Visual Studies Commons^™

Pre-Service Teachers’ Perspectives On How The Use Of Toon Comic Books During Guided Reading Influenced Learning By Struggling Readers, Ewa Mcgrail, Alicja Rieger, Gina M. Doepker, Samantha Mcgeorge

Gina Doepker

The study presented in this article examines the use of comic books, specifically the TOON comic books during guided reading instruction. The instruction was provided to struggling readers by the Literacy Center at a comprehensive university in southeastern United States. What most pre-service teachers in this study agreed upon was that comic books served as an effective tool for getting their students interested in reading. Reading comic books with tutors as partners in conversation with the struggling readers in this study was also a powerful medium for facilitating students’ literacy skills development, particularly in the areas of reading fluency and …

Street Life In London: Context And Commentary, Emily Morgan

Emily Kathryn Morgan

This book is the first-ever in-depth analysis of the genesis, development and context of Smith and Thomson’s innovative publication. Now regarded as a pioneering photo-text and a foundational work of socially conscious photography – “one of the most significant and far-reaching photobooks in the medium’s history” (The Photobook: A History) – Street Life in London did not achieve commercial success in its own time. In Street Life in London we see the start, but not the conclusion, of a conversation between text and image in the service of education, reportage and social justice.

Wocmes 2018: "I Am The Entertainer": Embodying Entertainment In Egyptian Film Posters (Slides), Robin Dougherty

Roberta L. Dougherty

No abstract provided.

Nelly's Iconography Of Greece, Katerina Zacharia

Katerina Zacharia

No abstract provided.

Postcards From Metaxas' Greece: The Uses Of Classical Antiquity In Tourism Photography, Katerina Zacharia

Katerina Zacharia

No abstract provided.

Book Review: Museum Pieces: Toward The Indigenization Of Canadian Museums, Matthew Ryan Smith, Ph.D.

Matthew Ryan Smith, Ph.D.

No abstract provided.

American Ethnographic Film And Personal Documentary: The Cambridge Turn, Matthew Ryan Smith, Ph.D.

Matthew Ryan Smith, Ph.D.

No abstract provided.

Continued Visual Objectification: The Image Of The Fair Sex In Occidental Advertisements, Esmaeil Zeiny

Esmaeil Zeiny

Portrayals of women in the mass media have always been a source of contention amongst scholars. Right from the emergence of the mass media, women have been stereotypically portrayed as an inferior being whose primary domain was home and who was viewed as a sexual object. In spite of feminists’ efforts to stop women’s denigration in the media over the course of several decades, women are still depicted as weak and sexual object, especially in the advertising industry. The visual objectification of women engenders a distorted view of the place of women in society. This paper examines the images of …

Is Choosemyplate A Good Choice?, Sharine Borslien

Sharine Borslien

No abstract provided.

Because I Am Not Here, Selected Second Life-Based Art Case Studies. Subjectivity, Autoempathy And Virtual World Aesthetics, Francisco Gerardo Toledo Ramírez

Francisco Gerardo Toledo Ramírez

Second Life is a virtual world accessible through the Internet in which users create objects and spaces, and interact socially through 3D avatars. Certain artists use the platform as a medium for art creation, using the aesthetic, spatial, temporal and technological features of SL as raw material. Code and scripts applied to animate and manipulate objects, avatars and spaces are important in this sense. These artists, their avatars and artwork in SL are at the centre of my research questions: what does virtual existence mean and what is its purpose when stemming from aesthetic exchange in SL?

Through a qualitative …

Heather Saunders: The "Freaky Friday" Series, Matthew Ryan Smith, Ph.D.

Matthew Ryan Smith, Ph.D.

Desire and sex and lust. The conflation of signifiers of sensuality and femininity in female clothing points to a rigorous sexualization of the body beginning in girlhood, through their dress and the way it’s worn. Lace, fishnet, silk, leather, satin, chiffon and latex are shown in their various iterations in children’s fashion. The same materials, fabrics and the words used to describe them host different meanings and associations in adulthood. Yet, somewhere in this liminal divide, childhood and adulthood speak to each other, and the conversation is uncomfortable, like the first time you heard about the birds and the bees.

Exhibition Review: Clive Holden: Media/Mediated, Matthew Ryan Smith, Ph.D.

Matthew Ryan Smith, Ph.D.

