Other American Studies Commons^™

Pioneers Of Evacuation, Pioneers Of Resettlement: The Photographic Archive Of The Japanese American Incarceration And The Settler Colonial Imaginary, Christina Hobbs

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis reexamines the photographic archive of the Japanese American incarceration during World War II produced by the US government, arguing that these images “restage” the evacuation, incarceration, and resettlement periods through a settler colonial “pioneer” mythology, thereby obscuring the precarity of Japanese Americans' racial positionality between “settler” and “native.”

In/Visible, Raymond Thompson Jr

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports

My MFA thesis and supporting exhibition focus on challenging the United States’ photographic archive that often left out African-American people. The work, through the use of appropriation and alternative photographic processes, disrupts America’s historical visual archive and notions that surround the white gaze. Through the unsettling of this visual space, new speculative narratives can be created to help imagine new futures. This work is the beginning of a process of mourning histories I have never known and reclaiming a place for myself and my family in the American landscape that is free of racial trauma.

Rui(N)Ation: Narratives Of Art And Urban Revitalization In Detroit, Jessica Ks Cappuccitti

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This dissertation considers the City of Detroit as a case study for analyzing the complex role that artists and art institutions are playing in the potential re-growth and revitalization of the city. I specifically look at artists and arts organizations who are working against the popular narrative of Detroit as “ruin city.” Their efforts create counter narratives that emphasize stories of survival and showcase vibrant communities. By focussing on artist-led and institutional initiatives, I emphasize the importance of art in both community and narrative-building.

This research has taken the form of a written dissertation and two adapted projects, and positions …

Bound To Rise, Morgan P. H. Bielawski

Senior Projects Spring 2019

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Languages and Literature of Bard College.

Bound to Rise is a collection of short stories about people who discover themselves in the “fine drizzly rain” (or smirr, in Scottish lingo) of everyday life. They orient themselves and find some way forward, or they realize they have to. Thematically, it addresses a carnival (the carnivalesque), a demolition derby, multiple fires, photography, drinking, music, an eating disorder, and a birthday cake. It includes one original children’s story written in Russian and translated into English by the author.

“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.

American Idyll: A Place To Call Home, Bowen Walsh Fernie

Senior Projects Spring 2018

I was raised in Italy from the age of five and when I returned to the United States at eighteen, I was surprised by the way I was affected by the landscape I had never known or explored. I found myself drawn to American culture as it is stereotypically represented in movies and TV - the quaint houses, the schools with cheerleaders and locker rooms, the drive-in movie theaters – and began to examine how those stereotypes are reflected in the real world. From this initial interest I began exploring the American space that I envisioned myself inhabiting throughout my …

This Must Be The Place: A Return To The Borscht Belt, Ezra Glenn

Senior Projects Spring 2012

This Must Be the Place: a Return to the Borscht Belt

The Borscht Belt is a region in and around the Catskill Mountains, primarily in Sullivan and Ulster counties, which was once home to over 1,100 resorts, country clubs, golf courses, hotels, and bungalow colonies.

Shortly after the beginning of the 20^th century, the first waves of Jewish immigrants arrived from Eastern Europe to New York City in droves. Small Jewish farming colonies that had sprung up in the mid-19^th century began opening their doors to vacationers from the city as makeshift boarding houses, in order to supplement …