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Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities

Useful Beauty: Tiffany Favrile, Carnival Glass, And Consumerism At The Turn Of The Twentieth Century, Chelsea Grayburn Apr 2019

Useful Beauty: Tiffany Favrile, Carnival Glass, And Consumerism At The Turn Of The Twentieth Century, Chelsea Grayburn

Theses and Dissertations

Commercial markets within the United States were changing rapidly in the nineteenth century as improved transportation and efficient methods of mass production made goods available to a wider portion of the population than ever before. The glass market was one of many that changed drastically from the opening of the nineteenth century and on into the early twentieth century. Iridescent art glass, whether cheap pressed glass or expensive blown glass, provides a small window into how advertising and purchasing habits changed and why. The burgeoning middle class was looking for new ways to proclaim respectability and enhance their living space. …


Consuming Digital Debris In The Plasticene, Stephen R. Parks Jan 2018

Consuming Digital Debris In The Plasticene, Stephen R. Parks

Theses and Dissertations

Claims of customization and control by socio-technical industries are altering the role of consumer and producer. These narratives are often misleading attempts to engage consumers with new forms of technology. By addressing capitalist intent, material, and the reproduction limits of 3-D printed objects’, I observe the aspirational promise of becoming a producer of my own belongings through new networks of production. I am interested in gaining a better understanding of the data consumed that perpetuates hyper-consumptive tendencies for new technological apparatuses. My role as a designer focuses on the resolution of not only the surface of the object through 3-D …


Crabgrass Piety: The Rise Of Megachurches And The Suburban Social Religion, 1960-2000, Nathan Joseph Saunders Jan 2015

Crabgrass Piety: The Rise Of Megachurches And The Suburban Social Religion, 1960-2000, Nathan Joseph Saunders

Theses and Dissertations

Although there were less than twenty megachurches (churches averaging over two thousand in weekly attendance) in the United States before 1960, by 2010 there were approximately fifteen hundred. Megachurches are not a homogenous group, but they exist in all parts of the country and they have enough in common to warrant their identification as part of a coherent trend in American evangelical culture. Specifically, most megachurches appeal to an ethos that emerged in the 1970s and 1980s known as the suburban social religion. The suburban social religion combined to differing degrees the American civil religion described by Robert Bellah, meritocratic …


Panoramic Sham, Andrea Vail May 2014

Panoramic Sham, Andrea Vail

Theses and Dissertations

Panoramic Sham is sunset and sunrise, a walk through a field of wildflowers or a day in the forest. It is that moment when a light breeze tousles your hair and chirping birds reaffirm vitality. Panoramic Sham is also a heap of outdated home goods that once transformed our living rooms into artificial habitats. I reimagine decommissioned domestic goods as a way to confront trends of mass-production, habits of consumption and to explore systems of artifice, authenticity, and the consumer haze perpetuated by contemporary American society. Comprised of synthetic materials and manufactured to impersonate nature, these 20th century cast-offs provide …


Discriminating Tastes: How Advertisements Taught Consumerism And Race To Gilded Age Youths, Jaclyn Schultz May 2013

Discriminating Tastes: How Advertisements Taught Consumerism And Race To Gilded Age Youths, Jaclyn Schultz

Theses and Dissertations

Commercial and social trends of the Gilded Age combined to give a unique and novel power to colorful advertising trade cards that were collected, exchanged, and preserved in scrapbooks by middle-class children living in the Northeast. These children were members of one of the earliest generations to grow up with mandatory co-educational schooling and to be part of a distinctive youth culture created through peer interactions. After 1876, advertising trade cards became ubiquitous and were a significant component of that peer culture. The cards were also innovative in that they were the first example of colored images to be made …


Part Of Their World: Gender Identity Found In Disney Princesses, Consumerism, And Performative Play, Emily Grider Ray Dec 2009

Part Of Their World: Gender Identity Found In Disney Princesses, Consumerism, And Performative Play, Emily Grider Ray

Theses and Dissertations

One way that children explore concepts of gender is through make-believe and performative play. One of the most prevalent presentations of gender that is packaged for children's play is the Disney Princess brand. In 2007 the Walt Disney Princess campaign profited over four billion dollars and expanded to include over 25,000 items for sale. Princess paraphernalia reflects a change in the way that young girls (ages 3-5) engage in imaginary play by creating a whole new paradigm of thought. As these girls project themselves into the role of a certain Princess, typical play transforms into a consumer based theatrical experience. …


21st Century Zen Garden, Allison Parker Andrews Jan 2006

21st Century Zen Garden, Allison Parker Andrews

Theses and Dissertations

This paper is a discussion of certain philosophical issues that have informed the progression of my work to date.