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Research: Art, Information, And Academic Inquiry, Luke D. McKinney 2024 University of Maine

Research: Art, Information, And Academic Inquiry, Luke D. Mckinney

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In light of the rapidly changing landscape of knowledge production and dissemination, this paper proposes a reformation of academic research that integrates artistic methodologies, emphasizes interdisciplinary collaboration, and prioritizes clear communication to both specialized and general audiences. By reconceptualizing research as a multidimensional, embodied practice that encompasses both rational and irrational elements, we can create a more inclusive, adaptable, and effective approach to scholarship that bridges the rational divide between artistic and scientific inquiry that allows for the engagement of Artistic Research from within the institution, ultimately leading to more innovative and impactful contributions to human knowledge.


Moral Education Through Mass Art: Implementing Vanderpump Rules In The Modern Ethics Classroom, Madison A. Cosby 2024 University of Tennessee, Knoxville

Moral Education Through Mass Art: Implementing Vanderpump Rules In The Modern Ethics Classroom, Madison A. Cosby

Masters Theses

In a world dominated by screens, professors more than ever need to diversify their pedagogical methods to compete for the tech-dependent students’ attention. In Section One, I argue the traditional method for teaching ethics does not cater to the modern student, thus to cultivate a more compassionate and ethical society, we should rethink how we conduct our ethics classes.

Traditional ethics classes rely too much on bizarre thought experiments, convoluted and abstract texts, and unstimulating lectures making them less effective at achieving their true purpose, i.e. cultivating what Martha Nussbaum (2010) calls the democratic citizen. I argue that Nussbaum’s narrative …


Shifting Forms: Queer Placemaking Amidst Neoliberalism In New York City Through Art, Colin J. Donnelly 2024 Dartmouth College

Shifting Forms: Queer Placemaking Amidst Neoliberalism In New York City Through Art, Colin J. Donnelly

Geography Undergraduate Senior Theses

This project explicates how queer people produce space for themselves through art in New York City amidst the prevalent neoliberal frameworks that have existed since the 1980s. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with queer artists and nonprofit workers, participant observation in art spaces, and close reading of art compiled through archival work, I explore sites of presentation (places in which art is displayed) and modes of presentation (how specific artists decide to present their art). I analyze museums and nonprofit spaces, and engage with queer artists that create what I consider to be site-specific art. I zoom in on spatial art …


Threading With Hair // Intertwined Stories, Cloris Ding 2024 Rhode Island School of Design

Threading With Hair // Intertwined Stories, Cloris Ding

Masters Theses

“Threading with Hair // Intertwined Stories” is a poignant exploration that navigates the nuanced landscape of women's growth and identity recognition amidst biased societal influences, tracing the trajectory from the artist’s mother's generation to her own. Through a deeply personal lens, the thesis transcends individual narratives to articulate some shared female experiences. Employing reflective works in the form of jewelry, objects and writings, the study delves into female-centric topics, including the fluidity of identity, the transformative journey through various life stages, and the profound impact of societal expectations and family heritage. At the heart of this exploration is the metaphorical …


Frontier: Land, Architecture, And Abstraction, Jacob Boatman 2024 Rhode Island School of Design

Frontier: Land, Architecture, And Abstraction, Jacob Boatman

Masters Theses

The abstraction of land is a colonial process by which physical land is transformed into a conceptual or symbolic entity. This transformation occurs through various economic, architectural, and cultural practices that imbue land with abstract values, meanings, and functions beyond its physicality. This includes the division of land into parcels for economic transactions, the design and construction of built environments that shape human interactions with the land, and the cultural narratives and representations that ascribe significance to particular landscapes. Through abstraction, colonial powers devalue indigenous perspectives and relationships to the land, reducing them to mere obstacles in the path of …


Industrial Tenderness, Elbert Girón 2024 Rhode Island School of Design

Industrial Tenderness, Elbert Girón

Masters Theses

Industrial Tenderness surveys the relationship between visual language, cultural expression, and diasporic practices through the design of functional sculptures. These designed objects seek to communicate cultural legibility, or intuitive cultural belonging, to Mexican-American peoples by challenging legacy notions of design language. Through a proposed design language framework and designed objects, Industrial Tenderness seeks to affirm a pluriversal practice of industrial design.

