American Material Culture Commons^™

“After-Ozymandias”: The Colonization Of Symbols And The American Monument, H. R. Membreno-Canales

Theses and Dissertations

After-Ozymandias examines the visual rhetoric of American patriotism through its many symbols, including flags and monuments. My thesis project consists of photographs of empty plinths, objects, products and archival materials. Countless relics remain today memorializing leaders and empires that inevitably declined, from antiquity to modern times. Looking back at distant history feels like a luxury, though: the question for our time in America is whether we have the strength of mind as a society to scrutinize our history, warts and all.

Review Of John James Audubon: The Nature Of The American Woodsman, By Gregory Nobles, Matthew Guzman

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

When we think about American ornithology, John James Audubon is often the first name that comes to mind. As evidence to Audubon’s lasting ability to enrapture readers, it bears repeating that an original Double Elephant Folio of Birds of America sold for an astounding $11.5 million in 2010 (2). Yet, for a man who produced such stunning and memorable visual and literary work on the avifauna of North America, some of the important details of his life and origins have remained highly contested. Even though Gregory Nobles’s new biography is not explicitly tied to the study of the Great Plains, …

Northwest Coast Native American Art: The Relationship Between Museums, Native Americans And Artists, Karrie E. Myers

Museum Studies Theses

Museums today have many responsibilities, including protecting and understanding objects in their care. Many also have relationships with groups of people whose items or artworks are housed within their institutions. This paper explores the relationship between museums and Northwest Coast Native Americans and their artists. Participating museums include those in and out of the Northwest Coast region, such as the Museum of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia, the Burke Museum, the Royal British Columbia Museum, the American Museum of Natural History and the Smithsonian Museum. Museum professionals who conducted research for some of these museums included Franz Boas, …

Usc South Campus: A Last Look At Modernism, Lydia M. Brandt, Paul Haynes, Andrew Nester, Robert Wertz, Ana Gibson, Margaret Mcelveen, John Benton, Adam Bradway, Hatara Tyson, Caley Pennington, Carly Simendinger

Faculty Publications

This is a class project from ARTH 542: American Architecture taught at the University of South Carolina by Lydia Mattice Brandt in Spring 2016.

With more Americans attending college than ever before; urban renewal; racial integration; the expansion of coeducation; and the architecture community’s advocacy for holistic relationship between planning, architecture, and landscape architecture, the American college campus developed rapidly and dramatically in the mid twentieth century. Using the University of South Carolina’s Columbia Campus as a case study, this project explores the history of American architecture in the mid-twentieth century.

The Experiences Of African-Born Women Faculty And Administrators At Colleges And Universities In The United States, Oyibo H. Afoaku

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to document the experiences of African-born women faculty and administrators at colleges and universities in the United States. The study explored the factors that motivated African-born women to immigrate to and extend their stay in the United States beyond completion of their education; factors they perceive as constraint on their quest for self-empowerment and identity as foreign students, college instructors, and/or administrators, and parents; and factors that have enabled them to adapt to their host culture and achieve their educational and professional goals even though they had to contend with multiple challenges associated with …

'Each Wise Nymph That Angles For A Heart': The Politics Of Courtship In The Boston 'Fishing Lady' Pictures, Andrea Pappas

Art and Art History

This essay examines the Boston fishing lady embroideries in light of eighteenth-century courtship practice, depictions of women anglers in prints and on decorative porcelain, and recreational fishing in colonial culture. In representing the fishing lady as a successful independent angler, women needleworkers addressed, and even covertly resisted, male control of courtship, a crucial life transaction. The regular placement of the image of the fishing lady in the narratives created by the complex embroideries asserts the woman’s pivotal, if brief, authority in the courtship process.

Speed And Resolution In The Age Of Technological Reproducibility, Shawn Taylor

Theses and Dissertations

The rate of acceleration of the biologic and synthetic world has for a while now, been in the process of exponentially speeding up, maxing out servers and landfills, merging with each other, destroying each other. The last prehistoric relics on Earth are absorbing the same oxygen, carbon dioxide and electronic waves in our biosphere as us. A degraded .jpeg enlarged to full screen on a Samsung 4K UHD HU8550 Series Smart TV - 85” Class (84.5” diag.). Within this composite ecology, the ancient limestone of the grand canyon competes with the iMax movie of itself, the production of Mac pros, …

Salvaging Print: Letterhead In Post-Industrial Urban America, Nancy Sharon Collins

The Mid-America Print Council Conference

This panel will explore the link between today’s small press movement and the formal aspects of commercial printing during the American 20th century. Panelists include Christine Medley , Philip Gattuso, and Nancy Bernardo.

Using as its primary example letterhead from defunct companies in Detroit, and secondarily, specimens of business and legal letterhead from other urban centers of the industrial United States, this panel will examine and discuss: What did letterhead represent to 20th century printers in local markets such as Detroit? What is the significance of printed letterhead, and stationery, to the art of small press printing in post-industrial cities …

Robber Barons And Humbuggers: The Rise Of Philanthropic Museums In Nineteenth-Century New York, Meaghan O'Connor

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

New York City's most recognizable museums like the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the American Museum of Natural History came to prominence in the second half of the nineteenth century thanks to the support of wealthy benefactors. At the same time, social reformers, mostly Protestant and middle or upper-class, were combating the vice and poverty that they saw in the diversifying city with a moralizing rhetoric of character building. This paper will show that these two movements, the rise of Philanthropic Museums and the Social Reform movement were connected and that the large temple-like museums that thrive to this day …

