Tom Regan And The Problem Of Conflicting Rights,
2011
University of Texas at El Paso
Tom Regan And The Problem Of Conflicting Rights, Jeanine Campsall
Open Access Theses & Dissertations
N/A
The Border Mural In The Electronic Age: Xican@ Literacy As Rhetorical Agency,
2011
University of Texas at El Paso
The Border Mural In The Electronic Age: Xican@ Literacy As Rhetorical Agency, José Angel Maldonado
Open Access Theses & Dissertations
The Border Mural in the Electronic Age is a project that responds to blanket statements, not only about a people's literacy (or illiteracy), but to the ways in which we define and measure literacy in the electronic age. In this study, literacy is located on the US-México border, and this specific location serves as the social, political, and economic grounds on which to study the types of literacies used by the local population. A cultural ecology approach is necessary when studying niche literacies, and in today's world, traditional literacies coexist among emergent forms of literacy most likely attributed to technological …
Kandinsky's Nonrepresentational Art: Finding Meaning Through Aesthetic Experience,
2011
University of Texas at El Paso
Kandinsky's Nonrepresentational Art: Finding Meaning Through Aesthetic Experience, Kandice Nikkole Diaz
Open Access Theses & Dissertations
The art world is not one in which much scholarship has been conducted from a communication perspective. As such, this study attempts to add to the very little body of work that exists in the realms of both art and visual rhetoric. Abstract art, such as that of Wassily Kandinsky, is full of meaning despite the fact that it is nonobjective, and therefore considered meaningless. Using a rhetorical method, I argue that by examining the artwork of Wassily Kandinsky in certain contexts, it is possible to discover the meaning embedded in his abstract paintings, in particular his Compositions and Improvisations.
The Role Of Nature In John Muir's Conception Of The Good Life,
2011
Antioch University of New England
The Role Of Nature In John Muir's Conception Of The Good Life, Randy R. Larsen
Antioch University Dissertations & Theses
Aristotle says our best moral guidance comes from considering the lives of exemplary individuals. I explore John Muir, as an exemplar of environmental virtue, and consider the role of Nature in his conception of the good life. I argue his conception consists of a web of virtue including various goods, values, and virtues. I suggest three virtues are cardinal: attentiveness, gratitude and reverence. I explore how Muir cultivated these virtues in Nature.
I argue Muir sought freedom from a popular conception of the good life, grounded in the gilded age values of money and materialism, and was sensitive to the …
Incorporating Sustainability Into Urban Infrastructures: The Tension Between Bio-Cultural Aspects And Environmental Considerations,
2011
University of Texas at El Paso
Incorporating Sustainability Into Urban Infrastructures: The Tension Between Bio-Cultural Aspects And Environmental Considerations, Shane Epting
Open Access Theses & Dissertations
The following arguments focus on how to think about sustainability as it relates to technology and the non-human world within an anthropocentric framework. We end up with a picture showing that humankind needs to change the ways in which we look at anthropocentric concerns. Secondly, the discussion that leads up to the final picture details the urgency that guides the thinking behind the implementation of sustainability. Because, as the West learns to live in an entirely new sense that is consistent with holding humankind's desire for existence as a permanent situation, one finds that this notion must be paramount for …
The Mind And Metaphysics Of Agency,
2011
University of Texas at El Paso
The Mind And Metaphysics Of Agency, Gareth Fuller
Open Access Theses & Dissertations
In this thesis, I try to spell out what it is to be a human agent. I start by defending an account of agency which I call the cognitive account. The cognitive account of agency holds that there are certain mental capabilities that are required to determine what is an action of the agent and what is not. This then leads into a discussion of intentionality, where I defend a functionalist account of intentional realism. After this I discuss how actions and events are individuated leading into a discussion of what it is to do something intentionally. This relies heavily …
Problematizing Executive Prerogative In Locke And Rousseau,
2011
University of Texas at El Paso
Problematizing Executive Prerogative In Locke And Rousseau, Benjamin Joseph Gutierrez
Open Access Theses & Dissertations
The organization of this paper is composed of three main sections. The first section intensively analyzes the discourses of John Locke. Thoroughly combing through Locke's reasoning the concept six fundamental principles of executive prerogative are derived. This provides a basis for comparison and understanding.The second section investigates Jean-Jacques Rousseau's works as an alternative proposal to the static principles of Locke. In order to effectively gain insight on executive prerogative, the basis and purpose of proper governments must be thoroughly addressed. Through Rousseau's various works three tenets for proper governance are built. The factors that position Rousseau to advocate for executive …
The Exploratory Value Of Agent-Based Models In Social Science,
2011
University of Texas at El Paso
The Exploratory Value Of Agent-Based Models In Social Science, Ricardo Andress Rivera
Open Access Theses & Dissertations
N/A
The Relationship Between Divided Government And Real Per Capita Gross State Product,
2011
University of Texas at El Paso
The Relationship Between Divided Government And Real Per Capita Gross State Product, Adrian Christopher Villasenor
Open Access Theses & Dissertations
This paper analyzes the relationship between divided government and real per capita gross state product in U.S. states using a panel study of data from all of the contiguous U.S. states, except Nebraska, for the period of 1990 to 2007. Some literature can be found on the relationship between divided government and economic growth at the national level. There is a lack of study of this relationship at the state level. Real per capita gross state product is the dependent variable in this study. Divided government, partisan control of the governor's office, partisan control of the state legislature, combined federal …
Introduction,
2011
Rhode Island School of Design
Introduction, Ananta Sukla
Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)
No abstract provided.
