Arts and Humanities Commons^™

The Romani People In The European Cultural Imagination: Alexander Pushkin, Prosper Mérimée And Virginia Woolf, Nadya Siyam

Theses and Dissertations

Scholarly literature on Roma is scarce compared to other racial groups as a lack of academic interest, financial limitations, and other social and political factors has constrained it. This resulted in a cross-cultural circulation of misinformation about Romani people and the reproduction of Romani myths and stereotypes in fiction. This project aims to analyze selected literary works on Gypsies from three Eastern and Western European countries and two periods to unpack the cultural and political roots of Romani literary misrepresentation. This research employs a range of theoretical frameworks chosen to put the Gypsy protagonists under maximum spotlight without unnecessary repetition, …

Historical Trauma: Literary And Testimonial Responses To Hiroshima, Mariam Ghonim

Theses and Dissertations

The concept of trauma is controversial in literature. While one may be able to come up with ways to describe trauma in fiction, representing historical trauma is a hard task for writers. Some argue that trauma can not be described through those who did not experience it, while others claim that, provided some elements are added, one can represent trauma to the reader. This thesis focuses on twentieth-century historical traumas related to a nuclear catastrophe and explores the different literary and testimonial responses to the catastrophic man-made event of Hiroshima (1945). In this thesis, Kathleen Burkinshaw’s historical fiction The Last …

Devil In The Details: Witchcraft In Reformation England, Angela A. Luna

Theses and Dissertations

An analysis of the English Reformation’s impact on perceptions of witches and the transformation of witchcraft as a crime prosecutable in courts of law. It demonstrates English diabolism characterized by the use of animal familiars, body markings, and pacts with the Devil, which helped to shape the English witch trials.

Translating The Enlightenment: Women Translators In Eighteenth-Century France, Marissa Gavin

Theses and Dissertations

This paper examines women translators in Enlightenment France for their strategies to achieve publication. Elite, French Enlightenment women appropriated oppressive structures and norms, redeploying them to expand their own roles. This paper examines Marie-Jeanne Riccoboni, Louise d’Epinay, and Anne LeFevre Dacier as exemplars of elite women translators who exploited gendered assumptions to gain access to print. Each of these women came from differing backgrounds, received differing levels of support from their patriarchal relations and expressed differing societal concerns through their writing. Despite such differences, Riccoboni, Dacier and d’Epinay all utilized similar strategies alongside translation to disseminate their concerns. Operating within …

“This Little Patch Of Earth Is Inexhaustible”: Ernst Ludwig Kirchner And The Outdoors Movements, Erica Evans

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis focuses on the influence of reform movements and hiking and mountaineering organizations on the life and work of Ernst Ludwig Kirchner. I explore how principles of these outdoors movements, including a healthy mind/body connection and rustic lifestyle, inform Kirchner’s works created while living in Davos, Switzerland.

​​​​From Repression To Appropriation: Soviet Religious Policy And Reform, 1917-1943, Andriy Dyachenko

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis analyses the dynamics of religious reform in the USSR from 1917 to 1943. It argues that the early Bolshevik policy of persecution was increasingly substituted by state co-optation. This dynamic was shaped primarily by Stalinist concerns with state security and problems of ideology.

Rethinking Watteau In The Context Of Early Eighteenth-Century Bourgeois Culture, Bronwyn C. Roe

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis reexamines the work of Antoine Watteau through a social-art historical lens. Traditionally, Watteau's fêtes galantes have been closely aligned to the culture of the French nobility. However, a closer look into the artist's background, training, social milieu, and the class identity of his primary buyers reveals an alternative class alignment, inviting new interpretations for Watteau's most elusive work. This thesis challenges the close association between Watteau and the French nobility and aims to broaden the socio-visual landscape from which Watteau was drawing, namely that of a burgeoning bourgeois consumer culture. In particular, the culture of emulation, with its …

Interpreting The Socio-Symbolic Value Of Jet And Amber Artifacts As Markers Of Religious Transformation In Early Christian Britain, Rachel C. Strohl

