Visual Studies Commons^™

Made In Movieland: Imitation, Agency, And Girl Movie Fandom In The 1910s., Diana Anselmo-Sequeira

Diana Anselmo-Sequeira

This article uses the key concept of imitation as a frame through which I explore the complex relationship established between a burgeoning American film press and the first generation of girls to be culturally construed as “adolescent” and “movie fans.” Interlacing early-twentieth-century psychology literature with commercial print sources and girls’ own fan testimonies, I set out to investigate the ways imitation became a source of agency for movie-loving girls at a time popular and scientific sources understood imitative behavior as both a mark of women’s intellectual inferiority and a product of female adolescent arrestment. The goal of this piece is …

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.

Union Presbyterian Seminary Hosting African Odyssey Exhibit

Joanne Braxton

Boost Or Blight?’ Graffiti Writing And Street Art In The ‘New’ New Orleans, Doreen Piano

Doreen M Piano

Before the storm, responses to graffiti writing and street art in New Orleans were typical of other urban environments where it was viewed as being “out of place” (Keith, 1999), “a spectacle of filth” (Conquergood, 2004), involving what Ferrell (1993, p. 37) describes as a “war of the walls.” David (2005) describes the political aspects of street art in New Orleans as “visual resistance” (p. 233), a term that captures relations of power among graffiti producers, their products, and the effects of their actions (p. 233). However, attempts to eliminate graffiti and street art by enforcing stricter penalties, encouraging neighborhood …

Nelly's Iconography Of Greece, Katerina Zacharia

Katerina Zacharia

No abstract provided.

The Frescoes Of Castelseprio, John Hatch

John G. Hatch

No abstract provided.

Futurism: Movement And The Structure Of Reality, John Hatch

John G. Hatch

No abstract provided.

Michelangelo's Last Judgment And 'Le Segrete Cose', John Hatch, J. Curtis

John G. Hatch

No abstract provided.

Giacomo Balla's Linea Di Velocita (1913), John Hatch

John G. Hatch

No abstract provided.

Julian Haladyn: Portable Tea Ceremony Performance At The University Of Western Ontario, London, Ontario, May 16, 2000, John Hatch

John G. Hatch

No abstract provided.

A Legacy Of Persuasion: Japanese Photography And The Artful Politics Of Remembering Manchuria, Kari Shepherdson-Scott

Kari L Shepherdson-Scott

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.

The Young White Faces Of Slavery, Mary Niall Mitchell

Mary Niall Mitchell

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.

Shantytown Vistas And Immigrant Voices: Bernardo Verbitsky, Guaraní Language And The Art Of Overcoming Peronism, Stephen Buttes

Stephen M Buttes

This was an invited presentation at a conference of Indiana professors who specialize in research on Latin America. The conference was hosted by the Minority Languages and Literature program at Indiana University, Bloomington. I gave a version of what was then a forthcoming paper on Bernardo Verbitsky's novel Villa Miseria también es América. The entire essay can be read at the following link: http://muse.jhu.edu/login?auth=0&type=summary&url=/journals/revista_de_estudios_hispanicos/v047/47.2.buttes.html

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.

Anti-Haitian Rhetoric And The Monumentalizing Of Violence In Joaquin Balaguer's Guía Emocional De La Ciudad Romántica, Medar Serrata

Medar Serrata

This essay compares four editions of the book Guía emocional de la ciudad romántica, by the Dominican author and politician Joaquin Balaguer. The book, a celebration of Santo Domingo’s monumental architecture, evokes the topos of the romantic poet who strolls down the streets of an ancient city admiring the remnants of the past. A closer examination, however, reveals a text deeply invested in the monumentalizing of violence—a text that portrays the dictator Rafael Leónidas Trujillo as the savior of the nation. Moreover, the metaphorical stroll that the reader is invited to take reenacts the movement of history in order to …

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.