events in relation to the disappeared and the Lebanese civil war, with the help of newspaper cuts, oral history, theories on historical writing, memories, and books on Lebanon. As a prospective historian, the writer will be tapping into the internal event of thought processes and meaning of the past, as advised by R. G. Collingwood in The Idea of History. (Collingwood, 1946 ) That critical inquiry will only be at the service of understanding the present from the lens of a self-reflecting inquisitor that has faced many silences in a past …

Revolutionary Affinities: Democracy And Revolution In Hannah Arendt’S Portrait Of Rosa Luxemburg, Matthew P. Finck

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This work is an exploration of Hannah Arendt’s portrait of Rosa Luxemburg. Beginning with a few minor discussions of Luxemburg in her first major work Origins of Totalitarianism (1951), the socialist revolutionary’s place in the constellation of figures that appear in Arendt’s work grew over the course of her career. Arendt’s portrait of Luxemburg culminated in “A Heroine of Revolution,” which appeared in the New York Review of Books, and in Men in Dark Times (1968). Yet Arendt’s portrait of Luxemburg was notable for its excision of her revolutionary Marxism in the process of sculpting Luxemburg into …

The Narrative Of Revolution: Socialism And The Masses 1911-1917, Stephen K. Walkiewicz

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis seeks to situate The Masses magazine (1911-1917) within a specific discursive tradition of revolution, revealing a narrative pattern that is linked with discourse that began to emerge during and after the French Revolution. As the term “socialism” begins to resonate again within popular American political discourse (and as a potentially viable course of action rather than a curse for damnable offense), it is worthwhile to trace its significance within American history to better understand its aesthetic dimensions, its radical difference, and its way of devising problems and answers. In short, this thesis poses the question: what ideological structures …

Working Lives: Artistic Solidarity In Revolutionary Peru (1960–1980), Jose R. Chavarry

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation examines the discourses and experiences of cultural work as a form of intellectual and artistic solidarity in Peru during the 1960s and 1970s. Amid the broader Latin American and global spirit of revolution, anti-imperialism and Third World liberation, in Peru these decades saw a radical transformation in society where rural and urban masses rose against a traditional political and socioeconomic system that maintained colonial structures of domination and oppression of marginalized populations. In an attempt to rein in this desborde popular, as it became known, the nationalist and populist Revolutionary Government of the Armed Forces and a …

Revolution, Reform, And Class Conflict In Rebecca Harding Davis’S Life In The Iron-Mills, Thomas Collins

Dissertations and Theses

Life in the Iron-Mills (1861) by Rebecca Harding Davis is a very early example of American fiction that depicts the living and working conditions in a mill town. Although the novella advocates for workers, it does not accurately depict contemporaneous working-class culture. Davis depicts workers as isolated and helpless in the face of the forces that oppress them rather than giving voice to the workers’ movement of her time. Although Davis depicts workers in a debased state, the text’s narrator holds out hope of the “Dawn,” suggesting a revolutionary movement. Because the narrator offers no interpretation regarding how the working …

The Revolution Of Plastic, Marine Brun-Franzetti

Theses and Dissertations

The Revolution Of Plastic is a fiction film about the overconsumption of plastic in our everyday lives. Leo, a ten year-old girl who loves dolphins, rebels against her father Mister Risso, the Manager of Detergents at Willy Supermarket.

Tracing Dominican Attitudes Towards Race: A Historical Analysis, Marcos Polonia

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The common misconception is that all Dominicans are racist – that Dominicans live in a Fanonesque reality where we believe we are white, but we clearly inhabit black bodies. These attitudes permeate Dominican society from the highest echelons of power to the everyday experiences of Dominicans on the street. The notion that Dominicans are racist is widespread among Latinos and African-Americans as well. Recently, global attention was focused on the Dominican Republic as the country changed its constitution in order to prevent Dominicans of Haitian descent from becoming Dominican citizens. But, where do these notions of race come from? This …

Rescinding Rancière: An Investigation Into The Conservative Tendencies Of A Leading Proponent Of Radical Democracy, And A Reconstruction Of The Participatory Democracy Of Ancient Athens, Tyler J. Olsen

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis advances a critique of the political theory of Jacques Rancière, focusing on the problems that arise as a result of its rigid form combined with its narrow content. I argue that Rancière gets caught in a practice of immanent critique that merely presupposes bourgeois abstract right; and that his ontological and pragmatic commitments prohibit him from projecting a norm that would transcend the liberal order. I trace these ontological and pragmatic commitments in detail by examining the intellectual milieu from which Rancière’s project emerged, the post-foundational political philosophy of the 1980s, with particular attention given to Claude Lefort. …

Not By Accident: How Egyptian Civil Society Successfully Launched A Revolution, Helen-Margaret Nasser

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis examines the role of civil society in Egypt and argues that it was central to the success of the 2011 revolution that ended in the ouster of President Hosni Mubarak. I will discuss the development of civil society under Mubarak and demonstrate its strength. In understanding civil society in Egypt, this thesis will discuss the strengths of groups such as associations, Islamist movements, women's groups, labor activism, and youth movements. I also demonstrate that it is important to understand the precedents established that shaped the state's stance towards civil society. As such, this thesis will also discuss the …

The White Creoles Of Saint Domingue Facing Revolution, Lionel Zami

Dissertations and Theses

No abstract provided.