Legacy industrial design confines design language to a heavily prescriptive canon, resulting in a stark monocultural language that is unrepresentative of perspectives outside of a legacy dominant white eurocentricity founded in thinking from the Bauhaus and Ulm schools. Through …


Knowledge Production And The Unthinkable: Weaving Stories Of Art, Gender, And Land, Christin Huntsman 2024 University of San Francisco

Knowledge Production And The Unthinkable: Weaving Stories Of Art, Gender, And Land, Christin Huntsman

Master's Theses

Colonialism is deeply and violently embedded in Western knowledge formation—dominant power structures produce epistemes that uphold and perpetuate colonial narratives. This kind of knowledge production forecloses other possibilities. Western discourse of truth becomes universalized to the point that other worldviews, other knowledges that do not conform to hegemonic norms, are suppressed or silenced. This thesis examines three areas of hegemony and erasure: art, gender, and land. First, the history of art clearly marks a delineation between Western elitist artistic masterpieces and non-Western ethnographic artifacts. Eurocentrism of art in the academy determines what counts as art and how art is categorized. …


Texas Gothic, Taryn Uribe Turner 2024 Southern Methodist University

Texas Gothic, Taryn Uribe Turner

Art Theses and Dissertations

The emotional and the ecological combine to create my body of work titled, “Texas Gothic.” My thesis tells the stories of my oil paintings created through personal connections to a variety of landscapes, animals and experiences that share the setting of Texas.

Desire and regret take shape as animals and figures not fully formed or real. Unreliable narratives of the past are entangled with present tensions to create a painting that haunts and stalks.

And yet, there is hope!

Through nostalgia and sweetness and burdens, my paintings confront a shrouded future. The contradictions of time passing are explored in my …


Queerform/Ing, Matthew Solon-Lee Weimer 2024 Southern Methodist University

Queerform/Ing, Matthew Solon-Lee Weimer

Art Theses and Dissertations

My artwork is situated within and around vessels and the Queer Homoerotic World and explores sexuality as a Demisexual within them. This is accomplished through the two processes of my creation, Minivague and Queerform/ing: balancing sexual tension and explicit expression, while subverting traditional norms and stereotypes with queerness to distance oneself from stereotypical Gay Art. Altering/emphasizing makes the artwork more romantic, lighter, whimsical, softer, and tender than the figure/s and the situations actually are. The process is also emphasizing what one sees or wants to be seen. The Pink Boy becomes a celebration of intimacy of any form. I discuss …


With Love, ; An Interdisciplinary And Intersectional Look At Why Creativity Is Essential, Theo Starr Gardner 2024 Whittier College

With Love, ; An Interdisciplinary And Intersectional Look At Why Creativity Is Essential, Theo Starr Gardner

Whittier Scholars Program

My Whittier Scholars Program self-designed major, Teaching Creativity, is a mixture of Art, Literature, and Education classes. My research and praxis classes have been focused on the ‘how?’s and 'why?’s of creativity, so it felt only right that my project should be a constructivist, generative project. The project I have been working on throughout my time at Whittier, and that has just fully come to fruition on April 11th, 2024, was a solo art gallery/open mic event entitled ‘With Love,’. With Love, was conceptually inspired by the research I’ve conducted on creativity and creative arts education over the past few …


The Question Of Design In The Context Of The First Australian Nations: Designing Reparations Through Decolonial Architecture, Eli Abamonte 2024 Kennesaw State University

The Question Of Design In The Context Of The First Australian Nations: Designing Reparations Through Decolonial Architecture, Eli Abamonte

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

Forget about tourist postcards and picture-perfect landscapes. Australia's true heart beats in the ancient stories of the Indigenous communities that tell them, their vibrant cultural tapestry woven beneath the surface. My research dives into this tapestry, not as an Architect with blueprints imposing my own vision, but as a student with an open ear and collaborative spirit. Australia’s vastness holds countless stories, but my research led me deep into the heart of East Arnhem Land, where ancient legends whisper in the wind and the Yolngu people dwell. Anthropologists like Bruno Descola shattered my singular view of the world, revealing a …


Aguaaaa!!!, Cory Villegas 2024 CUNY Hunter College

Aguaaaa!!!, Cory Villegas

Theses and Dissertations

“AGUA” is a call for new models of learning and sharing, celebrating the diasporic as a place of global revolution. Salsa, rooted in Latin American and Afro-Caribbean histories, is choreographer Cory Villegas’s expression of cultural legacy. As an Afro-diasporic dance, Salsa carries the wealth and variety of African and Indigenous roots. Villegas contextualizes her thesis event “Las Leyendas: An Afro Cuban Suite,” presenting herself and her troupe Soul Dance Co. as evidence that contradicts the erasure of Latin & Caribbean Culture in US dance history. The paper uses English and Spanish, written, visual, and oral materials with an accompanying webpage.


A Taste For The Distasteful: The Aesthetics Of Gore In The Giallo And Horror Films Of Mario Bava, Thais Casado Bignardi-Engstrom 2024 CUNY Hunter College

A Taste For The Distasteful: The Aesthetics Of Gore In The Giallo And Horror Films Of Mario Bava, Thais Casado Bignardi-Engstrom

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis analyzes the Italian experience with horror in cinema in both psychoanalytic feminist and cognitive Marxist critical film theories through a study of visual renderings of excessive violence and sex in gothic and thrillers known as giallo films created by the film director Mario Bava. This is an art historical study that looks at Bava’s work against the Italian cultural landscape in the post war period.


