History of Art, Architecture, and Archaeology Commons^™

“You Will Never Touch My Roots”, Zari Apodaca

Art & Art History Student Scholarship

Zari Apodaca ’23
Major: Studio Art
Faculty Mentor: Professor Judd Schiffman, Art and Art History

An Exhibition of ceramic objects reflecting on genocidal trauma and cultural bereavement in Armenian culture. Through her art, Zari asks questions about the intergenerational effects of exile and persecution. In Zari’s words: “Through multiple ceramic copies of face plaques and head sculptures, I work to understand who I see myself to be, despite feeling so disconnected. I communicate my inner thoughts concerning identity and society through text carved into clay and broken up pieces of faces to better understand the missing gaps in myself.”

Demythologizing Homer: Investigating Religion In Minoan Crete, Elizabeth Rybarczyk

Departmental Honors & Graduate Capstone Projects

The Minoan civilization of Bronze-Age Crete has, until recently, been obscured in mythological uncertainty. As a prehistoric civilization, the available evidence for historic analysis is sparse and ambiguous. This paper evaluates the material evidence for ritual activity to chart the religious developments of Minoan Crete. In the earliest periods of their civilization, the Minoans practiced animism, which reflected their ideals towards survival and cooperation. As their prosperity grew due to technological advancements, a social hierarchy formed. The emerging elite employed religion to justify their claim to power by appropriating religion, which culminated in a dual-monotheistic Knossian theocracy. This lasted until …

Catholicism Online: How The Church Is Communicating In The Visual Field, Alexandra Barfield

Honors Theses

ABSTRACT

Given the rise and importance of social media in the last two decades, religious institutions, especially the Roman Catholic Church, have an important place online to fulfill their mission and belief of spreading the Gospel message. Communicating this message on social media and with contemporary marketing practices is an opportunity and a challenge for churches, Catholics, and apostolates alike. In this study, I analyze a variety of Catholic-related Instagram accounts and interview individuals involved in Church management and content creation. This primary research is prefaced with secondary research exploring the status of the Catholic Church in the United States, …

Veiled Victorian Vampires: What Literary Antagonists Reveal About Societal Fears Of 19th Century England, Jenna Harford

Honors Theses

In my thesis paper I look at three primary texts, Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations, and Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray to analyze their main antagonists through a vampiric lens. I explain how the characters of Bertha Mason, Miss Havisham, and Dorian Gray are all written with veiled vampiric traits that revolve around themes of sexuality, secrecy and seclusion, and unbridled physical and emotional violence. Although none of these texts is obviously a “vampire novel”, the authors lean into vampire tropes including eerie physical description, doubled relationships, and other vampire lore that can be best …

But What Is Troy: Art In Queer Mourning, Ian Lamasney

Symposium of Student Scholars

Death is something that everyone, regardless of any arbitrary divisions, will inevitably have to experience. For a variety of reasons, queer mourning is not practiced the same way that straight society does - it manifests as raw anger at the society around them. Deconstruction and queer theory perspectives reveals political, social, and artistic strategies that inform recent visual art practice. Examinations of the work of Felix Gonzalez-Torres and John Boskovich, informed by queer theory perspectives, highlight similarities in the process of queer mourning in the late 20th century. In addition, discussion of the tale of Achilles and Patroclus recorded in …

Coded Ceramics: Computational Design Of Persian Ceramics, Nasrin Iravani

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This research explores the use of computer-aided technology and robotics in the creation of digital art and crafts, while also considering the cultural history of digital design. It begins with an examination of the most recognizable styles of Persian ewers made between the years 1,000 and 1,400 AD in the Islamic era. After analyzing a hundred ewers from this period, I classified them based on distinctive features such as openings, necks, bodies, spouts, handles, and bases. Then I designed a series of 3D printed ceramic vessels – titled Coded Ceramics – that were inspired by elements of the historic ewers. …

The Artist's Arsenal: Hiv+ Women Artists, The ‘War On Aids’, And Reclaiming Illness Narratives, Mekha Varghese

