Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

American Studies Commons

Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

History of Art, Architecture, and Archaeology

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

Articles 1 - 23 of 23

Full-Text Articles in American Studies

Artful Manipulation: The Rockefeller Family And Cold War America, Julia Kaziewicz Jan 2015

Artful Manipulation: The Rockefeller Family And Cold War America, Julia Kaziewicz

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

My dissertation, "Artful Manipulation: The Rockefeller Family and Cold War America," examines how the Rockefeller family used the Museum of Modern Art, Colonial Williamsburg, and the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Collection to shape opinions about America, both at home and abroad, during the early years of the Cold War. The work done at Colonial Williamsburg tied the Rockefeller name to the foundations of American society and, later, to the spread of global democracy in the Cold War world. The establishment of a new museum for the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art collection in 1957 renewed the narrative that American …


The Alan Lomax Photographs And The Music Of Williamsburg (1959-1960), Peggy Finley Aarlien Jan 2010

The Alan Lomax Photographs And The Music Of Williamsburg (1959-1960), Peggy Finley Aarlien

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

No abstract provided.


Flying Under The Radar With The Royal Chicano Air Force: The Ongoing Politics Of Space And Ethnic Identity, Ella Maria Diaz Jan 2010

Flying Under The Radar With The Royal Chicano Air Force: The Ongoing Politics Of Space And Ethnic Identity, Ella Maria Diaz

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

This dissertation explores the Royal Chicano Air Force (RCAF), a Chicano/a arts collective that produced numerous murals in Sacramento, CA, for over forty years. Grounded in Mexican and US aesthetic traditions, their murals reflect cultural hybridity and re-imagine US history through a Chicano/a perspective. Many of their works were and are located in Sacramento's Chicano/a barrios, while others occupy interethnic, public space in the vicinity of the State Capitol. By encoding hidden Chicano/a iconographies within each mural, the RCAF offers what scholar Alicia Gaspar de Alba calls "alter-Native" narratives of American history because they posit "Other" views of local history, …


Medicating Slavery: Motherhood, Health Care, And Cultural Practices In The African Diaspora, Ywone Edwards-Ingram Jan 2005

Medicating Slavery: Motherhood, Health Care, And Cultural Practices In The African Diaspora, Ywone Edwards-Ingram

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

A sophisticated exploration of the intricacies of motherhood and health care practices of people of African descent, especially the enslaved population of Virginia, can shed light on their notions of a well-lived life and the factors preventing or contributing to these principles. I situate my dissertation within this ideal as I examine how the health and well-being of enslaved people were linked to broader issues of economic exploitation, domination, resistance, accommodation, and cultural interactions. Historical and archaeological studies have shown that the living and working conditions of enslaved people were detrimental to their health. Building on these findings, I explore …


Facing Independence: American Revolutionary Portraits Within The Context Of British Identity, Susan Jensen Rawles Jan 2005

Facing Independence: American Revolutionary Portraits Within The Context Of British Identity, Susan Jensen Rawles

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

This paper examines the content of eighteenth-century American and British portraits within the ideologically-expanding context of eighteenth-century British identity. It explores the ways in which Britons and Americans negotiated who they were and, consequently, their claims on society, in the era preceding and including the American Revolution. It does so for three reasons: to advance a more interdisciplinary approach to the study of American portraiture; to motivate further dialogue on the relationship between American and British portraits; and to invoke the potential for American portraits as documentary evidence of social history.;Through historical examination of philosophical influences informing the development of …


Nathaniel Jocelyn: In The Service Of Art And Abolition, Toby Maria Chieffo-Reidway Jan 2005

Nathaniel Jocelyn: In The Service Of Art And Abolition, Toby Maria Chieffo-Reidway

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

Through my dissertation, I embark on a biographical, cultural and historical study of artist and abolitionist Nathaniel Jocelyn (1796-1881), primarily known as a nineteenth-century portrait painter and engraver in New Haven, Connecticut. Although Jocelyn received little formal training, he sought to become a preeminent portrait painter. Together with his younger brother, Simeon Smith Jocelyn (1799-1879), he established a successful engraving firm designing banknotes, maps, atlases, and book illustrations.;Jocelyn lived in an age of evangelical revivalism commonly called the Second Great Awakening. He was a devout Congregationalist and saw the various aspects of his life embedded in his religious convictions. Jocelyn's …


