Arts and Humanities Commons^™

The Flex Voice In The Soundtracks For The Nintendo Game Boy, Matthew Dineiro

Theses and Dissertations

The Nintendo Game Boy had a sound chip which allowed for only three pitched voices and one unpitched percussive voice. These limitations affected the music that was written for this video game system. Of the three pitched voices, one voice typically performs the melody, and one voice typically is the bass and harmonic foundation. This thesis analyzes the third voice, typically in the middle of the musical texture, and the various functions that it can hold. As is discussed, the middle voice sometimes pairs in harmony with the melody or the bass. In other cases, however, it forms a musical …

Gloria Rehearsal (Excerpt) A Feminist Mechanism For Metabolization, Eleanor Smith

Theses and Dissertations

Weaving embodied trauma studies with feminist theory, non-hierarchical creative structures, and research in dance improvisation, this thesis paper written by Eleanor Smith contextualizes the dance performance gloria rehearsal (excerpt). The performance piece was choreographed and performed by Molly Lieber and Eleanor Smith, who have been co-choreographing feminist dances since 2006.

(Not) Knowing, Jared Friedman

Theses and Dissertations

Jared Friedman’s work creates monuments out of banal common objects. Through acrylic paintings on- Astroturf, burlap, canvas, and upholstery fabric- he explores the ambiguity of the unremarkable, such as the condenser coils on the back of a refrigerator. In, (Not) Knowing, he parses the difference between knowing and understanding.

The Lives And Afterlives Of The Arenberg Gospels: Materializing Medieval Oaths, Sarah Ganzel

Theses and Dissertations

The “social life” of the Arenberg Gospels, a gospel book later used as an oath book in ecclesiastical officiation ceremonies, illuminates the impact and meaning of oath books in medieval Europe. This thesis traces the manuscript’s materiality throughout its life, showing why both words and flesh mattered to oath rituals.

Loca, Alejandro Heredia

Theses and Dissertations

Loca is a queer transnational novel highlighting the potential of friendship as home when nations, family, and identity groups fail us.

Grouping Against The Groove: Metrical Dissonance In Hiromi's "Voice", Sam Falotico

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis engages theories of rhythm, meter, and groove in an analytical study of Japanese-jazz pianist/composer Hiromi Uehara’s tune “Voice.” In doing so, it examines not only the techniques of this specific artist, but it also explores general issues regarding how a sense of embodied, forward propulsion—that is, a “groove”—may manifest in a jazz work that uses odd meters, and how metrical dissonances function in this context.

Almost Human, Sarah Huang

Theses and Dissertations

A collection of poems centered on extinction, loneliness, cultural identity, and what it means to be human.

Red: Stories And Novel Opening, Josephine Sloyan

Theses and Dissertations

“Red: Stories and Novel Opening” is a collection of three short stories and the beginning of a novel.

Excerpt From Novel, The House Of Bad Spirit, Balim Barutcu

Theses and Dissertations

This is an excerpt from Balim Barutcu's debut novel, titled (for now!) The House of Bad Spirit. It follows the story of a multi-generational family that lives a split life, not only across countries and continents, but across time. It is the story of a family divided and reunified by the gifts granted by an old god, presiding over their tale amid the stars, from the heavens. She is grateful for the support of the MFA program in Fiction, particularly of her advisors Sigrid Nunez and Adam Haslett.

Los Días De La Calle Gabino Barreda: The Social Circle Of Remedios Varo And Benjamin Péret In Mexico, 1941-1947, Esther R. Levy

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores the social circle of Surrealist exiles that formed at the home of Remedios Varo and Benjamin Péret on Calle Gabino Barreda between 1941 and 1947. This group is immortalized in Gunther Gerzso’s painting Los Días de la Calle Gabino Barreda (1944) and includes Gerzso, Varo, Péret, Esteban Francés, and Leonora Carrington. This thesis argues that the environment cultivated on Calle Gabino Barreda provided these artists with a place to expand on what they learned in Europe to develop their Surrealist practice in Mexico.

Darkroom, Alexandra Romero

Theses and Dissertations

Romero’s poetry manuscript “Darkroom” dips into the surreal with a playful tonal range, blurring the distinction between reality and dream state. Scenes are vivid and speakers ever-changing as the poems move between preoccupations of love, anguish and more, scaling from the microscopic to the universal.

For What Cannot Be Reached, Yasmeen Alkishawi

Theses and Dissertations

On searching and yearning for connection, forgiveness and love.

Beyond Participation: Hélio Oiticica And Neville D’Almeida, Jocelyn Elliott Rodriguez

Theses and Dissertations

The collaborative works by Brazilian artist Hélio Oiticica and filmmaker Neville D’Almeida responded to Brazil’s dictatorship and their self-imposed exile in New York between 1969-1974. Oiticica’s concept of crelazer and the artists elective “marginal” position converge to create a new cinematic language; challenging gender norms, and proposing new systems for living.

Machines Don't Stop: Stories & Novel Excerpts, Alexander N. Richardson

Theses and Dissertations

Collection of short stories and novel openings. Nancy Reagan consults astrology to prevent nuclear Armageddon. A son is influenced by his sick mother, his video-game-obsessed father, and commercials. A lawyer attempts to convince the governor of Illinois to prevent Six Flags Great America from reopening during the pandemic.

Leonora Carrington’S "Down Below": Transgressive Renderings Of The Grotesque Female Body, Kelsey King

Theses and Dissertations

The classification of the bodily grotesque relies on the transgression of boundaries, marked by an openness to the world. Leonora Carrington’s memoir (1944) and painting (1940) that share the same name, Down Below, illustrate the grotesque body as a revisionist self-configuration, destabilizing traditional representations and eroticization of the female form.