Art and Art History Honors Papers

This work uses the methodologies of both art history and medical sociology through the ‘syndemic’ framework to engage in close readings of two selected artworks, Exit (1997) by Nancer LeMoins and Violation of Africa (1984) by Affrekka Jefferson. An interdisciplinary approach to these works enables consideration of how multiple marginalized identities—i.e., living with a stigmatized illness, being a woman, being LGBTQIA+, being a person of color—appear in visual art and shape illness experience; these ideas are investigated through a formal and iconographic reading of the selected artworks. Placing art as the foundation of this analysis reveals its astounding impact and …

An Artful Examination Of The Stories Within The Story One Thousand And One Nights As They Evolve Through History And The World., Jacquelyn Stout

Honors Theses

The artworks for and associated with One Thousand and One Nights have had many influences over time. This thesis examines the effects of these influences on 27 examples of the artwork through five of the many tales. The tales used for this examination are Shahryar and Scheherazade, Aladdin and His Wonderful Lamp, Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, the Seven Voyages of Sinbad the Sailor, and the Fisherman and the Jinni. One Thousand and One Nights is a collection of stories and tales by various authors that have been collected over many centuries. The earliest written example of …

The Sound Of The Civil War: Examining The Intersection Between Music And Emotion In America, 1861-1865, Christina Cannon

Campus Research Month

The topics of the history of music and the history of music intersect in the Civil War in fascinating ways. Both religious music and “secular” music were seen to have great power over their listeners, potentially with the power to alter the directions of lives or their salvation status. Music was used both as a mode of rebellion against the antagonizing army and ideal and a rebellion against unnecessarily violent acts. Each side used it against the other, but a select few also used it against the war itself. Soldiers marched to music, set camp to music, and fought to …

Salzburg's Baroque Architecture: A Historical Analysis And Poetic Response, Rebecca Malzer

Honors Projects

Salzburg, Austria is a city full of history. During the Baroque era from about the mid sixteenth century to the end of the eighteenth century, the Prince-Archbishops of Salzburg designed and modeled the city with Rome, Italy in mind. Their loyalty to the Holy Roman Empire and with the Reformation in full swing, these Italian influences helped to build a pro-Roman Catholic style throughout the city. The Prince-Archbishops and their architects demonstrated Salzburg’s loyalty to Rome through the structures of Schloss Mirabell, Schloss Hellbrunn, and the Franziskannerkirche. In addition, these structures make for great inspiration for creative work, to which …

Fragmented Hours: The Biography Of A Devotional Book Printed By Thielman Kerver, Stephanie R. Haas

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

As the most richly illustrated and widely-owned texts of the late medieval and early modern eras, books of hours are essential to the study of art, religion, and the history of the book. Fragmented and damaged books, while perhaps less coveted, are of particular value to researchers for what they may reveal about their owners as well as the changing meanings of devotional texts and images over more than five centuries of use. This thesis explores the compelling biography of a damaged book of hours preserved in the University of Florida Library. The book has undergone such extensive alteration prior …

Menetekel: Ishmael's Black Whale And The Semiotics Of Doom, Todd Tyner Cronkhite

English Language and Literature ETDs

This study employs the narrator of Moby Dick, Ishmael, as a focal critic to interpret several potential examples of ominous writing on the wall, or menetekel. It concludes that the message of such writing, owing primarily to its irrevocably deictic relationship with the surface it is written on, is fundamentally apocalyptic in nature, regardless of its explicit content. The physical walls of the “kingdom” are incorporated into the grammar of the menetekel as object, so that its elemental message, “I was here,” becomes not only an admission of criminal trespass, but also a direct threat to the current order and …

Ecclesia And Synagoga: The Tragic Pair Of Christian Iconography, Lilly Jones

Student Research Symposium

Ecclesia and Synagoga: The Tragic Pair of Christian Iconography

Mandala: On The Logos Of Place, Michael Schwartz

Journal of Conscious Evolution

Suddenly, during the night, one awakens while dreaming – aware that this is a dream. The “rules” of action, reaction, and of form itself are not that of the waking state – one might leap in the air and fly, transform one’s body into any number of forms, reach up in the sky and grab the sun and clouds, pulling them to the side, bringing forth a canopy of moon and stars. The entire scene, in the lucid dream, has a heightened sense of radiance and joy, vitality and freedom.

