Digital Commons Network^™

Trans-Pacific Connections: Chinese Porcelain And Aztec Motifs In Colonial Mexico, Natalia Ramirez

Departmental Honors & Graduate Capstone Projects

This research explores artworks within the Global Baroque as visual and ideological evidence through which colonial power, trade, and cross-cultural influence shaped the material culture of the early modern world. Centering on blue and white ceramics as a key medium of transcultural and trans-local exchange, the study analyzes how global motifs, particularly those drawn from Aztec and Chinese traditions, were reinterpreted, aestheticized, and circulated in Aztec and Novohispanic artistic practices.

Through a close observational comparison of Aztec and Chinese decorative systems, the study recognizes contrasting systems of cultural documentation embedded within similar visual forms. Aztec motifs, rooted in ritual, calendrical, …

Trans-Pacific Connections: Unveiling Cultural Exchange Through Baroque Folding Screens Of Japan And Mexico, Natalia Christine Ramirez

Departmental Honors & Graduate Capstone Projects

This study focuses into the often-overlooked world of 16th-17th-century globally-mobile folding screens, revealing them as vastly important cultural objects. While conventional scholarship tends to compartmentalize artistic traditions, focusing on isolated cultures, this research emphasizes the vibrant exchanges that connected Japan and Mexico during the ‘Baroque’ period. By contrasting the Conquest of Mexico screen with the Japanese Namban Folding Screen, the nuances and vastness of cultural interaction through creative objects becomes illuminated and revered as important pieces of global history.

Through applying global art historical theories, especially the concept of the ‘global Baroque,’ I explore how Mexican biombo screens adapted from …

Art In Itself: The Vision Of Three Female Mississippi Artists, Jane E. Thomas

Honors Theses

This thesis is a collection of longform, narrative-style journalistic profiles on artists in Northeast Mississippi. These artists include Carol Roark from Enid and Hannah McCormick and Coulter Fussell from Water Valley. Each profile highlights an individual artist’s work, from her background, inspirations, process and distinctiveness as a creator. These profiles required studio visits and extensive interviews, as well as secondary interviews with clients, gallery owners and art curators. An overarching theme between the three artists is their ability to recognize artistic potential in their immediate surroundings; Roark paints landscapes from her own backyard, McCormick paints scenes from everyday life and …

Automation Of Javanese Shadow Puppets Using Machine Control, Kristian Rice, Yinson Tso, Mukhammadali Yuldoshev

Publications and Research

The virtualization of Javanese shadow puppetry (Wayang Kulit) offers a unique opportunity to preserve and revitalize traditional performance art through immersive digital platforms. This project explores the development of a virtual Wayang Kulit experience using real-time 3D engines like Unity/Unreal Engine while focusing on simulating the mechanics and aesthetics of shadow puppet performance. The puppets are designed using detailed 2D planes and rigged with skeletal systems to reflect the stylized motion of traditional puppetry. An aspect of this project is integrating an AI-driven control system that autonomously animates the puppets, learning from recorded puppeteer performances to replicate gesture, rhythm, and …

Society’S Press: Designing A Digital Commons To Promote Critical Thought And Civil Discourse, Louis Driver

Honors College Theses

This thesis proposes the design of a new digital commons aimed at counteracting the negative incentives that currently dominate online discourse. This paper outlines the research and design of a system that promotes informative, medium-length, user-generated content, emphasizing thoughtful communication over virality. Inspired by academic peer-review practices, the proposed platform will implement a community-driven moderation model to reduce low-quality contributions and foster constructive feedback.

Visibly Invisible: Reclaiming Atlanta Black Architecture Through Black Expression, Sean M. Spencer

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

Architecture has long grappled with questions of self, community, and cultural identity. While the number of Black architects is growing, architecture that genuinely reflects Black identity remains rare. This lack of representation has contributed to a sense of invisibility for Black communities within the built environment—whether by design or neglect. There is an urgent need to define and celebrate Blackness and Black space in ways that reflect the cultural richness of Black communities. As George Will points out, broad labels like African American or African often obscure the unique cultural experiences within Black communities. Historically, the lack of economic and …

Shell Quilt: Piecing Memory Through Quilting, Collage, And Printmaking, Grace M. Woodruff

Bachelor of Fine Arts Senior Papers

Shell Quilt is a mixed media quilt and accompanying book which collect an amalgamation of found, hand dyed, and printed fabric pieces. This project serves as a visual tether and inquiry into my late grandmother Sylvia’s life and a way of piecing together memories of my time with her. As a conceptual frame for my thesis project, Shell Quilt, I have looked to the process of femmage, a term initially coined by Miriam Schapiro and Melissa Meyer, which I interpret as a portmanteau of feminism and collage. Through the lens of femmage, I explore the processes of collage, quilting, …

