Arts and Humanities Commons^™

The Tortured Pre-History Of Urban Blight: African American St. Louis And The Politics Of Public Health, 1877-1940, Taylor Desloge

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation is a long history of the contested legal and environmental category of blight, especially in its racialized dimensions, in tandem with the African American experience of living in blighted urban spaces and forging a black politics of public health and welfare. Rethinking the conventional view that identifies blight as simply a preoccupation of post-World War II planners, this dissertation relocates its roots in a politics of public health that emerged a hundred years earlier, in the Post-Reconstruction Era, when black migration to the city and the rise of industrial capitalism raised new questions over both the social needs …

Crip Time In Fin-De-Siècle Spain: Disability, Degeneration, And Eugenics, Erika Rodriguez

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

A period of intense nation-building, the late nineteenth century was marked by the search for medical and legal solutions to the increasing number of bodies that did not align with culturally constructed expectations of productivity and reproduction in Spanish modernity. Authors of this time used representations of disability to engage in urgent political questions about population control and the rights of individuals in the face of increasing medical intervention. In carrying out this analysis, I raise the question of how representations of disability created a space to reconfigure the social values that determined what lives matter. Focusing on canonical realist …

Homeland Insecurity, Amy Chen

Bachelor of Fine Arts Senior Papers

Homeland Insecurity is a project born out of a life’s worth of marginalization, internalized racism, and forced assimilation. It presents common experiences and emotions that are located between cultures, questioning what it means to inhabit a homeland that exists as a hybrid mental space. As I progress through life, my parents’ culture—my heritage—becomes more and more distant, yet like many non-white children of immigrants, I will continue to carry it in my face as a physical reminder of a life I do not know. Influenced by acculturation theory, my work explores this culture that never quite belonged to me to …

Living In This World: A Social History Of Buddhist Monks And Nuns In Nineteenth-Century Western China, Gilbert Zhe Chen

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation relies on about 600 legal cases from the Ba County Archive that survive from the first three-quarters of the nineteenth century to investigate the social life of ordinary Buddhist monks and nuns. Although they played a crucial in maintaining the survival and proper functioning of Buddhism at the local level, they have remained significantly understudied. This dissertation adopts a bottom-up approach to investigate ordinary monastics’ involvement in various socioeconomic activities. By shifting the analytical focus from elite monks to their more mundane counterparts, this study illuminates how deeply ordinary monastics were embedded in their communities. The shift also …

Affective Materiality: Latin American Science Fiction At The Turn Of The Twenty-First Century, Kyeongeun Park

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation explores diverse shapes of the future as represented in literary production at the turn of the century—from the late 1980s to the present day—through examining the science fiction (sf) of Argentina, Chile, and Mexico. I focus primarily on materiality as an actor and on the agency of things in dialogue with human society through an investigation of the material and cultural productions of sf texts by further scrutinizing the impact of new networking technology. While analyzing the absence and presence of material culture and technological ecology in the selected texts, I work to identify the unique shades and …

Painting Ephemera In The Age Of Mass Production: American Trompe L’Oeil Painting And Visual Culture In The Late Nineteenth Century, Katherine Brunk Harnish

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study offers a fresh approach to investigating the modernization of visual media, exploring themes of media translation, appropriation, and the fine art and popular art divide. This dissertation focuses on paintings that represent prints and photographs in order to understand the relationships between all three media—relationships that changed drastically in late nineteenth-century America. William Harnett, John Haberle, and John Peto made many trompe l’oeil paintings that depict photographs, newspaper clippings, trade cards, and other ephemera. This project posits that these artists represented new media strategically to attract viewers well versed in these forms and to assert the continued relevance …

Milagros Y Portentos: Evento, Corporalidad Y Etnicidad En La Nueva España, Silvia Juliana Rocha Dallos

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Miracles and Portents: Event, Corporeality and Ethnicity in New Spain (Mexico) studies the concepts of miracle and portent as modes and codes of differentiation and representation of diverse social sectors. Through the examination of treatises on idolatry, inquisition cases related to subjects of African ancestry, and studies on astronomy, I argue that the interpretation of extraordinary events made by the imperial institutions of power impacted not only the imaginaries, but also the behaviors deployed by indigenous peoples, afrodescendants, and creoles. From 1600 to the celebration of the IV Provincial Council of 1771 and the Promulgation of the first Royal Pragmatic …

Infancias Imaginadas: Creciendo En España En El Siglo Xx Con Elena Fortún Y Miguel Delibes, Maria Del Carmen Toro Gonzalez-Green

