History Commons^™

America, Dreaming., Sarah Meftah

Masters Theses

There is a version

of America

that exists

only in dreams,

a kind of folklore,

shrouded in images,

technicolor interiors,

wrapped in plastic,

ghosts of recent past

to haunt and guide;

a constant reminder.

Wishful thinking

a constructed imaginary,

one I can hold in my hand.

Popular culture and spectacle, America and the domestic ideal, capitalism and the collective unconscious of a national identity. As an artist, I am interested in the myriad images that manifest for a viewer when they think of the spectacle of American pop culture, its domestic archetypes, and the material worship it revolves around. My …

Billie's Reflections, Billie Wynn, Melisa Achoko Allela, Movement Lab

Student Reflections

No abstract provided.

Skeleton Man, Billie Wynn, Sagian Shaw, Taira Schurman

Group Presentations

No abstract provided.

Fatma's Promise, Husna Abubakar, Simone Khanyi Hadebe, Clarissa Guzman

Group Presentations

No abstract provided.

Wendigo, Raul Falcon, Zoe Gilmore

Group Presentations

No abstract provided.

Taira's Reflections, Taira Schurman, Melisa Achoko Allela, Movement Lab

Student Reflections

No abstract provided.

Simone's Reflections, Simone Khanyi Hadebe, Melisa Achoko Allela, Movement Lab

Student Reflections

No abstract provided.

Sagian's Reflections, Sagian Shaw, Melisa Achoko Allela, Movement Lab

Student Reflections

No abstract provided.

Raul's Reflections, Raul Falcon, Melisa Achoko Allela, Movement Lab

Student Reflections

No abstract provided.

Rise, Ning Yen, Omar Abdelhamid, Erin Xi, Nicole Xu

Group Presentations

No abstract provided.

Session 3 | The Oral Storyteller, Melisa Achoko Allela, Movement Lab

Course Materials

Presentation for the Motion Capture and Orature course offered during the 2024 Wintersession.

Motion Capture For Orature Wintersession 2024 | Syllabus, Melisa Achoko Allela, Movement Lab

Course Materials

This winter session course invites students to explore motion capture through the lens of traditional oral storytelling practices. Students will actively identify the unique and distinguishing features of orature, and leverage their own cultural backgrounds, personal perspectives, and idiosyncrasies to create motion capture data that can be used in crafting an immersive digital retelling of a folktale.

Session 7 | Audience Role And Interaction, Melisa Achoko Allela, Movement Lab

Course Materials

Presentation for the Motion Capture and Orature course offered during the 2024 Wintersession.

Session 4 | The Talking Cloth As Prop, Melisa Achoko Allela, Movement Lab

Course Materials

Presentation for the Motion Capture and Orature course offered during the 2024 Wintersession.

Session 9 | Digital Immersion & Presence In Oral Storytelling: Being There, Melisa Achoko Allela, Movement Lab

Course Materials

Presentation for the Motion Capture and Orature course offered during the 2024 Wintersession.

Session 8 | Non-Verbal Storytelling: Facial Expressions, Melisa Achoko Allela, Movement Lab

Course Materials

Presentation for the Motion Capture and Orature course offered during the 2024 Wintersession.

Session 1 | Orature: Setting The Foundation, Melisa Achoko Allela, Movement Lab

Course Materials

Presentation for the Motion Capture and Orature course offered during the 2024 Wintersession.

Session 2 | Oral Storytelling Space / Place / Time, Melisa Achoko Allela, Movement Lab

Course Materials

Presentation for the Motion Capture and Orature course offered during the 2024 Wintersession.

Songa: A Mocap Database, Melisa Achoko Allela, Movement Lab

Course Materials

No abstract provided.

Session 6 | Motion Capture For The Storytelling Performance, Melisa Achoko Allela, Movement Lab

Course Materials

Presentation for the Motion Capture and Orature course offered during the 2024 Wintersession.

Session 5 | Oral Storytelling Props And Costume, Melisa Achoko Allela, Movement Lab

Course Materials

Presentation for the Motion Capture and Orature course offered during the 2024 Wintersession.

In A Condition Of No Light, Alana Perino

Masters Theses

In a Condition of No Light is an autofictional investigation into lineages of familial domesticity. The performances therein circumnavigate one family in one domestic environment, yet are in dialogue with repertoires learned and rehearsed within legacies of myth, literature, theater, film, music, and image; as well as through the otherwise untraceability of embodied memory and inherited trauma. The methodologies used are primarily photographic but also encompass practices reaching towards sculpture, installation, and performance. The line of questioning reserved for this inquiry is how a home, its objects, and inhabitants generate, spacialize, and embody the conditions of wealth, whiteness, and gender. …

Material Encounters: Making Memory Beyond The Mind, Ariel Wills

Masters Theses

Can acts of making carry the memories of our embeddedness within the world? This thesis explores how making things can nurture a sense of kinship that cuts across the organic and inorganic, erasing the distinction between living and dead, material and spiritual. Through handwork such as art-making, sewing, knitting, cooking, woodworking, and beyond, the burden of remembering and of archiving is shared across human and non-human bodies, cultivated through practices of making, and through the materials themselves. By recounting the stories of my family’s experience as Jewish immigrants in the United States, I aim to reveal how their domestic practices …