I Mondi Incrociati Di Machiavelli: Il Principe E La Mandragola, Carrie Tighe Cristiano

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores Machiavelli’s ideas of virtù and fortuna and how, through an exploration of these terms, we can better understand the writer and theorist. By examining his works, principally Principe and Mandragola, we see many consistent ideas as well as gain a clearer understanding of Machiavelli’s character.

Made In Italy: Gli Effetti Della Musica Italiana (T)Rap Sulla Società E Sulla Lingua, Paraskevi Z. Gkana-Alberico

Theses and Dissertations

This paper explores the history of Italian (t)rap music, and uses the lyrics of famous songs in an attempt to examine the effects the sometimes vulgar and explicit themes, which are usually accompanied by the use of foreign languages, could have on society and the Italian language.

Making And Taking: Evaluating The Ethnographic Gaze In Graciela Iturbide’S Los Que Viven En La Arena, Lauren Gonzales

Theses and Dissertations

Graciela Iturbide’s career-defining engagement with indigenous subjects began with a commission by the Mexican government's Instituto Nacional Indigenista (INI) to document the Seri people. This thesis contextualizes the resulting photobook, Los que viven en la arena (1981), within the history of indigenous representation in Mexico and the controversial policies of the INI.

Negotiating Liberty: Fine Ceramics For The U.S. American Market Before 1860, Presley Rodriguez

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis argues that the rise of the consumer market toward the end of the eighteenth century led to the production of decorated fine ceramics that became powerful modes of popularizing new ideas in the United States regarding independence, national symbols, and abolitionism.

Tractatus De Herbis, Botanical Guide To The Universe: A Case Study For Morgan Ms M.873, Darya Badikova

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis investigates the development of the late medieval pharmacopoeial treatise Tractatus de herbis illustrated in M.873, a fourteenth-century manuscript from the collection of the Morgan Library in New York. Particularly, the thesis considers the use and reception of this encyclopedic work by elite contemporary audiences of the Venetian Republic through material and medical history.

Shocking, Heartbreaking, Transformative, Jess Shane

Theses and Dissertations

Shocking, Heartbreaking, Transformative is a 4-part creative non-fiction podcast that problematizes the use of personal stories in the documentary industry and examines the power dynamics between documentary-makers and their subjects. The series features a story within a story: it follows me, documentarian Jess Shane, as I craft short documentaries about four individuals’ lives— individuals who have applied to participate in my project by responding to an online ad. It also dives into the behind-the-scenes decisions required to tailor individuals’ life experiences to conform to industry standards of what makes a “good story.” In tandem, these two narratives— of me producing …

Diy The Process Of Healing From Trauma Through Woodworking, And Living Off Grid, Rachel A. Pollock

Theses and Dissertations

DIY is a website and short hybrid documentary that explores off-grid living, the longing for authenticity and healing from trauma. It is also about clinging to memories, even ones that may be painful, and the desire to move on. The website, Bare Minimums explores healing through the written word, and the short documentary “Home Is Where You Park It” explores the processing of trauma through video. They are two different approaches that evoke completely different emotions and outcomes. Processing memories and trauma through these mediums shows a kind of nostalgia for what once was, mixed with uncomfortable feelings that anticipate …

Lawn Story Short, Sarah Johnsrude

Theses and Dissertations

Lawn Story Short is a short essay film on lawn culture in a subdivision development outside of Louisville, Kentucky. The film is presented from the point of view of a first person narrator who guides the audience through an inquiry: why are lawns a pervasive icon in the US today?

Edward & Sons: An Improvised Opera, Ian Robles

Theses and Dissertations

A hurricane is coming, but at Edward & Sons Hardware and Plumbing the shelves are bare, the gringo debt collectors are calling and the owners is getting high in the back room. An improvised opera about the demise of the very last family-owned hardware store in Puerto Rico.

Zeus Iv, Lauren Holmes

Theses and Dissertations

How do you survive a pandemic? When you’re trapped inside for weeks? When society’s rules are revealed as largely arbitrary?

You get a dog and bring it to the park.

This play is about a group of devoted dog owners in Boston who stumble on an unexpected community. It's a dog park ballet about the close care of strangers.

I Could Never, Chad Kaydo

Theses and Dissertations

Isn’t it horrible? What she did? Can you even *imagine* doing that? Three women reckon with the dark myths we tell ourselves…while their husbands golf.

Walk Away, Anna May, Kim Diana Ly

Theses and Dissertations

Remember how Anna May Wong was passed over for white actors in yellowface? An emerging Asian American screenwriter moves on a kaleidoscopic journey through the entertainment industry -- from Kabuki to Crazy Rich Asians -- in order to understand why she's even trying to make it in Hollywood.

Impressions Of An Urban Vision: Art Across The Park (1980 And 1982), Marie N. Catalano

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines Art Across the Park (1980 and 1982), a program of sculpture and performance conceived of by artist David Hammons sited throughout overlooked regions of New York City’s public parks. Amidst debates about the proper use of public space and the role of public art in the early 1980s, Art Across the Park asserted a more culturally expansive model of being in social space, one rooted in strategies of performance as an antidote to lasting effects of social control.

Riverside Drive, Phillip C. Smith

Theses and Dissertations

RIVERSIDE DRIVE: Eugene, a mild-mannered librarian by day and a foul-mouthed comedian by night, uncovers the hidden legacy of his family’s Harlem home which forces him to transform his life.

"Those Common Everyday Things We All Know": Roger Brown's American Art, Jake Brodsky

Theses and Dissertations

Roger Brown (1941–1997) was an American artist associated with the Chicago Imagists. Borrowing elements from American visual culture to construct an idiosyncratic language of motifs, Brown’s paintings demand a mode of attention—of looking, searching, recognizing, identifying—that parallels the structures of feeling that constitute being in America.