Imagine this sense of lucid dreaming is occurring right here …

Remembering The Future: Wild Time And The Cosmic Imagination, Arabella Thaïs

Journal of Conscious Evolution

Entropy – the Second Law of Thermodynamics – is generally held to prove “time’s arrow”: that time is linear and unidirectional, and that the universe is following this trajectory. This paper presents a preliminary exposition into a new, integral ontology of time in which time is hyper-dimensional, non-linear and flows in both directions. This is supported through trans-disciplinary praxis at the intersection of aesthetics, cosmology, quantum mechanics, and chaos theory. The metaphysical implications of reverse causality are investigated, and confer a teleological universe that is coherent with the paradigm of an intelligent, self-realising cosmos in which beauty is a fundamental …

Something “Transcendentally Stimulating”: Resistance And Antidote To Empiricist British Culture In Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’S Sherlock Holmes, Crissy Preston, Crissy M. Preston

Master of Arts in Classical Studies

Sherlock Holmes is a name synonymous with detective and perhaps more familiar to households than his creator Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. His lasting impact as a literary figure is indisputable, but the curiosity surrounding the reasons for his longevity in popularity remain an enigma to many scholars and critics. In my thesis, I will discuss some of the reasons Holmes relates to readers from various time periods, age groups, and nationalities for more than a century. The first section of this project will establish the empiricist culture surrounding the decadent late 1800s, which compose the setting for most of Doyle’s …

Tejiendo Historias, Construyendo Vidas: Un Capítulo Teotihuacano, Natalia Moragas Segura

Tejiendo imágenes. Homenaje a Victòria Solanilla Demestre

Este trabajo debe entenderse en el marco del Homenaje a la Dra. Victòria Solanilla visto desde mi punto de vista y con un toque personal comentando una parte de su recorrido académico y vital y los momentos en que nos cruzamos. Un capítulo teotihuacano que se focaliza en los años 2006-2008, con motivo de las investigaciones realizadas en el proyecto de colaboración científica impulsado por la Dra. Solanilla dentro del marco del Proyecto La Ventilla, Teotihuacan, bajo la dirección in situ del Mtro. Rubén Cabrera (INAH), y que sirve como excusa para hacer unos breves comentarios acerca de la problemática …

Origami Club - A Gateway Into The Art Of Self Expression, Minjae Song, Noah Vincent Rachwitz

Honors Program: Expanded Learning Clubs

The Nebraska Honors Program's Origami Club is an engaging platform for 3rd-5th graders that uses the fascinating Japanese art of origami to create a rich, interactive learning environment. Under the guidance of experienced instructors Minjae Song and Noah Rachwitz, and supplemented with YouTube tutorials, the club facilitates a captivating journey from simple projects to complex designs, skillfully developing each student's creativity, teamwork, and problem-solving capabilities. Each session is planned meticulously to ensure an immersive experience, starting with anticipation-building project reveals and culminating in the production of personal origami masterpieces. As a hands-on club, students are encouraged to question, explore, assist …

Welcome To The Cat House!, Sara Anne Hook

Graduate Scholarship and Professional Work

No abstract provided.

Helen Dupré Moseley: Artist, Author, Roller-Coaster Fan, And Air Stewardess On Flying Saucers, Lizzie Richards

Gender Studies Student Scholarship

Helen Dupré Moseley (1887-1984) was a prominent woman from Spartanburg, South Carolina who deserves to be recognized for transcending gender norms through her education, professional career, and overall artistic prowess and pioneering artistic style. She was born into a family that clearly placed high value on personal achievement and general notoriety, playing a big factor into how Moseley viewed herself. Previous research about her remains local to Spartanburg and needed to be expanded upon to further understand Moseley and her importance to the city. Most importantly, Moseley will be highlighted as an artist creating both brushwork pieces and later oil …