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

From the 1920s to the 1990s, a large number of works featuring children as main characters were produced and published in Spain. Children live in constant confrontation between what they are and what is expected of them: because of this, in a new literary paradigm, childhood became a symbol for the confrontations, tensions, and contradictions that characterize 20th century Spain. Also, the preponderant temporal dimension for these children characters is the present, which is a significant choice in a historical period in constant tension between letting go of the past and clinging to it. This project explores how different imagined …

The Evolution Of Modern Music: Tradition And Innovation In Bartók, Schoenberg, And Stravinsky, Dan Viggers

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Despite their reputations as musical revolutionaries, Béla Bartók, Arnold Schoenberg, and Igor Stravinsky continually asserted that their styles were not revolutionary, but evolutionary. For each composer, stylistic evolution implied a continuation of the musical traditions and techniques they inherited from their predecessors. While much has been written about the innovative—or revolutionary—aspects of these three composers, less has been written about how their styles connected to the classical tradition. This dissertation attempts to capture the evolutionary aspects of the styles of Bartók, Schoenberg, and Stravinsky. In each chapter, I analyze the interaction of innovative and traditional musical structures. Chapter one discusses …

The Afterlife Of Corpses: A Social History Of Unburied Dead Bodies In Qing China (1644-1911), Joohee Suh

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation began with the reading of numerous Qing-dynasty records pertaining to dead bodies that remained on the ground without proper burial. These bodies were not necessarily the victims of extraordinary events such as wars or natural disasters, but the remains of ordinary people whose families failed to arrange a burial site. A wide range of historical materials recorded the presence of these bodies, such as commentaries and critiques on popular burial customs written by the imperial government and literati elites, and Qing popular tales where these bodies were described as man-hunting zombies (jiangshi 僵屍). These sources demonstrate unburied dead …

In Praise Of The Peaks: Science, Art, And Nature In Kojima Usui’S Mountain Literature, Aaron Paul Jasny

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

During the Meiji period (1868–1912), a newly constituted Japanese nation sought equal standing among the global powers it encountered with increasing frequency, by updating and modernizing in various fields of knowledge and cultural production. Science and technology were adopted and adapted from the nations of the West in order to bolster the economy, improve infrastructure, and ensure the health and well-being of the Japanese people. Meanwhile, literature and the arts were refashioned to make them more suitable for dealing with modernization, urbanization, empirical and rational thinking, and a regard for individual autonomy and subjectivity. Meiji Japan witnessed numerous innovations, which …

Sociocultural And Collaborative Antagonism In The Harold Prince-Stephen Sondheim Musicals (1970-1979), Ashley Marian Pribyl

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

“I can get an idea for a musical…from getting politically roiled up about one or another thing.” - Director/producer Harold Prince “I couldn’t have been less interested in politics.” - Composer/lyricist Stephen Sondheim Despite the above seemingly incompatible quotes, Harold Prince and Stephen Sondheim somehow ended up forming one of Broadway’s most enduring collaborative legacies. Prince, who strived to challenge his audience’s political complacency, often clashed with Sondheim, whose primary consideration was individual characterization and narrative arc. Prince also chose other collaborators who were more interested in creating politically challenging works, contrary to Sondheim’s focus. When collaborating, Prince and Sondheim …

Sociocultural And Collaborative Antagonism In The Harold Prince-Stephen Sondheim Musicals (1970-1979), Ashley Marian Pribyl

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

“I can get an idea for a musical…from getting politically roiled up about one or another thing.”

- Director/producer Harold Prince

“I couldn’t have been less interested in politics.”

- Composer/lyricist Stephen Sondheim

Despite the above seemingly incompatible quotes, Harold Prince and Stephen Sondheim somehow ended up forming one of Broadway’s most enduring collaborative legacies. Prince, who strived to challenge his audience’s political complacency, often clashed with Sondheim, whose primary consideration was individual characterization and narrative arc. Prince also chose other collaborators who were more interested in creating politically challenging works, contrary to Sondheim’s focus. When collaborating, Prince and Sondheim …

Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things, Sarah Adcock

Graduate School of Art Theses

I view my creative process as alchemy, the transformation of materials through experimentation. I use wax as a material that transcends its historical use as a sculptural process for casting and instead, use it for its transmutable qualities to inform content. Because of its plasticity and duality as fragile and resilient, wax is symbolically submissive and assertive. By applying heat, wax can be molded and formed into new shapes. Once it cools, wax reverts back to its natural state; solid and impermeable. I use objects to explore desires of origin and life. Transitional objects, the first “me not me” possession …

When A Woman Betrays The Nation: An Analysis Of Moto Hagio’S The Heart Of Thomas, Kaoru Tamura

