Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Sometimes Windows Break, Samantha Snyder

Theses and Dissertations

The sensation of detachment and reclusion frequently gives rise to an uncanny and dreamlike space. Enveloped within this dimension, the quirks of memory become a fragile lifeline to bygone, intangible ideas of reality. Fixated on this threshold, my artistic explorations in print, collage, and assemblage navigates these elusive realms, rendering fragmented and distant shapes and figures in stark contrast to elements that evoke an eerie sense of familiarity. In this manner, my work invites viewers to embrace the disconcerting and unsettling aspects of the in-between, all the while establishing an unsettling connection to reality through the lens of nostalgic objects …

Daughters And Fathers In Memoirs: Najla Said And Fatima Bhutto, Yasmina Bakry

Theses and Dissertations

The father-daughter relationship has always been crucial in shaping the identity of the daughter. Daughters inevitably inherit their fathers’ personal trauma, and in the case of the daughters of activists, national trauma as well. Throughout childhood, adolescence, and adulthood, daughters struggle to depoliticize their famous fathers, as well as assert their individuality amidst the overshadowing activism of their fathers and conflictual history of their nations. To heal the daughters’ identity fissures, they embark on a journey to chronicle memories of their fathers throughout their lives and critically assess their fathers’ cultural, social and political heritage and identity. This thesis will …

O Silêncio Da Mulher Carioca Oitocentista E Sua Representação No Romance Naturalista Lar De Pardal Mallet, Jessyca Kimberly De Oliveira Zanetti

Theses and Dissertations

The 19th century represents the arrival of the Portuguese royal family in Brazil and, with it, significant changes in society and the local population. A formerly reclusive member of society begins to take shape not only in public life but also within the literature: the Brazilian woman. Despite her changing social role, prevailing hygienist and medical theories of the time pointed to the lack of vocation of the nineteenth-century woman for rational matters; which in naturalism implies that these pseudo-scientific theories would be the base to dissect and explain the social pathologies of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and society at …

The Materials Of Traditions, Victoria Jensen

Theses and Dissertations

The homes we grow up in have a great impact on the homes we create as adults. Many of the traditions I saw in my childhood home were expressions of love within our family. These everyday traditions helped not only to build bonds within my nuclear family, but also with the chosen family I have formed as an adult. Repeating these traditions, or at least my best memory of them, has helped me in building my own home now. The ways I interact with my friends often reflects those same traditions I learned from home. I brought a few of …

Memorias De Mi Familia, Melissa Z. Montero

Theses and Dissertations

Abstract

Memorias de Mi Familia is an hour-long personal documentary through which I explore the meaning of “home.” I was born and raised in New York to a Puerto Rican mother and Ecuadorian father and lived between two worlds—sometimes more. While on a visit to Puerto Rico with my mother, Sylvia, I search for belonging and explore my family’s story of migration between the island and the United States.

Through interviews, family films, home videos and photographs spanning over 60 years, I examine the revolving migration pattern common to many Puerto Ricans on the island and in the diaspora, a …

Transnationalism And Identity: The Dream Of ‘Better Life’ For Egyptian Migrants In The Uae, Aliaa Ellawaty

Theses and Dissertations

In the modern globalized world, there has been a shift in migration studies that now focus on those immigrants from a transnational perspective. Thus, their lives are not detached from the transnational space that is not only about the point of departure and the point of arrival, but it is more related to the interconnections that emerge in the transnational space. This means that individuals are no longer tied to ethnic and cultural diversities, but by the transformations in the sociality of the transnational space. For many years, the United Arab Emirates has been a great attraction for middle-class Egyptians …

Until One Resembles The Other, Chad E. Mundie Jr.

Theses and Dissertations

A written accompaniment to Chad Mundie’s thesis exhibition titled Until One Resembles the Other, conceived during the years 2021-22 and installed at The Anderson Gallery, Richmond from April 9-22nd.

The following writing explores themes of labor within the home, generational knowledge, interiority, exteriority, and emotional residue through a series of essays surrounding areas of interest within my practice. The writing concludes with documentation of the show and an accompanying explanatory text.

Home, It Turns Out, Is Always A Matter Of Paperwork, Leonardo Madriz

Theses and Dissertations

A meandering of life-thinking on notions of migration & diaspora, assimilation, place & home, family & loss, cruel optimism and new imaginaries - through text, film & video, installation, and expanded cinema.