Firing The Canon: Queer Representation In The Magical Girl Genre, Lena C. Humble

MFA in Illustration & Visual Culture

This research delves into the impact queer representation in the shoujo (Japanese for young girl) genre has on audiences. More specifically, the “Magical Girl” (a subgenre of shoujo) genre’s main focus is about ordinary girls whose lives are drastically changed when they are given magical powers. One of the major plot points of magical girl media is how these girls find balance with their ordinary lives with their magical alter egos, and their attempts to keep these lives separate. Much of this media follows a small group of girls, who tend to build deeply emotionally intimate relationships as they share …

The Dragon's Eye: A Quest For Tabletop Role-Playing's Visual Culture, Benjamin Kent

MFA in Illustration & Visual Culture

The world of Tabletop Role-Playing Games (TRPGs) has always been defined and dominated by Dungeons & Dragons (D&D), the game that pioneered the industry in the 1970’s. Meanwhile during this time, independent games have consistently innovated new ways of utilizing this highly creative field both in contrast and in concert with D&D’s growth. As a decade-long player and developing creator of these games, I hold a vested interest in furthering our understanding of them. The visual aspects of these products are well-documented and celebrated, but in this essay I attempt to define the overall landscape of TRPG visual culture …

Illustrated Nonfiction In The Screen Age, Katie Klaras

MFA in Illustration & Visual Culture

The addictive qualities of our phones and incessant demands on our attention pose consequential challenges to individuals and the collective. In the age of screens, what are illustrated nonfiction books uniquely positioned to offer modern audiences? This essay seeks to understand how the genre can serve as one possible antidote to the infinite scroll. I examine the qualities of three illustrated nonfiction texts: Abbi Jacobson’s I Might Regret This, Shaina Feinberg and Julia Rothman’s How We Got By, and Nora Krug’s Diaries of War. The essay considers how the slower pace of the reading experience, the careful curation of image …

Lines Of Thought: The Cartoon As A Phenomenological Object And A Philosophical Tool, Thomas Attwood

MFA in Illustration & Visual Culture

Cartooning’s greatest strength is its simplicity. This essay argues that the cartoon’s inherent modesty and accessibility are central to its philosophical utility, and that its spare visual language conveys more than meets the eye. Drawing on phenomenology, it considers cartooning as a process grounded in the body, and it investigates the bodily encounter between the viewer and the cartoon. Through an analysis of cartooning work by Saul Steinberg, R.O. Blechman, and Liana Finck - a “family of cartoonists” - it demonstrates how a line-drawn, representational cartooning language can transform the act of looking into a participatory experience that interrogates issues …

America Is Banking On You! Selling American Ideology During World War Ii, David W. Maupin

MFA in Illustration & Visual Culture

This essay uncovers advertising from World War II found in tear sheet archives. Through deep reading and contextual analysis, this essay seeks to determine what these advertisements—found in magazines, newspapers, and posters—were asking their viewers to do in response to the global conflict of the 1940s. It argues that advertisers used emotions and racism to entice citizens of specific classes to invest, enlist, and align their values with American ideals. The creators of these advertisements were hired by American companies, who used government sponsored tactics to woo citizens to the American Ideology while keeping the corporate brand in the public …

Hauntological Warfare: Explorations In Propaganda, Influence Campaigns, And Online Affect, Roy Uptain

MFA in Visual Art

This thesis, Hauntological Warfare: Explorations in Propaganda, Influence Campaigns, and Online Aesthetics, investigates how ideological power continues to shape contemporary reality through both overt and spectral means. Drawing from concepts like hauntology, psychological operations (PsyOps), and disinformation aesthetics, I examine how propaganda does not simply vanish once its immediate goals are achieved, but instead lingers—reshaping memory, identity, and cultural narratives through what I call hauntological warfare.

My post-conceptual research-based art practice engages this terrain by creating site-specific installations, performances, and media works that make these invisible forces perceptible. Works such as Kill Zones (for Boeing) (2024), r/RoastMe (2024), …

Unmeasured, Detached, And Isolated: The Legitimation Of A Domesticated Identity, Eva M. Agüero

MFA in Visual Art

Unmeasured, detached and isolated explores the lingering effects of colonialism on identity, behavior, and cultural perception through the lens of my personal experience as a Venezuelan immigrant in the United States. I investigate how colonial legacies—especially those codified through manuals of etiquette like Manuel Antonio Carreño’s Manual de Urbanidad y Buenas Maneras—continue to shape self-perception and societal expectations. Through video, sculpture, miniatures, and installation, I reconstruct a visual language that resists simplification and reclaims complexity. Engaging with the symbolic weight of tropical imagery, domestic spaces, and hybrid aesthetics, my work challenges Eurocentric frameworks and examines the figure of the migrant …