Picturing Home: Domestic Painting And The Ideologies Of Art, Mark E. Sprinkle Jan 2004

Picturing Home: Domestic Painting And The Ideologies Of Art, Mark E. Sprinkle

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

This dissertation describes domestic painting in Atlanta, Georgia between 1995 and 2004 as a market defined by its intentional connection of the ideologies and spaces of art with those of bourgeois domesticity. The first half of the work seeks to contextualize the market's various objects and texts within public and academic discourses on culture that commonly posit an antithesis between the practices of bourgeois women (especially decoration) and "high" or avant-garde art, as suggested by the sentiment, "GOOD ART WON'T MATCH YOUR SOFA." Thus, Chapter 1 addresses the promises and pitfalls of sociological approaches to understanding art in general, Chapter …


Domestic Brick Architecture In Williamsburg: A Comparative Study Of Eighteenth-Century Brick Houses In Williamsburg, Annapolis, And Charleston, Andrew Craig Barry Jan 2004

Domestic Brick Architecture In Williamsburg: A Comparative Study Of Eighteenth-Century Brick Houses In Williamsburg, Annapolis, And Charleston, Andrew Craig Barry

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

No abstract provided.


Satisfying Williamsburg's "Meat Tooth": Butchers And Bones In Inter-Bellum Williamsburg, Virginia, Carrie Alblinger Jan 2002

Satisfying Williamsburg's "Meat Tooth": Butchers And Bones In Inter-Bellum Williamsburg, Virginia, Carrie Alblinger

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

No abstract provided.


The Still Life: Domesticity, Subjectivity, And The Bachelor In Nineteenth-Century America, Matthew Cohen Jan 2002

The Still Life: Domesticity, Subjectivity, And The Bachelor In Nineteenth-Century America, Matthew Cohen

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

"The Still Life" explores debates over single manhood in the culture of the nineteenth-century United States. Until recently, the "bachelor" was less an identifiable social type than a battleground for discourses of privacy and intimacy, sympathy and sentiment, and labor and leisure. Representations of the bachelor tended to excite readers' concerns about the relationships among emotion, public behavior, and intellectual prowess. Concentrating on constructions of the bachelor within specific discursive arenas, this dissertation examines "bachelorhood" as a way culture organized a wide range of ideologies and experiences. Though the bachelor's particular significance faded in the twentieth century, a conceptual roadblock …


The Domestication Of History In American Art: 1848-1876, Jochen Wierich Jan 1998

The Domestication Of History In American Art: 1848-1876, Jochen Wierich

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

This dissertation traces the decline of history painting and its domestication in Other artistic forms in the United States. In the three decades between the Mexican-American War and the Centennial, the market for historical art went through a major transformation. Artists shifted from historical to contemporary subjects or represented historical themes in everyday-domestic settings. Monumental history painting, which was supported by art unions and private patrons during the antebellum period, came under critical attack and lost its status as a form of high art. Critical opinion turned especially against paintings of historical struggle and heroic sacrifice which seemed to be …


Going Nowhere Fast: The Car, The Highway And American Identity In Vladimir Nabokov's "Lolita" And Robert Frank's "The Americans", Scott Patrick Moyers Jan 1997

Going Nowhere Fast: The Car, The Highway And American Identity In Vladimir Nabokov's "Lolita" And Robert Frank's "The Americans", Scott Patrick Moyers

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

No abstract provided.


Fort Hill: A Representative Of The Structural And Social Hierarchy And Harmony Of Greek Revival Architecture, Beth Ann Spiryson Mcpherson Jan 1996

Fort Hill: A Representative Of The Structural And Social Hierarchy And Harmony Of Greek Revival Architecture, Beth Ann Spiryson Mcpherson

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

No abstract provided.