Delightful Scars, Shahrbanoo Hamzeh

Theses and Dissertations

At the door of the house who will come knocking? / An open door, we enter / A closed door, a den / The world pulse beats beyond my door (Bachelard, 25).Border is a dichotomous concept. Within a border exists both the potential for protection and alienation. By exploring the closure in borders around people in both a family and a country setting I am exploring communication on both an interpersonal and intrapersonal level; how our understanding of ourselves and others can affect us; how we can be close to each other and help each other. I suggest that our …

Stranger’S Window, Nation’S Mirror, Kyoko Hamaguchi

Theses and Dissertations

In this text, I consider my identity as a Japanese immigrant in the United States during a global pandemic and its impact on my understanding of home as a liminal space. In particular, I discuss notions of home in relation to my work as an artist including two works that utilize the home-sharing platform Airbnb and three works that deal with the dichotomy of inside and outside.

Beyond The Threshold, Kathleen Granados

Theses and Dissertations

Crossing through spaces of memory, generational dialogues, and the domestic psyche, Beyond the Threshold investigates the precarious nature of home. Spanning installation, sculpture, and sound, these explorations underscore patterns and materializations of the ever-present past.

Diasporic Strangers In The Mirror: Ever-Evolving Identity And The Immigrant Experience, Meriam Metoui

Theses and Dissertations

This text explores the disparity between immigrant parents and their American born or raised children and show the chasm of misunderstanding between generations navigating different national and cultural contexts found in novels such as The Joy Luck Club, The Namesake, Americanah, and Everything I Never Told You.

Converging Objects Of The Universe, Everett Hoffman

Theses and Dissertations

Reconfigured found objects shape scenes of everyday life, questioning the structural histories that go into defining an identity. Engaging in a multidisciplinary approach of making, my work reimagines the function of ornamentation and its relationship to the body. I approach new materials and found objects with the eye of a jeweler, highlighting and exploiting the subtle, and often invisible, links between material histories and their connection to identity. Material debris patinated with age like skillets, baseballs, and furniture are used to penetrate normative structures around identity, gender, and sexual desire. Using adornment as a support in my installations I propose …

You'll Be Home By When?, Rebecca Centeno

Theses and Dissertations

You’ll be home by when? is a short personal documentary about trying to locate home. Through exchanges with my grandmother, I seek home in city and country. Reflections on family and loss reveal how we relate to spaces and to each other.

My Giants, Teodora Altomare

Theses and Dissertations

My Giants is a thirty minute documentary about two journeys. During the first, in 2015, the filmmaker documented the story of Xylella fastidiosa, a bacteria responsible for the loss of many thousand-year-old olive trees in the Italian region of Puglia. During the second visit, in 2016, she witnessed the illness of her father.

By weaving together the two stories, My Giants is a snapshot of a transitional moment in the filmmaker’s life, a moment when illness became an opportunity to reconnect with her roots.

Endure, Jacob Copetillo

Theses and Dissertations

My thesis is an account of my research on Deconstruction as it relates to family structure and the making of the objects leading to, and consisting of, the work shown in the installation, Endure. The work is a product of my intercessory labor to make sense of the breakage within family structure. Through forced brokenness, domestic imagery, and intercessory reconstruction, I am building a memorial that expresses my concern with deconstruction and hope for reconciliation.

Rewrite, Jamie Lawyer

Theses and Dissertations

“Rewrite” is a photographic project that utilizes the domesstic space as a stage for emotional projection of a traumatic memory. The work considers the relationship that exists between an individual and the rooms and objects within a home space in an attempt at understanding an individual’s mental state. “Rewrite” explores the ways in which we exist through our home and how a juxtaposition of objects and materials can create meaning. The photographs are a visual interpretation of the emotions surrounding sexual abuse/assault/rape as they have related to my own personal history and conversations I have had with women close to …

Moments Of Absorption, Sarah K. Kaufman

Theses and Dissertations

Moments of Absorption explores the conceptual and visual themes that are presented in my MFA thesis exhibition. The research looks into the absorption of the nude subject, the gestures that communicate this absorption, and the domestic space as a stage for the presentation of these gestures. This work investigates a tension between the theatrical and the natural as represented by images.