Serpentine Imagery In Nineteenth-Century Prints, Paula A. Rotschafer

School of Art, Art History, and Design: Theses and Student Creative Work

This thesis explores images of sea serpents in nineteenth-century print culture that reflect an ongoing effort throughout the century to locate, capture, catalogue, and eventually poeticize the sea serpent. My research centers primarily on the sea serpent craze that occurred within the New England and Mid-Atlantic states between 1845 and 1880 and examines the following three prints: Albert Koch’s Hydrarchos, a fossil skeleton hoax, printed in an 1845 advertisement by Benjamin Owen, a book and job printer; an 1868 Harper’s Weekly illustration titled The Wonderful Fish; and Stephen Alonzo Schoff’s etching, The Sea Serpent from 1880, based on …

Wallpaper Mania, Ellen Corrigan

Faculty & Staff Research & Creative Activity

Text panels from "Wallpaper Mania," a local exhibit in support of the Booth Library installation of the National Library of Medicine traveling exhibition The Literature of Prescription: Charlotte Perkins Gilman and "The Yellow Wall-Paper," on display September 23-November 2, 2013.

Hear My Voice: An Examination Of The Views Of Parents Who Are Raising Children Of African American Descent, Chavez Maurice Phelps

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Researchers have demonstrated that children who attend early childhood education programs benefit academically and socially (National Institute for Early Education Research, 2003). However, other researchers have shown that African American students may still lag behind their counterparts when they enter school (National Center for Education Statistics ([NCES], 2004). To explain this phenomenon, scholars and practitioners have relied on deficit theories, such as Ruby Payne’s (2005) culture of poverty theory or John Ogbu’s (1992) oppositional culture identity theory, which shift the blame solely on the child or their parents. However, there are other researchers who have stressed the importance of examining …

Lani Montreal Interview, Thi Navi Thach

Asian American Art Oral History Project

2010 interview with Filipina teacher, writer, performer Lani T. Montreal by Thi Navi Thach

Tatsu Aoki Interview, Brian Callahan

Asian American Art Oral History Project

2010 interview with musician Tatsu Aoki

Ann Poochareon Interview, Christina Yang

Asian American Art Oral History Project

2010 interview with new media artist Ann Poochareon by Christina Yang

Tina Ramirez Interview, Karina Lopez

Asian American Art Oral History Project

2010 interview with poet Tina Ramirez

Dahuang Zhou Interview, Julia Lin

Asian American Art Oral History Project

2010 interview with multimedia artist and entrepreneur DaHuang Zhou

Chi Jang Yin Interview, Anna Huang

Asian American Art Oral History Project

2010 interview with experimental documentary filmmaker Chi Jang Yin by Anna Huang

Von Kommanivanh Interview, John Pluciennik

Asian American Art Oral History Project

2010 interview with Loatian born/Chicago based painter Von Kommanivahn by John Pluciennik

Rominna Villasenor Interview, Jamelle Apolinar

Asian American Art Oral History Project

2010 interview with writer, performer, visual artist Rominna Villasenor by Jamelle Apolinar

Sam Del Rosario Interview, Nancy Shaba

Asian American Art Oral History Project

2010 interview with writer and the former ED of the Asian American Artists Collective- Chicago Sam del Rosario by Nancy Shaba.

Michiko Itatani Interview, Liza Rush

Asian American Art Oral History Project

2010 interview with painter and School of the Art Institute of Chicago professor Michiko itatani by Liza Rush

Mike Park Interview, Ben Rogers

Asian American Art Oral History Project

2010 interview with Mike Park from Asian Man Records by Ben Rogers

Ann Marie Chua Lee Interview, Jasmin M. Ortiz

Asian American Art Oral History Project

2010 Interview with cosplay costume designer Anne Marie Chua Lee by Jasmin M. Ortiz

Polish Influence On American Synagogue Architecture, Samuel D. Gruber

Religion - All Scholarship

Hundreds of thousands of Jews from Poland came to America after 1880. Many built synagogues with details recalling synagogues in their homeland. Immigrant artisans brought motifs and methods of Poland. Many of these synagogues were small, so the relationship to Polish art was on the inside in the painted and carved decoration. Established architects also had access to Polish synagogues as sources. With publication of the Jewish Encyclopedia (1901-06) images of Polish synagogues, such as the Warsaw’s Tlomackie Street Synagogue, became part of many Jewish libraries. More Polish influence came in the 1950s. Most architects were building modern synagogues, …

Jienan Yuan (Chien Yuan) Interview, Lauren Smith

Asian American Art Oral History Project

2009 interview with record producer and composer Chien Yuan by Lauren Smith

Anita Chang Interview, Lauren Smith

Asian American Art Oral History Project

2009 interview with filmmaker Anita Chang by Lauren Smith. For more information on the artist visit: http://anitachangworks.com/

Flo Oy Wong Interview, Angelika Piwowarczyk

Asian American Art Oral History Project

2009 interview with Chinese American multimedia artist Flo Oy Wong by Angelika Piwowarczyk

http://www.flo-oy-wongartist.com/

Danny Pudi Interview, Shariq Jefferi

Asian American Art Oral History Project

2009 interview with comedian Danny Pudi by Shariq Jefferi

Cynthia Tom Interview, Lauren Swift

Asian American Art Oral History Project

2009 interview with painter and president of the Asian American Women Artists Association Cynthia Tom by Lauren Swift