Theory and Criticism Commons^™

John Frederick Kensett & Lotus-Eating, Elizabeth Montfort

Dartmouth College Master’s Theses

This thesis examines Lotus-Eating: A Summer Book (1860) by George William Curtis, with illustrations by John Frederick Kensett. Situating the work within the broader culture of the nineteenth-century travel literature, it analyzes the text’s intermedial construction across memoir, poetry, and visual imagery. By considering each of these modes both independently and in relation to one another, the thesis argues that Curtis and Kensett collaboratively produce a hierarchical framework for viewing and experiencing nature.

Drawing on intermedial and ecocritical methodologies, this project demonstrates how the book does not simply depict landscape but actively instructs its audience in how to see it. …

Echoes Of A Country In Question: Visualizing And Constructing Lebanese Identity Through Contemporary Artistic Practice At The Venice Biennale, Anoush Manoukian

MA Theses

Historically (and presently) riven by sectarianism, struggling with massively degraded infrastructure, and seething with starkly apparent class divisions, Lebanon has long been tied up with bloody postwar politics, paralyzed by innumerable crippling setbacks on its path to recovery. During war, images of conflict have been plastered across media stations, firming the country’s place in the global conversation and imagination; everyone had heard about Lebanon, and people from the art world were attracted to the work being produced in Beirut: a localized body of work that was thematically interesting, formally unique, aesthetically neoconceptual and allegorical in approach. Unresolved conflicts have long …

The Weight, Hammet Reavis

Theses and Dissertations

What follows drifts between out to under, argument to object, learned to unlearned, and then back again, for now. What remains is not erased, but held in tension - pressed forward by an unspoken weight. However, let's go on record and retrace this gesture, not by means of crossthru, but as underline.

Science Fiction Cinema And The Technological Sublime: Spectacle And The Infinite From Early Cinema To Digital, David Jackson Dr.

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

This dissertation examines how science fiction cinema constructs and reimagines the technological sublime in the twentieth century: the experience of awe, terror, and admiration provoked by human-made power and scale. Drawing on the philosophical foundations of the sublime in Edmund Burke and Immanuel Kant and extending through Leo Marx’s and David E. Nye’s theorization of the technological sublime, I propose an aesthetic mode in which representation inflected with affect translates technological spectacle into examinations of humanity’s role and agency in the face of overwhelming technologized worlds and in some cases, even the universe itself.

Through three distinct historical periods …

El Estudio Del Arte Contemporáneo Cubano A Través De Cuatro Obras “Apócrifas”: Lo Apócrifo Como Estrategia De Producción De Distorsiones Entre La Realidad Y Lo Ficticio. Un Reporte De Investigación, Laura M. Garcés Ramírez, Jorge Prieto Terrones

Journal of Roleplaying Studies and STEAM

Magela Garcés Ramírez's thesis, entitled Between Fiction and Reality. An Approach to the Apocryphal in Contemporary Cuban Art, is a research proposal consisting of four artists, whose common factor is that they discuss the limits of reality and its connection with fiction, with the intention of raising the next questions: What we are seeing?, Is it real?, Is it true?, Is it part of everyday life? The thesis proposes a division of categories to analyze the above: “remix,” “heteronym,” “historical object,” and “simulacrum product.” The document addresses the theorizations, methodologies, background, and selection criteria of artists, namely Jorge Rodríguez …

Animal Man: Morrison's Reflection On The Author, Ellie Harwood

Student Scholar Symposium

Grant Morrison’s Animal Man debuted in DC Comics in 1988. For seven years as its author, Morrison explored themes of animal rights, conservationism, postmodernism, existentialism, and even free will all through their careful deconstruction of the superhero genre. In “Animal Man: Morrison’s Reflection on the author”, Ellie Harwood analyzes major portions of Morrison’s comic to identify their commentary on the relationship between people, animals, and fictional characters, and the moral ramifications of those relationships. Harwood achieves this through identifying the similarities between how Morrison portrays animals in the comic, as well as how they portray their own characters on a …

A Burlesque: The Shimmering Body Of Revealing, Lola Montgomery

Staff Scholarship - Australia & Dubai

A Burlesque: The Shimmer Manuscript is a hybrid critical–creative work that examines burlesque as an embodied methodology and a mode of knowledge production. Drawing from my two decades as a performer–scholar, the work reframes glamour, desire, and adornment as epistemological practices rather than theatrical ornamentation. The project is significant in that it expands understandings of performance studies, autotheory, and feminist aesthetics by foregrounding the performer’s body as an intelligent, sensing, world-making apparatus.