Theses and Dissertations

During the Medieval period in Britain, changes in the lived materiality of religion aided in the reinforcement of new ideologies. Christian missionaries and foreign invaders introduced new religious structures and cultural paradigms from the Continent that included novel symbolic forms and material markers. In pre-Christian contexts, jet and amber are thought to have been used for religious purposes due to their presumed magical properties, such as burning and generating a static charge. These materials also served as lucrative exports throughout Europe and beyond before the introduction of Christianity. Textual records from the Mediterranean as well as archaeological evidence for the …

Marketing Race In British History: An Analysis Of The British Empire Marketing Board Posters (1926-1933), Jules Matthew Maffei

Theses and Dissertations

Contemporary instances of racially charged product imagery are deeply intertwined with history. Products like "Aunt Jemima", "Uncle Ben's Rice", or the indigenous peoples portrayed on "Land O' Lakes" butter affects perception of race, class, and gender. The continued existence of these controversially branded products helps to construct attitudes about these subjects and demonstrates a societal acceptance of these as norms. The British Empire Marketing Board (EMB) represents an important historical example of the production of such racialized values. Between 1926 and 1933, the EMB created and disseminated marketing materials to promote intra-Empire trade. While the EMB was generally considered to …

Power Dressing: Feather Fans And The Visual Language Of Female Portraiture, Charlotte Svetkey

Theses and Dissertations

Feather fans in sixteenth-century portraiture not only allowed the female sitter to express her own claims to wealth, status, and power but also acted as a visual indicator of changes that were occurring on the global stage. Both fans and sitters will be evaluated through ideas of gender and class.

"Unite The Left": Contextualizing Bukharin's Abc Of Communism And Berkman's Abc Of Anarchism, David Hayter

Theses and Dissertations

In 1919, Nikolai Bukharin, the leading theoretician of the Bolshevik Party, published a manual entitled The ABC of Communism meant to put the governing ideology of the newly formed Soviet State into eminently readable terms. Alexander Berkman, a Russian Anarchist who strongly supported the October Revolution, became disillusioned with the new regime in 1921 and left the country. He later published his own tract entitled The ABC of Anarchism. This thesis pits these two theoretical works against each other as historical documents embodying the nature of leftist polemics that has characterized the movement since the dissolution of the First …

Pratiquer Ou Incarner La Vertu? L'Agentivité Des Femmes Chez Marie De France Et Christine De Pizan, Kathe Blydenburgh

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis studies the treatment of women in Medieval literature as active agents in their roles of upholding the virtues of the societies in which they live. This study focuses on works written by the female authors Marie de France and Christine de Pizan.

Time Machine Research And Approach, Tarek Bouraque

Theses and Dissertations

Time Machine is a hybrid documentary that explores the logics of enslavement, colonialism, eurocentrism and their interconnectedness in our globalized world. Mustapha Azemmouri, born in 1502, undertakes a journey to the 21st century to recount his own story of enslavement and exploration, and reflects on a collective puzzle of 500 years of hidden history.

Judith Leyster: A Study Of Extraordinary Expression, Nicole J. Cardinale

Theses and Dissertations

Judith Leyster’s innovative application of expression in her Self Portrait serves as the focus, whereby she is shown to blend conventional painting categories, preserve a sense of innocence, and confidently flaunt her skills. In turn, Leyster challenged the male-centric art market and stood apart from her artistic predecessors and contemporaries.

Western Influence In The Cover-Up Of The Holodomor, Michael Galka-Giaquinto

Theses and Dissertations

This paper discusses how the Holodomor (Ukrainian Genocide of 1932-1933) was effectively covered up by Stalin with the help of compliant actors in the West. A confluence of media, political, and economic interests in the West was critical in successfully covering up Stalin's crimes against the Ukrainian people.

All The Small Things, Talia E. Levitt

Theses and Dissertations

My paintings engage with the history of the still life as a marginalized and antiacademic genre. Rather than fool viewers into believing that there are real objects in front of them, as is the historical intention of trompe l’oeil, I use realistic rendering to emphasize the painting and painter.

