Arts and Humanities Commons^™

The Unveiling Of Us, Alexis Parra

Senior Projects Spring 2018

The Unveiling of Us is an affirmation by, of and for wom^n of color. In this collaboration, we - subject and photographer - seek to reclaim the performance, production and beauty of individual identities that are informed by collective pasts. Everyday acts of performance are emphasized in these images through objects and gestures that reference the day to day practices of black and brown wom^n based on our histories, our cultures and our senses of self. This is our space to claim: the viewer looks, but the subjects hold the gaze as they declare power through a notion of beauty. …

Black And Grey: An Audio-Visual Tribute To The Undefined, Jewel Evans

Senior Projects Spring 2018

The Process:

My project was originally called Seven Stages of “Griffe.” The term “griffe” was a racial category describing people who are three quarters black and one quarter white, which is my actual genetic makeup. My original plan was to analyze the history of the term and reference it in seven songs representing the seven stages of grief, and create a long music video to open up dialogue about the racial definitions we ascribe ourselves to. The project changed when I reached an impasse in my historical research, given that the term was obsolete by the 18th century and had …

Reporting Identity: Social And Political Implications Of Adding A Mena Category To The U.S. Census, Mehgan Rose Abdel-Moneim

Senior Projects Spring 2018

The Census Bureau has been testing a new category called MENA for the 2020 census that would better describe the Middle Eastern and North African population in the United States, but in January of 2018, the agency announced that the category requires further research. In this work, I connect the development of a MENA identity category to historical events, sociological theory, current politics and public concerns related to the following questions: What are the social and political implications of including a MENA category on the U.S. census? What does the movement to add a MENA identifier to the census tell …

Free Running Brown Legs, Jada E. Smiley

Senior Projects Spring 2018

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Languages and Literature of Bard College.

Does That Look Gay? Framing Queer Identity In Extended Sensibilities: Homosexual Presence In Contemporary Art, Sarah Peskin

Senior Projects Spring 2018

This Senior Project questions the usefulness of identity, specifically queer identity, as an organizing principle for an art exhibition. I explore this topic in relation to the curatorial method for the exhibition at the New Museum in New York in 1982, entitled Extended Sensibilities: Homosexual Presence in Contemporary Art. I argue that identity was a useful category for Extended Sensibilities by analyzing the art as Camp. By doing so, I hope to prove that the curator, Dan Cameron, chose a collection of art that opposed an essentialist perspective of queer identity. Furthermore, I compare Extended Sensibilities to a more …

Nation, Self, And Foreign Space: Exploring The Expatriation Of James Baldwin, Henry James, And Edith Wharton, Emily Monroe Weisman

Senior Projects Spring 2018

This project explores the expatriation of James Baldwin, Henry James, and Edith Wharton. Through their fiction and personal journeys abroad, Baldwin, James and Wharton seek to answer the question of what it means to be an American. This trio of writers chose to leave America at some point or another in order to find both literary and personal freedom from the confinement that was brought upon them by the space of America.

Baldwin, James, and Wharton explore the effects of race, class, and gender on an individual in the space of America versus the space of Europe. The novels that …

Xx Openings, Jackson Siegal

Senior Projects Spring 2018

XX Openings represents my dual sculpture and photography practice. The title comes from a 70’s domestic frame, with 20 openings of varying sizes for family pictures. Half of the slots were filled with stock pictures of smiling family scenes, while the others just had measurements for the openings themselves. The object struck me as alienating, and oppressive. I didn’t see any scene within those openings I felt connected to.

The frame came to symbolize varying perspectives, ways of seeing, and ways of being. As my sculpture practice has weighed more heavily on my work as a photographer, I feel tensions …