Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Putting Christians On The Map : Topographic Mosaics From Late Antique Jordan As Representations Of Authority And Status., Tracey Elizabeth Eckersley

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In this dissertation, I examine nine ecclesiastic floor mosaics from Late Antique Palaestina and Arabia that contain topographic motifs ­­˗ images of cities set in realistic or stylized landscapes. Previous interpretations of the pavements have been limited by two assumptions: that artists or bishops were solely responsible for determining the compositions, and that only religious interpretations were intended for church pavements. Inscriptions indicating that patrons were generally lay people and iconography that encourages secular interpretations complicates both assumptions. This study investigates the mosaics in light of Late Antique euergetism in order to determine why donors included architectonic elements in the …

Murakami-Ego : Collective Culpability And Selective Retention., Yun Kweon Jeong

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this thesis is to argue that Murakami’s art expresses the Japanese’s psychological suffering by showing their struggle between remembering themselves as victims but forgetting themselves as aggressors. I apply the Mitscherlichs’ psychoanalisys of the Germans’s psyche to the Japanese because their people have had similar experiences. The first section examines the history of Japan surrounding WWII in order to demonstrate its effects on the Japanese people’s psyche. The second section introduces Otaku to better understand Murakami’s art. The third section examines how selective retention works on the Japanese’s psyche. The fourth section analyzes how Murakami’s art represents …

Let's Keep In Touch : Conversations About Access And Tactility., Whitney E. B. Mashburn

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Let’s Keep in Touch: Conversations about Tactility, a project collaboratively organized by social practice artist Carmen Papalia and curator Whitney Mashburn, presents conversations between Papalia and artists selected by Mashburn, in regard to tactile access of the chosen artists’ works. The project aims to challenge visual biases in museum engagement, through dialogue with living artists.

Carmen Papalia takes social practice in a new direction as he applies it to the topic of accessibility. Using the tool of conversation, he creates strategic infrastructural activism and prompts exploration of non-visual perception.

In this thesis, Papalia’s work will be examined and discussed …

The Queer Child And Haut Bourgeois Domesticity : Berthe Morisot And Mary Cassatt., Jessica Cresseveur

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Since the 1970s, feminist art historians have extensively treated Mary Cassatt and Berthe Morisot. In particular, focusing on class-bound womanhood and domesticity, Griselda Pollock, Linda Nochlin, and Anne Higonnet have provided compelling psychoanalytic, Marxist, and semiotic analyses, seemingly exhausting all potentials for any further historical exploration of these artists. Yet, to date, investigations into the significance of the queer (deviations from normative sociocultural codes of gender identity, sexuality, and reproduction) in the works of Cassatt and Morisot have not been conducted. In this dissertation, queer theory complements the existing scholarship that has focused on the significance of women as mothers …

Elsewhere, Amber Law

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The photographer discusses the work in Elsewhere, her Master of Fine Arts exhibition held at East Tennessee State University in the Reece Museum, located in Johnson City, Tennessee. The exhibition is displayed from March 1 through March 31, 2016 and consists of 17 color photographs and 3 videos representing a body of work that visually communicates the photographer’s interest in transient lifestyles.

The influence and research regarding the concept is communicated by a focus on artists, literature and art historical knowledge that pertain to Law’s work. The artists included are Rineke Dijkstra, Jocelyn Lee, Lise Sarfati, Stephen Shore, Robert …

Claude Cahun, Marcel Moore, And The Collapse Of "Surrealist Photography"., Elizabeth Ann Driscoll Smith

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis probes the photographic oeuvre of Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore and their interpretation of Freudian fetishism. Cahun and Moore rework Freud’s theory to disrupt and invalidate various symbols conventionally associated with sexual difference, examining social, fictional, and historical dimensions of gendering and the shift that occurs when their parameters disintegrate. The first section examines the lovers’ portraiture and use of clothing—specifically the androgyny of early-twentieth century Paris fashion—in order to demarcate same-sex gaze, desire, and fetish. The second section covers the four years in which Cahun and Moore’s participation in the Paris Surrealist circles can be traced—from 1933 …

Site Responsibility : Eco-Art And Environmental Ethics In The Anthropocene., Nicholas Flint Collins

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation proposes an interdisciplinary theory for examining the ethical dimensions of contemporary eco-art, based on the conceptual interplay between the art historical discourse of site specificity and philosophy of environmental ethics. It considers how eco-art redefines site specificity as eco-ethically-oriented site reform, and argues that eco-artists’ site-reformative actions are not only environmentally impactful and beneficial, but are also site-responsible because they realize humankinds’ moral obligations to respond to the human-caused ecological crises of the present by improving the degraded conditions of specific sites and amending site-destructive conduct. Site-reformative eco-artworks in turn yield variable propositional content that demonstrates site responsibility …

9/11 Memorials : Contested Memory, Competing Narratives, And Healing., Jennifer A. Fraley

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In this dissertation I examine the role that monuments and memorials play in our lives including artistically, historically, and culturally. I begin by examining what monuments and memorials are and how these public works should be their own classification of public art. I argue there are many things these works can be (place of mourning, celebration, historical marker, etc.) and should not be (a single source for a historical accounting); yet, memorials do have the necessary condition of creating a referential relationship between the viewer and the memorialized objects. Without this relationship, the work fails as a memorial. Memorials are …

Pilgrimage, Spatial Interaction, And Memory At Three Marian Sites, Katherine Rousseau

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Global mediation, communication, and technology facilitate pilgrimage places with porous boundaries, and the dynamics of porousness are complex and varied. Three Marian, Catholic pilgrimage places demonstrate the potential for variation in porous boundaries: Chartres cathedral; the Marian apparition location of Medjugorje; and the House of the Virgin Mary near Ephesus. These three places are porous in that they emplace the interactions of different groups, fostering the permeability of boundaries between categories of pilgrimage and tourism, commercial place and devotional place, and cultural and spiritual value. They also show varied degrees of spatial porousness, either topographically or in their connection to …