Adolf Wissel: Compliant Dissidence, A Nonbinary Reading Of Work Executed From 1933 – 1941, Jeremy Lyn Schrupp

Theses and Dissertations

Despite the vast amount of scholarship devoted to the Nazi era, there is very little dedicated to the analysis of its works of art. This paper aims to rectify that, by analyzing the work of Adolf Wissel. Aside from its didactic use amongst academia, there is only one academic analysis of his work. The intent of the present analysis is to build from that foundation and provide an additional layer of contextualization to an era that is relatively unexplored within our field. This analysis will establish that Adolf Wissel maintained specific subject, compositional, and stylistic choices that subtly opposed NSDAP …

Alexandre Cabanel's St. Monica In A Landscape: A Departure From Iconographic Traditions, Rebecca Ann Kidd

Theses and Dissertations

The iconography employed by Alexandre Cabanel in the 1845 work St. Monica in a Landscape drastically deviates from the established artistic tradition utilized in other depictions of St. Monica in Christian art. Cabanel’s work depicts a female saint accompanied by a derelict young child. This thesis considers an alternative identity for this female saint, proposing that St. Elizabeth may be the definite subject of the work, accompanied by a young St. John the Baptist. The visual content of St. Monica in a Landscape is analyzed in conjunction with other works depicting St. Monica, as well as St. Elizabeth with a …

The What If Collection, Aisha J. Daniels

Theses and Dissertations

The What If Collection is a visual narrative that confronts white supremacy, the social, economic, and political ideology used to subjugate black civilization via colonial rule and enslavement in history and via structural racism today. Many white people have been socialized into a racial illiteracy that fosters white supremacy. This racial illiteracy fails to realize and understand the destructive effects of Western dominance on the rest of the world, particularly on past and present Africa and her diaspora. In response, utilizing discursive design, the collection constructs a counter-story that depicts a shift in the power structure in which the white …

A New Brand Of Men: Masculinity In French Republican Socialist Rhetoric, Randolph A. Miller

Theses and Dissertations

Social theorist and activist, August Blanqui, used his appearance before court in 1832 to lay out an argument that condemned the present political and economic system and demanded emancipation of the male worker. During his monologue, along with his devastating portrayal of worker misery and systemic corruption, Blanqui made comparisons between the male bourgeoisie and the male proletariat. Recounting the recent overthrow of Charles X for his audience, Blanqui described the “glorious workers” as six feet tall, towering over a groveling bourgeoisie who praised them for their “selflessness and courage.” According to Blanqui, the workers, unlike the aristocracy of wealth …

After Faith, Hope, And Love: The Unique Divergence Of Asceticism By Gregory The Great And Maximus The Confessor, Caleb N. Zuiderveen

Theses and Dissertations

In the late sixth and early seventh centuries, asceticism continued as a frequent expression of Christian devotion. Despite communications between the Eastern and Western Churches and a common patristic foundation, theology in the East and West during this time diverged on the results of asceticism. This paper explores this divergence by examining two theologians, Gregory the Great and Maximus the Confessor. Current scholarship has examined Gregory the Great and Maximus the Confessor on their own, yet the dialogue between each tradition and its implications remains understudied. Thus, this study contextualizes Gregory the Great’s On the Song of Songs and Maximus …

The Impact Of Ethnic Cleansing And The Eurocentric International System On The Entrance Of The Ottoman Empire Into The Great War, 1878-1914, Parker Lake

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines the reasons for the Ottoman Empire’s entrance into the First World War. It claims that the Empire’s decision was rooted in the failure of the European international system to uphold its diplomatic agreements and the resulting refugee crisis in the Balkans caused by Russian imperialism.

The Political Nature Of The Paris Commune Of 1871 And Manifestations Of Marxist Ideology In The Official Publications Of The Central Committee, Emily M. Jones

Theses and Dissertations

Historians originally claimed that the 1871 Paris Commune was inspired by Karl Marx. Since the 1960s, however, this assertion has been rejected by scholars who either claim that Marx had no influence over the Paris Communards or do not address the possibility that this influence existed. Many scholars have also claimed that the Commune was not political in any way, but was a rebellion inspired by patriotism, bitterness for the Versailles government’s capitulation of Paris to Prussia, or a spontaneous reaction to hostility from the national army’s attempt to disarm the indignant, rapidly organizing Parisian workers who called for municipal …