Undefinitive, Lan Mu

MFA in Visual Art

My thesis project, Undefinitive, examines the cyclical process of destruction, transformation, and rebirth through installation, ceramics, and text. With a deep unease toward my own gendered body, I investigate how vulnerability, both physical and psychological, can become a site of resistance and empowerment. Drawing from feminist theory, Chinese mythology, and stream-of-consciousness narratives, my work explores the monstrous and the fragmented as inseparable states of one’s becoming. Through references to body art, speculative fiction, and queer theory, I reimagine femininity and queerness as forces capable of dismantaling societal structure and forging new modes of existence.

Set in a post-apocalyptic world where …

Digital And Physical Spaces: All At Once, Addyson Hoey

MFA in Visual Art

In this thesis, I explore our experience of digital and physical spaces in the ever-increasing presence of technology. By investigating the intersections of these spaces, I focus on how our experiences in the physical world are processed through the digital space, to re-merge in lived spaces. Through digital collage paintings, I explore how assisted chance and machine destruction can be productive in the formation of space that is not possible on the screen. By using the drop shadow as primary content, my work takes on the arrangements of surface and space—rather than the requirements of the physical world. In addition, …

Transmutation, Sam Berger

MFA in Visual Art

My artistic practice is about change itself. I am inspired by the doubling and layering effects that came out of Surrealist Photography. Scale, fracture, and doubling are intentional components of my process. I combine those methods to create complex works of art, focusing on the untamable light that I hope to capture when making my images, which often are self portraits. Poetry is an integral element of this thesis text as well as my art making process. Through my poetic work I hope to offer my audience a glimpse into how I see and experience the world. This thesis text …

Places, Please!, Catie Cook

MFA in Visual Art

Growing up in the American South as the daughter of a scenic designer, I frequently found myself on both the physical stage of the theatre and the metaphorical stage of gender performance. Through immersive oil paintings, I seek to visually represent where these two experiences merge, depicting imagery and characters from my childhood staged in theatrical and uncanny environments. In this thesis I explore the canine motif as my primary subject, positioning the Dalmatian as a self-insert and exploring the show dog as a foil to the Southern beauty. Building upon Judith Butlers theory of gender performance, and Laura Mulvey’s …

Go Cry About It!, Grace C. Ryder

MFA in Visual Art

I have always been a crier. I have always felt deeply and intensely. Goodbyes, heartbreak, joy, and empathy—I’m grateful to feel it all, even when it hurts. My artwork often investigates vulnerable topics through making the personal public using self archival and diaristic elements. Inspired by my familial and romantic relationships, I explore my connections to other people and how I memorialize and honor them. My painted works often depict ephemeral objects, establishing their value through the use of oil paints while my sculptures are often exaggerated, oversize forms, emphasizing the passage of time.

From January 1st to December 31st …

The Kinship Of Creatives, Saba Saif Ur Rehman

MFA in Illustration & Visual Culture

This research essay contends that artists and creative individuals must recognize their agency in shaping societal narratives, particularly during times of technological and political upheaval. The essay draws on the insights and contributions of visionaries like Walter Benjamin, Ursula K. Le Guin, and Tomm Moore to emphasize the power of imagination and creativity in addressing real-world issues. It argues that previous technological advances have often reinforced hierarchical and oppressive systems, benefitting a select few while neglecting the masses. As we enter the fourth Industrial Revolution, this essay calls the artists to reclaim their tools from being co-opted for exclusionary and …

Comics As Confrontation : A Case For Breaking Silence Around Sexual Abuse In Comics, Manimanjari Sengupta

MFA in Illustration & Visual Culture

In this essay I will provide an overview of the socio-cultural and legal attitude towards sexual violence in India, as evidence of the need for bringing survivor’s narratives out into public view. I will look closely at Indian comic artist Shromona Das’s Naming and Shaming (2018) , American artist Phoebe Gloeckner’s A Child’s Life and Other Stories (1998), and my own comic Feral (2025), to elucidate the ways in which comics are a potent medium for survivors to confront, not only our own memories by stringing together a sequential narrative, but also the audience, with the visualization of a lived …

Hot Girls Don't Worry About Copyright: Trans/Formative Works And The Femmage Lifestyle, Czeslawa Wojtkowski

MFA in Visual Art

This thesis examines the ways in which collage is an ontologically transgender medium due to its freedom from traditional artistic formal and narrative structures. Considering that many trans experiences center around dichotomies, juxtaposition, and self-definition, collage is the best equipped to communicate these experiences in innovative ways. Through interrogations of feminized labor and the ways in which the art world upholds harmful gender binaries, as well as discussions of Femmage, maladjustment, and obsession, I argue that the fragmentary nature of photomontage, digital collage, and videomontage can externally express the multitude of feelings and identities contained within a body, to a …