Facing Philadelphia: The Social Functions Of Silhouettes, Miniatures, And Daguerreotypes, 1760-1860, Anne Ayer Verplanck Jan 1996

Facing Philadelphia: The Social Functions Of Silhouettes, Miniatures, And Daguerreotypes, 1760-1860, Anne Ayer Verplanck

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

In 1807, Charles Fraser lauded fellow miniature artist Edward Greene Malbone's ability to produce "such striking resemblances, that they will never fail to perpetuate the tenderness of friendship, to divert the cares of absence, and to aid affection in dwelling on those features and that image which death has forever wrested from it." The explanations traditionally given for the commissioning of portraits--the perpetuation of family or institutional memory--correspond with Fraser's comments. Yet these explanations rarely incorporate the social context: the communities in which images were produced and the individual, familial, or group meanings of portraits.;"Facing Philadelphia: The Social Functions of …


"The Road To Ruins And Restoration": Roland W Robbins And The Professionalization Of Historical Archaeology, Donald Walter Linebaugh Jan 1996

"The Road To Ruins And Restoration": Roland W Robbins And The Professionalization Of Historical Archaeology, Donald Walter Linebaugh

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

Roland W. Robbins helped to pioneer the profession of historical archaeology. as the discipline professionalized, he found himself increasingly excluded. This study analyzes Robbins's career within the context of the disciplines of archaeology and historic preservation and considers the professionalization process, current cultural resource management practice, the value of early data, and the importance of public archaeology.;The study also explores archaeology as Robbins's solution to his long personal crisis of vocation. He reacted to his coming of age during the Depression by searching for personal foundations and also responded to larger cultural needs, including a quest for the roots of …


Joshua Johnson Revisited: Filling The Lacunae, Toby Maria Chieffo-Reidway Jan 1995

Joshua Johnson Revisited: Filling The Lacunae, Toby Maria Chieffo-Reidway

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

No abstract provided.


Framing The Woman Artist: Gender And Art In Howells And Sargent, Matthew Cohen Jan 1995

Framing The Woman Artist: Gender And Art In Howells And Sargent, Matthew Cohen

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

No abstract provided.


A Toast To The Tavern: An Archaeological Study Of A 17th And 18th Century Tavern In Charlestown, Massachusetts, Christy Cathleen Vogt Jan 1994

A Toast To The Tavern: An Archaeological Study Of A 17th And 18th Century Tavern In Charlestown, Massachusetts, Christy Cathleen Vogt

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

No abstract provided.


The Kids Are (All) Right: Baby-Boomers And The Rhetoric Of Childhood In The Picture Books Of Chris Van Allsburg, Mark. Sprinkle Jan 1993

The Kids Are (All) Right: Baby-Boomers And The Rhetoric Of Childhood In The Picture Books Of Chris Van Allsburg, Mark. Sprinkle

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

No abstract provided.


Rituals, Roots, And Rectangles: The Classical Tradition In Early American Portraiture, Lauren Jessica Brown Suber Jan 1992

Rituals, Roots, And Rectangles: The Classical Tradition In Early American Portraiture, Lauren Jessica Brown Suber

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

No abstract provided.


The Craft Of Portraiture In Eighteenth-Century America, Anne Mary Fuhrman Jan 1992

The Craft Of Portraiture In Eighteenth-Century America, Anne Mary Fuhrman

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

No abstract provided.


The Quaker Influence On Nantucket Architecture: A Case Study, Anne Elizabeth Gaeta Jan 1990

The Quaker Influence On Nantucket Architecture: A Case Study, Anne Elizabeth Gaeta

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

No abstract provided.


"I Would Not Begrudge To Give A Few Pounds More": Elite Consumer Choices In The Chesapeake, 1720-1785 The Calvert House Ceramic Assemblage, Steven Edward Patrick Jan 1990

"I Would Not Begrudge To Give A Few Pounds More": Elite Consumer Choices In The Chesapeake, 1720-1785 The Calvert House Ceramic Assemblage, Steven Edward Patrick

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

No abstract provided.