The methodology is creative practice research and archive-driven, integrating backstage documentation, AI-assisted photomontage, and theoretical reflection. The work draws from poststructuralist and feminist frameworks (Irigaray, Deleuze & Guattari, …

Firing Through Adversity: How Women Ceramicists Sustained Stoke-On-Trent’S Pottery Industry Between The Wars, Zachary Carlson

Theses

Between the First and Second World Wars, the pottery industry of Stoke-on-Trent endured economic depression, material shortages, and social upheaval. Within this volatile context, women ceramicists such as Susie Cooper and Clarice Cliff emerged as central figures in sustaining, and redefining British ceramic production. This thesis examines how these artists transformed adversity into innovation through design, entrepreneurship, and leadership, arguing that their work both stabilized the industry and advanced a distinctly feminist modernism grounded in labor, creativity, and resilience. Drawing on feminist design theory, class and economic analysis, and material culture studies, this research situates Cooper and Cliff within broader …

Investigating The Relationship Between Noun Classes And Plant Folk Taxonomy In Chasu Language Of Kilimanjaro Region In Tanzania, Peter Rabson Mziray

Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences

The current study investigates the relationship between noun classes and plant folk taxonomy in Chasu (G 22). The study focuses on two objectives: the first objective is to describe the plant folk taxonomy in Chasu and the second objective is to determine the relationship between noun classes and plant folk taxonomy in Chasu. Data were collected from rural villages in Same and Mwanga districts by using free listing, field interviews (jungle-walk-and-identify), and written texts containing Chasu plant names. The findings reveal that Chasu folk taxonomy reflects different ethnobotanical categories; including a unique beginner which is mmea/mimea ‘plant(s)’, and three life …

Front Matter, Kris K. Belden-Adams

Art Inquiries

No abstract provided.

Review - Shahzia Sikander: Collective Behavior, Annie Dell'aria

Art Inquiries

Shahzia Sikander’s work spans traditions from multiple continents, eras, and media. Trained in the traditional miniature painting of South Asia and Persia, yet creating monumental pieces that command space both inside and outside the gallery, this artistic polymath maintains a signature style rooted in sumptuous detail and motifs that drip with layers of meaning. In Collective Behavior, a multi-part, career-spanning traveling museum exhibition of works made over the past 35 years, Sikander’s full array of talent and artistic evolution is on display.

Review: The Visionary Art Of Minnie Evans, Cynthia Fowler

Art Inquiries

The Visionary Art of Minnie Evans was a small exhibition of 16 drawings and paintings by Minnie Evans (1892-1987) on loan to the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (MFA) from the Cameron Art Museum in Wilmington, North Carolina, which holds a significant collection of her work. Evans was born in North Carolina and spent most of her life in Wilmington. Her artworks are colorful compositions rich with decorative details that illustrate her dreams and visions. But the exhibition attempted to expand our understanding of Evans’s work beyond them. Divided into three categories — “Wilmington Landscapes,” “Spiritual Nature,” and “Visual Culture” …

A Formidable Female Network: The Role Of Women In William Henry Fox Talbot’S Establishment Of Early Photography, Rose Teanby Phd

Art Inquiries

This paper explores how women assisted William Henry Fox Talbot (1800-1877) to establish his Photogenic Drawing and Calotype photographic processes in Great Britain and Europe. Utilising preserved contemporary correspondence as a primary source of unedited transcribed conversations, the genesis of photography can be revisited from an alternative viewpoint of extensive familial collaboration. Letters between Talbot and his female relatives exposed a sophisticated network of interconnected mid 19^th century social elite, providing multiple opportunities for informal advocacy and timely dissemination of the new scientific art.