An approach to artmaking that is driven by the prospect of chance, by the accidental, is reliant upon the inherent rationale of the natural world. There, chaos constitutes change (or vice versa) and reveals new forms that displace and/or update the old. Toronto-based multidisciplinary artist Clive Holden’s recent practice has manipulated the properties of the natural world into an aesthetic strategy. Utilizing the randomization and dynamism found in nature serves to unsettle and reconfigure his installations, transforming them into ever-evolving media.

Shapeshifting: Transformations In Native American Art, Matthew Ryan Smith, Ph.D.

Matthew Ryan Smith, Ph.D.

Gary Wyatt: Seekers And Travellers Contemporary Art Of The Pacific Northwest Coast, Matthew Ryan Smith, Ph.D.

Matthew Ryan Smith, Ph.D.

No abstract provided.

A Study Of Japanese Animation, Michele Gibney

Michele Gibney

This paper takes a sociological approach to the question of popular culture’s ability in Japan--specifically that of Japanese animation--to be reflective of the country's sociological concerns. This is not to say that all anime shows consciously reflect Japanese life, but by extrapolation of recurrent themes one can construct a model of certain sociological issues in Japan. The author split the paper up into five sections each of which tackles a different theme. These sections are: Education, Social and Class Differences, Environment, Post-Nuclear Visions, and An Emergent Feminism. The main point that the author conveys in each section is a way …

Soundscapes Of Disaster And Humanitarianism: Survival Singing, Relief Telethons, And The Haiti Earthquake, Elizabeth Mcalister

Elizabeth McAlister

This essay first listens, on one hand, to music made by Haitians, for Haitians, close to the epicenter, in the direct aftermath of the Haiti 2010 earthquake. On the other hand, it considers music made by (mostly) North Americans for (mostly) other Americans, in telethon performances far away in New York and Los Angeles and London, weeks after the event. I argue that Haitians used music, and particularly religious singing, self-reflexively, in a culturally patterned way, to orient themselves in time and space, and to construct a frame of meaning in which to understand and act in the devastated Haitian …

White Snake, Black Snake Folk Narrative Meets Master Narrative In Qing Dynasty Sichuanese Cross-Stitch Medallions, Cory Willmott

Cory A. Willmott

The cross-stitch medallion in figure 1 was collected by my grandmother, Katherine Willmott, in the early 1920s when she was a missionary in Renshow, Sichuan Province, West China. Many years after I inherited it, I learned that it depicts a folk narrative called “White Snake; Black Snake” that was traditionally performed both on stage in the legitimate theaters and in Chinese shadow puppet dramas (Highbaugh n/d:6).

The story may be summarized as follows: There were two female snakes, White Snake and Black Snake, who were inseparable friends. They both changed into beautiful young women. White Snake got married and bore …

Some Things Last A Long Time, Matthew Ryan Smith

Matthew Ryan Smith, Ph.D.

Relational viewing is also linked to poststructuralist theory, which has provided a framework for shifting away from the idea that the author is the creator of meaning to instead consider how readers interact with texts to produce meaning. Some Things Last a Long Time considers the connections between autobiography and relational experience. With this exhibition, I propose that contemporary autobiographical art can operate as a site where social encounters are created and where self-discoveries become possible. I encourage viewers to use their own lived experiences and personal histories to interpret the artworks in the exhibition.

Installation Art - Frenzy Episode | Contact | Raising The Dead, Agnieszka Golda, Martin V. Johnson, Ruth Fazakerley

Agnieszka Golda

This monograph presents a series of three exhibitions developed collaboratively by Agnieszka Golda and Martin Johnson. It describes a wonderful tracery of not quite recognisable anthropomorphic creatures who inhabit oddly constructed and disjointed spaces. Together Golda and Johnson have utilised crocheted and printed textiles, carved wood and painted aluminium to form strange dwellings, figures and passages. Dr Ruth Fazakerley's research and art practice span Australian contemporary urban public art, painting and sculptural installation. In her essay here she positions Golda and Johnson's work in a wider context. The distinctive aesthetic force of collaborative process is underpinned by Golda's discerning scholarship …

The Paradox Of Gender Among West China Missionary Collectors, 1920-1950, Cory A. Willmott

Cory A. Willmott

During the turbulent years between the Chinese nationalist revolution of 1911 and the communist victory of 1949, a group of missionaries lived and worked in West China whose social gospel theologies led to unusual identification with Chinese. Among the regular social actors in their lives were itinerant “curio men” who, amidst the chaos of feuding warlords, gathered up the heirlooms of the deposed Manchurian aristocracy and offered these wares for sale on the quiet and orderly verandahs of the mansions inside the missionary compounds of West China Union University. Although missionary men and women often collected the same types of …

The Participating Witness: A Conversation With Jaret Belliveau, Matthew Ryan Smith

Matthew Ryan Smith, Ph.D.

