American Studies Commons^™

Margins (I Nvr Needed Acceptance From All U Outsiders), Jahi Lendor

Masters Theses

A comedian said, “American pie isn’t made out of apples, it’s made out of whatever you can get your fucking hands on.”1 With that, my work seeks to provide an honest representation of the infinite value of the everydayness and behavior of blackness ranging from trauma to beauty. Various mediums explore culture, class, collective memory, identity, and erasure. While resisting institutional and systemic boundaries between disciplines my practice actively seeks fluidity between media. The work often translates to (social) poetic-bricolage visualizations that combine gestures of assemblage, sculpture, installation, and painting. The work focuses on reflecting on how I see life …

Making Then Meaning, Ben Denzer

Masters Theses

This is an artist talk contained within a book. It is 816 pages and 49 minutes long. Closed captions run across the spreads. A video of this talk can be watched on bendenzer.com/making-then-meaning

At RISD, I’ve been prompted to expand the scope and tools of my practice and to reflect on questions of meaning in my work.

I spend my days making things, but I’ve never really had good answers to questions of why I make the things I make, or what their meaning is. I don’t think there are simple answers to these questions.

I think meaning comes from …

The Rules Of Appropriation From The Perspective Of A Contemporary Artist, Cicily J. Collazo

Masters Theses

No abstract provided.

Frontier Access To East Tennessee: A Ceramic Analysis Of Ramsey House (40kn120), Bell Site (40kn202), And Exchange Place (40sl22), Abby Jane Naunheimer

Masters Theses

East Tennessee, falling within the Appalachian sub-culture, was romanticized by 19th-century writers as an unchanging, rural society. The stigma of a non-consumer, frontier culture persisted, questioning the ability of East Tennessee residents to access consumer goods during the frontier period. By using multiple lines of evidence, historical archaeology is well-positioned to study unknown settlers living within a misunderstood region.

Three frontier-era East Tennessee homesteads were chosen to conduct ceramic analyses as a beginning point of understanding consumer access. Ramsey House, Bell Site, and Exchange Place were each occupied beginning in the late 18th century and continued into the first quarter …

The Interrelationship Between Pop Art And Advertising, John Edward Pajkos

Masters Theses

No abstract provided.