Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Always Pay Your Exorcist, Ryan Baker

Diamond Line Undergraduate Literary Magazine

No abstract provided.

The Bright And Dim Of Childhood, Kannah Price

Diamond Line Undergraduate Literary Magazine

No abstract provided.

The Poetry I Love, Emma Shiltz

Diamond Line Undergraduate Literary Magazine

No abstract provided.

Starburn, Emma Bracken

Diamond Line Undergraduate Literary Magazine

No abstract provided.

Dried & Saved, Luci Green

Diamond Line Undergraduate Literary Magazine

No abstract provided.

Across The Harbor, Susan Elliott

Diamond Line Undergraduate Literary Magazine

No abstract provided.

A Billowing Wind, Dark Drawing Its Breath, Noah Truelove

Diamond Line Undergraduate Literary Magazine

No abstract provided.

An Inevitability, Elizabeth Burger

Diamond Line Undergraduate Literary Magazine

No abstract provided.

The Harbinger, Emma Bracken

Diamond Line Undergraduate Literary Magazine

No abstract provided.

Contributors, Diamond Line Editors

Diamond Line Undergraduate Literary Magazine

No abstract provided.

Acknowledgements, Diamond Line Editors

Diamond Line Undergraduate Literary Magazine

No abstract provided.

Letter From The Editors, Diamond Line Editors

Diamond Line Undergraduate Literary Magazine

No abstract provided.

Table Of Contents, Diamond Line Editors

Diamond Line Undergraduate Literary Magazine

No abstract provided.

Echoes Of Neon, Evan Meyers

Diamond Line Undergraduate Literary Magazine

No abstract provided.

Diamond Line - Spring 2025, Diamond Line Editors

Diamond Line Undergraduate Literary Magazine

No abstract provided.

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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, …

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 …

Buffalo Bill And The Great Western Story, Sarah A. Hawkes

MFA in Illustration & Visual Culture

The author investigates how narratives are constructed through visual culture to better understand her own history. Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show acts as a case study demonstrating how “history” is often a narrative established by those in power. These narratives often essentialize their subjects, leading to erasure and exclusion. Sitting Bull and Annie Oakley are used as examples of figures that have become caricatures in service to a greater narrative about the American West. This paper argues for the inefficacy of considering any one narrative as “history” instead recommending a close reading of many different narratives. Three different Western figures, …

The Liminal Space Of Dreams: Narration Of Dreams In Graphic Novel And Comics, Muyang Li

MFA in Illustration & Visual Culture

This essay explores the dream as a narrative in graphic novels and comics, examining its character as a subconscious experience depicted by means of visual storytelling. Focusing on psychological, symbolic, and aesthetic functions of dream narrative, I demonstrate that dream narration offers an allegory by means of which both creator and reader can explore issues of identity, desire and trauma in an intimate and healing way. In analyzing these functions of dream narration, I draw upon ideas from theorists such as C.J Jung, Freud and other scholars who have engaged their work on the psychological perspective of the experience of …

Froggy People: Anthropomorphism And Slice-Of-Life In Autobiographical Comics, Maddie Baker

MFA in Illustration & Visual Culture

This essay explores how the following three comics categories overlap and interact with one another: slice-of-life, anthropomorphic, and autobiographical. I search for reasons why comic makers would choose to tell their own daily life stories using animal avatars rather than their own faces. While each of these three categories has been studied extensively individually, I hope to find additional insights by observing how comic makers employ the genres together as storytelling devices. Each category has unique narratological power which impacts the reader’s experience. For example, anthropomorphism affects how the author and reader internalize and relate to characters. Slice-of-life comics are …

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 …

Imaginary Friends: Engaging The Unconscious Mind Through Picture Books, Cleonique Hilsaca

MFA in Illustration & Visual Culture

“Imaginary Friends” investigates the potential of the ‘imaginary friend’ as a narrative device in picture book storytelling. By combining the research of Marjorie Taylor on ‘imaginary companions’ and Lois Rostow Kuznets on ‘toy animals’ in literature, I seek to give form to the concept of the imaginary friend, to then explore the phenomenon further by delving into the intellectual heritage of the imaginary and the unconscious mind. To explain how the imaginary friend works as a visual metaphor in illustrated narratives, I borrow principles of image-making and their effect on children, as discussed by Martin Salisbury, Morag Styles, and Molly …

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 …