Jaret Belliveau is a Moncton-based photographer and filmmaker whose photographic work addresses illness and loss. Arguably, Belliveau is best known for his series Dominion Street (2003-2008), which began as a visual investigation into family dynamics and the hegemonic balances of power that maintain it. However, ten months into the project, Belliveau’s mother was diagnosed with stomach cancer. Soon after, the disease spread throughout the rest of her body and in time it took her life. Upon the recent staging of Dominion Street at Fredericton’s Beaverbrook Gallery (April 26, 2012 - June 10, 2012), I conducted an e-mail exchange with Belliveau …

Karin Doleske: The Drama Of Abstraction, Matthew Ryan Smith

Matthew Ryan Smith, Ph.D.

Karin Doleske’s most recent series Embedded Paintings from 2012 maintains a heightened interest in placing the viewer as an arbiter of knowledge. With these works, Doleske has manipulated poetic narrative for the visual sphere so that viewers may experience her paintings as they would written texts. However, in a twist of semiotic mischief, each painting formally characterizes an empty page to be filled by the viewer’s thoughts and imagination. For example, the horizontality of "Ten" subtly points to the lines of a written novel yet alphabetical letters are clearly absent. By doing so, it is as if Doleske has created …

Deliberate Cultural Curriculum: A Case Study In Online Discourse For Race And Gender Issues In Media, Lorene Wales

Lorene Wales

Interview For Kathimerini National Newspaper (In Greek), Katerina Zacharia

Katerina Zacharia

No abstract provided.

Adel Abdessemed: The Future Of Décor, Matthew Ryan Smith

Matthew Ryan Smith, Ph.D.

Adel Abdessemed’s Future of Décor at OCAD’s Onsite Gallery is the artist’s first solo exhibition in Canada and is a testament to the university’s ‘Nomadic Residency’ programme, which has featured work and lectures from ORLAN, Rirkrit Tiravanija and Hal Foster. Some may find Abdessemed’s invitation by curator (and OCAD professor) Charles Reeve as a daring gesture considering the artist’s 2008 show in San Francisco was terminated after the artist received death threats over a video series that featured close-ups of six animals bludgeoned to death for food. That being said, Abdessemed moves in a different trajectory for Onsite. The work …

John Cushnie: Greying The Grey, Matthew Ryan Smith

Matthew Ryan Smith, Ph.D.

Paintings are not talking heads. They can produce a conversation, an interaction, an exchange. They ask us to listen with our eyes, to feel the space between us, to project ourselves. The paintings in Eidolon Prospects aim for a mutual exchange, a reciprocal relationship — they push us to face our uncertainty, to work at them, to reconsider their visuality, to tap into their manipulation of materials. Their material and pigment are rendered as voices, and in their silent speech, the paintings come to haunt us. John [Cushnie]’s paintings disturb, incite and ambiguate.

Autobiography And The Family Frame: Jaret Belliveau's “Dominion Street” At Gallery Tpw, Matthew Ryan Smith

Matthew Ryan Smith, Ph.D.

Documented over a period of five years, “Dominion Street” presents a visual narrative of love, loss, and life encapsulated within an East Coast milieu. Privy to the Belliveau family’s emotional and physical plights, the artist utilizes an autobiographic frame offering up strikingly informal glimpses of his family.

Hellenism, Katerina Zacharia

Katerina Zacharia

No abstract provided.

Love, Sex, And Gender Embodied: The Spirits Of Hatian Vodou, Elizabeth Mcalister

Elizabeth McAlister

No abstract provided.

Hellenisms (Iii), "Reel" Hellenisms: Perceptions Of Greece In Greek Cinema (Ch. 12), Katerina Zacharia

Katerina Zacharia

No abstract provided.