Icon And Image In Modern Thai Art: A Preliminary Exploration,
2011
University of Sydney
Icon And Image In Modern Thai Art: A Preliminary Exploration, John Clark
Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)
Thai modern art is marked by the actual deployment of religious or august symbolic icons or the quasi-iconic use of images of variable indexicality in otherwise highly secular contexts. What were the sources for such modern uses and have the semiotic functions of icons shifted? To answer these questions, at least partially, religious functions for images are examined by tracking the use of court images and Buddhist figures.
Recent Publications,
2011
Rhode Island School of Design
Philosophical Hermeneutics And The Ethical Function Of Architecture,
2011
Seattle University
Philosophical Hermeneutics And The Ethical Function Of Architecture, Paul Kidder
Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)
Karsten Harries’ book, The Ethical Function of Architecture, raises the question of how architecture can be interpretive of and for our time. Part of Harries’ pursuit of this question is done in dialogue with the philosophy of Martin Heidegger, whose evocatively expressed ontology of building and dwelling recovered, in philosophical and poetic terms, the power of buildings to symbolize and interpret the most fundamental truths of being and human existence. The present essay identifies contributions to this hermeneutic and ontological approach to architecture drawn from the philosophy of Hans-Georg Gadamer, emphasizing Gadamer’s notions of play (Spiel), symbol, and the …
Affirming Difference: Everyday Aesthetic Experience After Phenomenology,
2011
Goldsmiths, University of London
Affirming Difference: Everyday Aesthetic Experience After Phenomenology, Wood Roberdeau
Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)
This article explores the complex relationships among two different types of critique, the socio-temporal zone known as "everyday life" and the moment of the encounter by those who are encountering art works. It proceeds with a close study of the phenomenology of Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Mikel Dufrenne, and tests their key concepts against generalized contemporary art practices that question a model of the traditional aesthetic experience by suggesting the possibility that within the expanse of postmodernity such a paradigm has shifted, (although it is not completely irretrievable). The paper argues that this shift has been achieved by remobilizing readymade objects …
Video Games As Mass Art,
2011
Lincoln University
Video Games As Mass Art, Grant Tavinor
Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)
Videogames are one of the most significant developments in the mass arts of recent times. In commercial terms, they are now among the most prominent of the mass arts worldwide. This commercial and cultural success does not exhaust the interest in videogames as a mass art phenomenon because games such as Grand Theft Auto IV and Fallout 3 are structurally radically different from previous forms of mass art. In particular, the ontology of videogames, the nature and identity of their works, and how they are instanced and evaluated is a departure from the familiar mass arts of film and popular …
Disgust And Ugliness: A Kantian Perspective,
2011
Central European University, Budapest, Hungary
Disgust And Ugliness: A Kantian Perspective, Mojca Kuplen
Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)
Contemporary discussions of the problem of ugliness in Kant’s aesthetic theory have, to my knowledge, left unexplored the relation of disgust to ugliness. At most, they have explained away disgust as merely an extreme form of ugliness or displeasure, as Guyer did in his interpretation of ugliness in Kant’s aesthetic theory,[1] and by that strayed from the phenomenological and conceptual uniqueness of disgust in comparison to ugliness, while Kant, as I argue, did not. As a matter of fact, careful investigation of the concept of disgust in Kant’s writing will reveal the distinctive and multifaceted character that he ascribed …
Aura, Self, And Aesthetic Experience,
2011
Grand Valley State University
Aura, Self, And Aesthetic Experience, Marshall Battani
Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)
Aesthetic experiences are generated in encounters with cultural objects and such experiences are marked by the free play of cognitive and numinous experience unstructured by concepts. Kant’s famous three types of pleasure, made infamous in social theory by Pierre Bourdieu, are examined in relation to the critical theoretical concept of aura, the social psychology of “flow,” and cognitive explanations of perception to explain experience in aesthetic fields. Theories of aesthetic experience developed at the crossroad of critical social thought and cognitive science hold promise for a social analysis able to avoid the usual sociological pitfalls of either ignoring aesthetics or …
Editorial Note,
2011
Rhode Island School of Design
Everyday, Elsewhere: Allegory In Philippine Art,
2011
University of the Philippines
Everyday, Elsewhere: Allegory In Philippine Art, Patrick D. Flores
Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)
The essay traces certain contexts of the allegorical impulse in Philippine image making and art, specifically as it marks the self-consciousness of the maker of image and art to render time, place, and event legible. It conceives of it as an aesthetic of migration, prefiguring an elsewhere that is aspired to as well as a phantasm of affinity that describes a present condition. The allegorical, therefore, bears the desire to belong to the world, referencing both the critique of coloniality as well as the possibility of transcending it at the very moment of revealing its ethical failure.
The Grid And The Nomadic Line In The Art Of Phaptawan Suwannakudt,
2011
University of the Philippines
The Grid And The Nomadic Line In The Art Of Phaptawan Suwannakudt, Flaudette V. May Datuin
Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)
Inspired by Thomas Lamarre’s deployment of Deleuze and Guattari’s “nomadic line” in his analysis of Heian calligraphy, this essay hopes to demonstrate how the Thai artist, Phaptawan Suwannakudt, drawing on a deeply internalized feeling for form in Buddhist painting, moves us to go beyond sight and surface appearances by creating through gestures, sensations and inscriptions zones of disruption, disorientation, departures, and arrivals.