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis discusses The Heart of Thomas (1974), the representative shōjo manga (girl’s comic) of Moto Hagio, who is often called “The Magnificent Mother of shōjo manga” or “The Goddess of shōjo manga” and was the first shōjo manga creator to win a Meadal of Honor for artistic achievement from the Japanese government. Although The Heart is highly regarded, even worshiped, by fans of manga, scholars have been slow to give it due consideration as an important document of social history, especially of women’s social history. The following study takes a personal approach, attempting to analyze The Heart in the …

Material Memory, Merry Sun

Bachelor of Fine Arts Senior Papers

Memory may be implicitly embedded into an artwork through explicit material triggers. Materials can evoke memory through material past life and through physical denotations of the past. The former carries with it the weight of existence; the latter demonstrates tangibly what cannot be captured by words. The material triggers act as semantic memories that can be used to construct an experiential, episodic memory in the mental faculties of the viewer. The memory that is contained within the work must be implicit in nature to carry experience, for explicit memory can only be read semantically. As the viewer strives to reach …

Black Stereotype, Rashonda Daniels, Blaize'b Daniels

Bachelor of Fine Arts Senior Papers

In my work, I create my own narrative regarding the stereotyping of Black people. The body of work that is discussed focuses in on the history of the Black stereotypes that dates as far back as the slavery era. Through my art practice, I address how the contemporary mistreatment of Black people stems from the historical foundation of negative Black stereotypes that were imposed upon us by Europeans. My hope is that by confrontingour history we can eliminate so called “Black behavior” or bad behavior and accept it as simply normal human behavior.

Breaking The Fourth Wall: Avenues For Empathy Through Participation And Interaction, Grace Zajdel

Bachelor of Fine Arts Senior Papers

Abstract:

Theater is used as a lens through which I view the act of role play in participatory and interaction based artworks. I examine the elements of Action – in participatory or performance works—and Set—in immersive installation works – for their effectiveness in creating avenues for empathetic relations in my own work and that of contemporary artists. I distinguish between the overblown spectacle of Peter Brook’s Deadly Theater and connect the mission of the Holy Theater to that of my own art practice. Performance, immersive installation, participation and interaction thereby serve to allow the artwork’s participants to engage in role-taking …

A Vestige Of The Ultimate Force Of Time And Space, Jiyoung Megan Lee

Bachelor of Fine Arts Senior Papers

This art statement is rooted in an idea that the existential quality is independent of absence and presence (synonymous to appearing and disappearing, and real and recognition) and distilled physicality of human body creates a parallel relationship between the two. In search of a proof and logic for articulating the central idea, –that the absence does not define evanescence of existence— the application of physical interactivity in my art, also known as relational aesthetic, enables the work to invite viewers in a way that the interactors leave their traces by physically interacting with the work. These individual traces are eventually …

Grids Within Grids, Lingrong Wang

Graduate School of Art Theses

Combined with my art practice, this thesis acts as a lens for the universe within the little grids I create. Instead of using brushes and pigments, I’m searching for a different way to represent strokes to form abstract images. I’m interested in using a folding method to make one page of printed paper into multiple layers. It is fascinating to transform single sheets of paper from magazines. The magazines that I have collected show people’s personal interests. These everyday items give hints and first impressions of meaning to the viewer, but I fold the magazines to make them unreadable in …

The Psychos, Paula N. Stevenson

Graduate School of Art Theses

My current body of work is a series of drawings that juxtapose characters of fiction and reality in an attempt to explore the relationship between horror film and contemporary social issues. I strive to render an accurate portrayal of the face to draw the viewer into questioning the troubling narrative these characters illuminate. I focus on retelling stories of fear and horror, and crime and infamy. I want my work to convey ethical dilemmas as they are present within the relationship between horror movie antagonists and the audience (all of us). It is these concerns I attempt to visualize in, …

The Making Of Cleveland’S Artist: The Aesthetic And Cultural Politics Of Boundary Crossing In The Industrial Landscape Paintings Of Carl Gaertner, 1923 - 1952, April N. Johnston

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

ABSTRACT

The Making of Cleveland’s Artist: The Aesthetic and Cultural Politics of Boundary Crossing in the Industrial Landscape Paintings of Carl Gaertner, 1923 – 1952

by

April Johnston

Master of Arts in American Culture Studies

Washington University in St. Louis, 2019

Dr. Iver Bernstein, adviser

In 1923 Carl Gaertner captivated jurors at the Cleveland Museum of Art’s annual competitive May Show with a painting of a local bolt factory titled Up the River at Upson’s. What made the painting so arresting was its rendering of the elements of factory, nature, and the human spaces that mediated between them, as …

