Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Representing The Mixed Plate: Involving Descendant Communities And Kānaka Maoli In Hawai’I Plantation Museums, Amanda Ku’Ualohalanileimakamae Lane

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores the ways that the involvement of diverse stakeholders at Hawai’i plantation museums affects representations of Hawai’i’s plantation history. Plantations in Hawai’i had a direct colonizing effect on Kānaka Maoli (Native Hawaiians), displacing them from their lands, replacing them with immigrant laborers, and putting into motion the chain of events that led to Hawai’i’s annexation in 1898. The current-day population in Hawai’i continues to reflect these significant changes in the society and culture of the islands. Hawai’i’s plantation museums traverse topics of labor, immigration, indentured servitude, and colonization. Simultaneously, these museums advance stories of perseverance, celebration, and multiculturalism. …

Drawing Identities: An Ethnography Of Indigenous Comic Book Creators, Melissa Ann Kocelko

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This research examines the experiences of Indigenous comic creators when making comic books, and I aim to investigate the individual and communal motivations for creating comics. Representations of Indigenous characters and storylines have primarily been told through a white lens in mainstream comics. Within the past five years, this trend has shifted with increased academic and public attention on Indigenous comic books and the rise of comic conventions like Indigenous Pop X. I argue that these comics are acts of decolonization and self-determination where creators use comics as educational tools and as a form of cultural preservation by documenting Indigenous …

Away From The End Of Motherhood: Sites Of Haunting In The Social Imaginary In Lemonade And The Handmaid's Tale, Julia Michele Fleming

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis analyzes the television series adaptation of The Handmaid's Tale, specifically the episode "A Woman's Place," and Beyoncé's Lemonade: A Visual Album. I argue that these cultural texts leverage representations of women's lived experiences to scrutinize contemporary American anxieties about motherhood and reproductive justice. Lemonade, a celebration of Black womanhood, presents a counterpoint to The Handmaid's Tale's preoccupation with white motherhood in way that speculates on the utopian potentials of a woman-centered society.

Using bell hooks' film analysis, Avery Gordon's "haunting," and Luce Irigaray's "mimicry," I examine two interconnected themes: feminist aesthetics and generational haunting. …

Woven Kin: Exploring Representation And Collaboration In Navajo Weaving Exhibitions, Teresa Maria Montoya

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Following recent trends in scholarship that establish museums as complex sites where representations of Native American cultures are actively negotiated, this thesis explores the relationship between representational strategies and the employment of critical Indigenous methodologies by museum institutions in the display of Navajo weavings. A postcolonial theoretical framework is utilized to analyze six Navajo weaving exhibition installments over the past decade. Additionally, a critical reflection is offered about the development of the author's collaborative exhibition, Na'ashjé'ii Biką' Biyiin (Chant of the Male Spider): A Holistic Journey with Diné Weaver Roy Kady, that reveals both the rewards and challenges of …

Virgil Ortiz: American Indian Artist, Representational Trickster, And Identity Shapeshifter, Noell Ross Jackson

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study opens the door for a re-thinking of how discourse shapes American Indian representation and identity. As such, contemporary American Indian artist, Virgil Ortiz, his art, and the discourse surrounding both art and artist are examined to reveal the strategies and tactics employed in his constitution of a politics of representation that broaden the spectrum of considerations of American Indian identity. Critical invention is the orientation through which two methodological approaches are intertextually applied. A critical rhetorical approach is employed to analyze both the vernacular discourse produced by Ortiz and the dominant discourse constructed by the dominant culture. Sorrells …