A Biography And Case Study On Marthe Wéry Her Ceaseless Exploration Of The Components Of Painting: Tracing Journeys In The Artist’S Life And Work, Sarah Grace Jones 2024 CUNY Hunter College

A Biography And Case Study On Marthe Wéry Her Ceaseless Exploration Of The Components Of Painting: Tracing Journeys In The Artist’S Life And Work, Sarah Grace Jones

Theses and Dissertations

My thesis investigates Belgian artist Marthe Wéry’s oeuvre, determines art-historical contexts for her paintings, and examines the many milestones that exemplify her work. Her monochromatic paintings, radical experiments with paint, empirical way of thinking, and exploration of architecture defend her robust career and demand involvement in today’s art historical conversation.


Southern And Caribbean Transnational Black Feminist Dialogues In Contemporary Art, Adria Gunter 2024 CUNY Hunter College

Southern And Caribbean Transnational Black Feminist Dialogues In Contemporary Art, Adria Gunter

Theses and Dissertations

“Southern and Caribbean Black Feminist Transnational Dialogues in Contemporary Art” presents a Black feminist reading of the transnational cultural forms, as well as the political and social histories between the Southern United States and the Caribbean through the works of Andrea Chung, Allison Janae Hamilton, and Tamika Galanis.


Mourning Before Death: Ferdinand Hodler And Valentine Godé-Darel, Nicolas Dowling 2024 CUNY Hunter College

Mourning Before Death: Ferdinand Hodler And Valentine Godé-Darel, Nicolas Dowling

Theses and Dissertations

“Mourning Before Death” explores Ferdinand Hodler's (1853-1918) artistic relationship with death and grief culminating in an examination of his series of paintings and drawings depicting the slow death of his mistress, Valentine Godé-Darel. This thesis primarily utilizes the theories of Elisabeth Kübler-Ross as a framework for understanding Hodler’s work.


Cinema's Poetic Function: Creating An Amorous Distance, William Yonts 2024 Chapman University

Cinema's Poetic Function: Creating An Amorous Distance, William Yonts

Film and Media Studies (MA) Theses

The aim of this thesis is to examine how cinema can embrace its poetic function to avoid its assimilation into preexisting hermeneutic structures, which would leave it vulnerable to myth as defined by Roland Barthes, and instead be a generative force, encouraging its viewer to engage with the full potential of the text. This mode of spectatorship is termed the “amorous distance,” which Barthes describes as his simultaneous fascination with the film and that which exceeds it. The amorous distance finds further articulation through the work of Roman Jakobson and Julia Kristeva. Jakobson’s schema of six language functions describes the …


That Way: An Examination Of Male Relationships In Film During The Hays Code, Jane Knudsen 2024 University of Nebraska at Omaha

That Way: An Examination Of Male Relationships In Film During The Hays Code, Jane Knudsen

Theses/Capstones/Creative Projects

The Hays Code (1934-1968) influenced the construct of United States masculinity and the discourse surrounding masculine presentation between the 1920s to the 1960s. The Hays Code and World War II affected the culture surrounding male/male relationships in the United States. Previous research done by David Lugowski (1999) and Jeffrey Suzik (1999) shows that both World Wars led to crises of masculinity in which the hegemonic ideal of masculinity was restructured to establish men as providers and warriors, and Code-era films reflected the discourse. To understand the gender roles in the 20th century, I analyzed the Hays code, male bonds, …


Re-Evaluating Egalitarian Design In Contemporary Danish Society, Alice Baughman 2024 William & Mary

Re-Evaluating Egalitarian Design In Contemporary Danish Society, Alice Baughman

Undergraduate Honors Theses

This study examines the discourses and practices of egalitarian architecture in contemporary Denmark. Denmark’s long standing comprehensive welfare system promotes, for all citizens, equal access to education, healthcare, and public services, and other opportunities. Similarly, its own brand of socially progressive, egalitarian architecture encourages spatial designs intended for use by all people regardless of social disparities. Drawing on a range of sources from government documents to architectural magazines to design projects themselves, this study defines the historical development of this discourse going back to Modernist and Functionalist movements in the 1930s. By revealing the cultural and demographic assumptions on which …


Origin Stories., Danielle Deeley 2024 University of Louisville

Origin Stories., Danielle Deeley

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis is an investigation into the Peruvian pre-Columbian collection at the Speed Art Museum in Louisville, Kentucky. The Speed Art Museum acquired this collection in 1934 and it has largely remained unresearched for nearly a century after acquisition into the museum’s collection. This investigation is not an attempt to make broad characterizations of pre-Columbian ceramics. Nor is its goal to fill in all the gaps of the collection’s history. Instead, this thesis follows the evidence the collection presents: the physical attributes of the ceramics, the donor’s history, U.S. history, and information from the collection file provided by the Speed …


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