The Rise And Fall Of The Fighters: Colonial Korean Exiles In China, Minseung Kim

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis mainly aims to examine colonial masculinity, especially focusing on the national fighters for Korean independence during the Japanese colonial period. As China was a place that Korean exiles moved to, through an examination of Korean short stories by Chu Yosŏp, Sim Hun, and Kim Kwangju, this thesis traces back to the rise and fall of Korean exiles in China who participated in political movements during the 1920s and 1930s. In the 1920s, male intellectual characters in stories by Chu Yosŏp, and Sim Hun expressed their pride as national fighters while participating in Korean exile groups in Shanghai. The …

Dialogical Practice, Meenakshi Jha

Graduate School of Art Theses

Within an interdisciplinary and dialogical practice where process is as significant as final form/s, I delve in matters not to resolve but to explore them. Digging deep in my studio practice over my philosophical yearnings to talking loud and clear about my life in performances, I venture out in the geographical expanse to connect with self and others. In fact, the more I practice my craft, I feel a lesser and lesser gap between my ‘self’ and others. The walk outwards brings me closer to my internal realizations as a human being. In short, my practice is based on the …

Her Anticipation, Cora Rozencohn

Graduate School of Art Theses

My thesis paper will explore my artistic practice by analyzing my thesis video project,Her Anticipation. I will accomplish this by examining three main topics: The essential elements of the video, the video’s relationship to my earlier work, and a discussion of the video and its structure with representative examples.

The first essential element of the video springs from my relationship with my husband, especially the aspect of the relationship that is tied up with our nearly forty-year age difference. The second element is my personal experience filtered through a deep reading of Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queene. The third element …

Methods Of Teaching Latin: Theory, Practice, Application, Morgan A. Nicoulin

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In this project, I present a way to effectively blend modern theories of language acquisition and the contemporary practice of teaching Latin. I intend to demonstrate that a curriculum is able to balance both traditional and innovative philosophies by adapting Second Language Acquisition Theory’s idealized way to learn a language to fit the realistic limitations of the classroom. I begin with a discussion of the history of language pedagogy, focusing on Latin’s influence on the study of language learning from antiquity to present. Next, I present the key topics in SLA and the practical implications of this research for today’s …

A War Of Words: The Circulation And Interpretation Of Taiping Depositions, Jordan Weinstock

Senior Honors Papers / Undergraduate Theses

On November 18, 1864, the death knell of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom was rung. Hong Tiangui Fu had been killed. Hong, divine leader of the once nascent kingdom, was asked to confess before his execution, one of the last figures to speak directly on behalf of the Qing’s formidable opponent. The Western world listened intently to the Young Monarch’s last words, curious about the movement’s unorthodox Christianity and the destruction they had left behind. The deposition resulting from Hong’s confession fit within an established legal genre. Depositions had long been collected to indict members of oppositional movements, as well as …

Universe Of Things: A Human Presentation Of Food-For-Thought., Madeline Halpern

Bachelor of Fine Arts Senior Papers

I present this statement under three loose categories: People, Objects and their Environment. I consider People as human, Objects as art objects, domestic objects, and food, and Environment as the shared space of the former groups. Food directs this statement as I present each concept and creative process as a metaphorical dish. Material exploration carried me from a direct practice of reorienting acrylic paint and questioning object functionality through personified sculptures into theoretical thesis work in which I use interpersonal relations and the idea of consumption to translate tactile, gustatory and olfactory sensations into digital film. In this meal I …

Skin, Bones + Bags: Investigating The Death Of Marine Ecosystems, Rylie Walter

Bachelor of Fine Arts Senior Papers

Plastic has become ubiquitous in the oceans. Although a convenient and cheap way to distribute goods around the world, plastic is also a leading cause for the death of many marine ecosystems. Walter explores her personal connection to the ocean, researches the relationship between plastic pollution and the ocean, and examines art as a means for inciting social change to protect and restore ocean environments. By using plastic as her main material for making art, Walter transforms the material from one that harms into one that can be calming and peaceful, while still representing the destruction it causes.

Feeling Blue, Katherine Ewald

Bachelor of Fine Arts Senior Papers

“Feeling Blue” discusses the intersection between art and science as it relates to my thesis body of work entitled Bed/Room. I delve into the sensory world of art, diving into how our environment can have an effect on our neurological and emotional state of being. This is explored through different pathways, namely the color blue, seasonal affective disorder, and the senses. The artwork reflects these ideas, providing a multi sensory environment with the goal of promoting tranquility. Through my process of creating the piece, my intentions shifted to removing Bed/Room from the fine arts context and transferring it into the …