Trans-Dimensional Coexistence: I No Longer Hold You But I See You, Keren Guo

Bachelor of Fine Arts Senior Papers

We live in a world where impermanence is the only lasting truth. Fleeting moments and fading relationships reoccur in our lives, but the journey continues, nonetheless. My practice projects my individuality onto universal connections between humans through depicting worlds full of colorful imaginations, experiences, creatures, and figures. I draw inspiration from work by Inka Essenhigh, Yoko Ono, and Pipilotti Rist, studying contemporary artists’ use of colors, materials, and audience participation to make an array of works from paintings to an interactive installation as my final work. Additionally, I look into historical sources about mythical creatures and religious beliefs to enhance …

Containers Of Becoming, Embodied Thresholds: Wearable Art As Performance, Bei Qi Ms.

Bachelor of Fine Arts Senior Papers

My interdisciplinary art practice investigates wearable sculpture as a tool for emotional processing, identity negotiation, and embodied performance. Beginning with early works like a cape made from thrifted scarves—exploring how different wearers transform the same garment—I have expanded their role into vehicles for personal and collective meaning. Drawing from the work of artists including Nick Cave, Stan Brahkage, Lucy McRae, Lucy Orta, and Rebecca Horn, I examine how bodily concealment, distortion, and constraint can foster new modes of self-discovery.

Over time, my practice has evolved to incorporate performance, time-based media, and psychological frameworks. For example, my choreographed dance Enneagram: Beings …

Held Together, Falling Apart: Classical Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome As Embodied Abstraction, Chloe S. Macaulay

Bachelor of Fine Arts Senior Papers

Reconciling life within a body defined by fragility, I create worlds of connectivity to embody and refigure Classical Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome (cEDS)–a connective-tissue disorder causing hypermobile joints, fragile skin, easy bruising, and poor wound healing. Large-format oil paintings employ a multi-layer method, layering paint like skin to reform the body onto canvas. Drawing on Surrealist automatic processes and theories of unconscious production, my methodology combines intuitive, process-based mark-making with traditional oil painting techniques and experimental material practices to subvert and reassert artistic agency, weaving between control and surrender. Scientific imagery, particularly SHG imaging of cEDS collagen tissue, informs a visual language …

Counter-Environments And The Myth Of Progress: A Practice Of Participatory Disruption, Elliott J. Andrew

Bachelor of Fine Arts Senior Papers

This thesis explores the potential of archival and participatory practices to illuminate and disrupt societal barriers to genuine human connection, particularly those arising from productivity, routine, and capitalist notions of progress. Rooted in an extensive personal archive—over 70,000 photographs, hundreds of journal entries, and fragmented sensory experiences—my artistic process involves meticulously collecting, rearranging, and interpreting patterns within everyday consumption. Through iterative methods akin to artists such as Wolfgang Tillmans, I juxtapose images, texts, and found materials, embedding personal narratives and subjective insights to uncover deeper connections and overlooked truths.

Central to my practice is the critique of contemporary societal norms, …

How Kirby’S Return To Dream Land Deluxe Subverts Narrative Expectations, Kelley I. Hale

Aurora

The Kirby series has been around for over 30 years, and very little has been done to research it. This is a shame, as I believed (and still do believe) the series has a lot to offer in terms of research. For this paper, I analyzed Kirby's Return to Dream Land Deluxe, a Switch remake of the Wii game Kirby's Return to Dream Land. I analyzed the cutscenes found within the game using fantasy theme criticism. I did this to explore how the game subverts narrative expectations, as well as show that Kirby games have value when it comes to …

Webdesign Jayasaintfrances.Com, Taylor Mcauliffe

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Performative Biomechanics : Evolving Buildings Into Inhabitable Organisms, Josh Lopez

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

There has always been a connection between biology and architecture. Michael Pawlyn, in Biomimicry in Architecture, coined “biomechanical designs” to describe structural techniques derived from creatures. This study investigates chitin-based creatures. Crustaceans, insects, and microscopic organisms all have exoskeletons in nature. With a focus on crabs, other crustaceans and bugs, this study examines and evaluates the formal characteristics of chitin-based organisms. The architectural creations of OXMAN, NOX, which was founded by Lars Spuybroek; and Lebbeus Woods are among those that are analyzed and studied due to their inspiration from living things. They follow functional effectiveness in nature, which is why …

Studio One Volume 49, Studio1 Literary Club

Studio One

No abstract provided.