Epistolary exchanges from 1839 to 1858 provide new insights into women’s subtle, less visible influence …

Review: 60th October Salon - What’S Left?, Rachel Klipa

Art Inquiries

Spread across nine venues and public spaces in Belgrade, Serbia, the 60th October Salon’s concept posed a pressing question: What’s Left? In a moment marked by oppressive capitalism, cultural erasure, and the slow dismantling of socialist ideals, this year’s biennial resisted nostalgia and nationalism. Instead, it probed the emotional and political residues of systems in flux, examining how art can sustain memory, provoke continuity, and imagine new futures in uncertain times.

Art Inquiries Volume Xx No 1 2025 - Full Issue, Kris K. Belden-Adams

Art Inquiries

No abstract provided.

Review: Luna Luna: Forgotten Fantasy, Jessica J. Stephenson

Art Inquiries

In 1987, Luna Luna, a fairground/immersive art installation, opened in Hamburg, Germany. A decades-long project in the making, it was conceived and realized by André Heller, a Vienna-based avant-garde artist, musician, film-maker, and author favoring multimedia work including circuses, parades, variety shows, firework displays and poetic gardens. Over the course of three months, about 300,000 attendees traversed Heller’s Luna Luna’s exuberant space with performances, music, and rides on art works that took the form of Ferris wheels, carousals, infinity mirror rooms, puppet shows and other theatrics. The works were created by more than 30 artists including notable 20 …

Conjuring Elizabeth Fulhame: Using Ai To Depict The Invisible Woman From The Dawn Of Photography., Yvette Hamilton

Art Inquiries

Histories of the origins of photography are dominated by men, but the lesser-known contributions of women, such as the British chemist Elizabeth Fulhame, were fundamental to its success. Fulhame’s eighteenth-century chemical experiments directly contributed to the birth of photography, however, she is either totally obscured, or only briefly footnoted, in foundational texts on the history of photography. Her obscuration is heightened by the complete absence of any surviving images of her - she is, quite literally, invisible within a medium whose history privileges the visible.

This paper charts my practice-led research that used AI generative imaging to create speculative portraits …

Exhibition Review - Sung Tieu: 1992, 2025, Lina Alam

Art Inquiries

Over the last decade, we have witnessed the ascendancy, consolidation and mobilization of far-right movements around the world – not least in Germany. The Vietnamese-German artist Sung Tieu lives there and produces mixed-media work on recent histories of state violence, racism, migration and surveillance. In her solo show 1992, 2025 at the KW (Kunst Werke) Institute for Contemporary Art in Berlin, Tieu expanded on her previous projects about the 1980 labor recruitment agreement between the German Democratic Republic (GDR) and the Socialist Republic of Vietnam that resulted in nearly 70,000 Vietnamese workers relocating to Germany. Her new body of work …

Dependency In Romantic Relationships: Bloom’S Other In Ulysses, Lydia Smaciarz

Journal of the Symposium of University Research and Creative Expression

Project Mentor(s): Christopher Schedler, PhD

James Joyce’s Ulysses explores themes of love, grief, religion, culture, and identity while following the journey of Leopold Bloom, a husband and father who has a problematic sense of Self. Bloom’s difficulty to find himself is prominently shown through his relationship with his wife, Molly, with whom he no longer has a healthy romantic relationship. Bloom reminisces on several memories with Molly which expose the reason for his lack of Self – his dependence on Molly. This presentation applies Jacques Lacan’s concept of “The Mirror Stage” to Bloom’s nostalgic memories of Molly in Ulysses. …

Frida Kahlo: More Than The Unibrow, A Cultural Feminist Analysis, Karen Valencia

Journal of the Symposium of University Research and Creative Expression

Project Mentor(s): Erika Pazian

Frida Kahlo has been a common name in the art historical canon – one that reinvented Surrealism, despite not identifying with the style, and challenged conventional norms in artistic practices. Many of her works are discussed in Mexican art historical settings, however, the research of this paper will point the bulk of its focus directly onto The Two Fridas, offering additional discussion on how it connects to feminist theory. Kahlo was a deeply complicated woman, reduced to her bus incident, or tumultuous relationship with muralist Diego Rivera. The materials used as sources in this paper will …