"To Conceive With Child Is The Earnest Desire If Not Of All, Yet Of Most Women": The Advancement Of Prenatal Care And Childbirth In Early Modern England: 1500-1770, Victoria E.C. Glover

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis analyzes medical manuals published in England between 1500 and 1770 to trace developing medical understandings and prescriptive approaches to conception, pregnancy, and childbirth. While there have been plenty of books written regarding social and religious changes in the reproductive process during the early modern era, there is a dearth of scholarly work focusing on the medical changes which took place in obstetrics over this period. Early modern England was a time of great change in the field of obstetrics as physicians incorporated newly-discovered knowledge about the male and female body, new fields and tools, and new or revived …

Lux Occidentale: The Eastern Mission Of The Pontifical Commission For Russia, Origins To 1933, Michael Anthony Guzik

Theses and Dissertations

Although it was first a sub-commission within the Congregation for the Eastern Churches (CEO), the Pontifical Commission for Russia (PCpR) emerged as an independent commission under the presidency of the noted Vatican Russian expert, Michel d’Herbigny, S.J. in 1925, and remained so until 1933 when it was re-integrated into CEO. The PCpR was given authority over the spiritual and material mission to Soviet Russia, including refugees who had fled the Bolshevik Revolution. While most studies concerning the Catholic Church and Russia are religious or political histories which focus, respectively, on martyrdom or the contest between the so-called free world and …

Hell In Hand: Fear And Hope In The Hellmouths Of The Hours Of Catherine Of Cleves, Stephanie Lish

Theses and Dissertations

This paper is an attempt to investigate how well the borders and miniatures of The Hours of Catherine of Cleves facilitated the method of meditation recommended by Gerard Zerbolt of Zutphen and therefore was a useful tool in Catherine’s search for eternal salvation.

"A Vigorous Propaganda": The Peace Conferences Of 1899 And 1907, The Peace Palace, And Internationalism Through Design At The Hague, 1899–1920, Daniel Pecoraro

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis uncovers the history of the Peace Palace and The Hague’s role in the early days of the internationalist movement. In the process of localizing the early twentieth century history of The Hague, this thesis examines the development of international imagery and culture through design. The Peace Palace as we know it today was ultimately a result of tensions between internationalist ideas (cooperation, arbitration, modernity) and the pride of Old World nationalism. The final design by Louis Cordonnier and J. A. G. Van der Steur repudiates the feeling of modernity surrounding the idea of peace through arbitration. It is …

The Byline Of Europe: An Examination Of Foreign Correspondents' Reporting From 1930 To 1941, Kerry J. Garvey

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis focuses on two of the largest foreign correspondents’ networks the one of the Chicago Tribune and New York Times- in prewar Europe and especially in Germany, thus providing a wider perspective on the foreign correspondents’ role in news reporting and, more importantly, how their reporting appeared in the published newspaper. It provides a new, broader perspective on how foreign news reporting portrayed European events to the American public. It describes the correspondents’ role in publishing articles over three time periods- 1930 to 1933, 1933-1939, and 1939 to 1941. Reporting and consequently the published paper depended on the correspondents’ …

The Poet And The Polemist: Demystifying The Natural Law Theory Of John Milton, John J. Mazola

Theses and Dissertations

A summation of the influences behind Milton's Natural Law theory as found in the works of Aristotle, Grotius, Hobbes, and Thomas Aquinas. The essay's intent is to uncover this important thread that runs through both Milton's Poetic Verse as well as his Polemic tracts.

Gender Reflections: A Reconsideration Of Pictish Mirror And Comb Symbols, Traci N. Billings

Theses and Dissertations

The interpretation of prehistoric iconography is complicated by the tendency to project

contemporary male/female gender dichotomies into the past. Pictish monumental stone sculpture

in Scotland has been studied over the last 100 years. Traditionally, mirror and comb symbols

found on some stones produced in Scotland between AD 400 and AD 900 have been interpreted

as being associated exclusively with women and/or the female gender. This thesis re-examines

this assumption in light of more recent work to offer a new interpretation of Pictish mirror and

comb symbols and to suggest a larger context for their possible meaning. Utilizing the Canmore

database, …