European History Commons^™

Germania: The Nazi Party And The Third Reich Through The Lens Of Classical Architecture, Maggie L. Smith

Honors Theses

This thesis examines the influence of classical architectural styles and principles on architectural projects in Germany during the Third Reich. My research focuses on major projects completed by the state and does not delve into private buildings or other structures. All of the data was gathered from scholarly publications of repute and photographs to determine how Adolf Hitler’s regime utilized Greek and Roman stylistic elements in an attempt to revive the power and culture of Germany during a time of strife, as well as how Nazi architecture reflected Hitler’s personal ambition as dictator. Additionally, the thesis doubles as an expansion …

The Medici Example: How Power Creates Art And Art Creates Power, Margaret Hayden

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This project looks at two members of Florence’s Medici family, Cosimo il Vecchio (1389-1464) and Duke Cosimo I (1519-1574), in an attempt to assess how they used the patronage of art to facilitate their rule. By looking at their individual political representations through art, the specifics of their propagandist works and what form these pieces of art came, it is possible to analyze their respective rules. This analysis allows for a clearer understanding of how these two men, each in very different positions, found art as an ally for their political endeavors. While they were in power only one hundred …

Provincializing New York: In And Out Of The Geopolitics Of Art After 1945, Béatrice Joyeux-Prunel

Artl@s Bulletin

In this article, I argue that the putative global centrality of New York in art after 1945 is a construct, as it is for Paris prior to 1945. Monographs and national approaches are unsuccessful in challenging such powerful myths as these. A global, transnational and comparative approach demonstrates that the struggle for centrality was a global phenomenon after 1945, a battle that New York does not win (depending on one’s point of view) until after 1964. Rather than considering centres and peripheries as a fixed category, I propose to consider them as a strategic notion which artists and their promoters …

How To Build A World Art: The Strategic Universalism Of Colour Reproductions And The Unesco Prize (1953-1968), Chiara Vitali

Artl@s Bulletin

What role did UNESCO play in the art world of the post-war era? This article makes use of published and archival sources in order to clarify the utopia of a “World Art” that shaped UNESCO and led to the “Archives of Colour Reproductions of Works of Art”, a project of worldwide collect and diffusion of images of “masterworks” inspired by Malraux’s “Museum without walls”. This case study focuses on one particular aspect of the project, the “UNESCO Prize”, conceived by the Brazilian art critic and Marxist intellectual Mario Pedrosa for the 1953 São Paulo Biennial.

Carpets As Signifiers Of Historical Change: The Azerbaijani Carpet Industry From The Mid-Nineteenth To Late Twentieth Century, Jill Boggs

Senior Theses

The Azerbaijani carpet industry, long recognized as an important piece of Azerbaijan’s cultural heritage, transformed dramatically between the mid-nineteenth and twentieth centuries in response to political, economic, and social changes that took place under the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union. During this period, the carpet industry began to use modern weaving techniques and materials, favored factory production over traditional hand-woven designs, and created pieces for exportation rather than personal or community use. These developments contribute to two historical schools that view the Soviet Union as either a prison of nations, stifling non-Russian cultures, or a nursery of ethnic identities, …

Death And The Transformation Of Women’S Roles Surrounding Death: An Analysis Of Jacques-Louis David’S History Paintings, Miranda Boljat

Bound Away: The Liberty Journal of History

Jacques-Louis David is remembered today for his contributions to the world of Neoclassical art before the French Revolution, during the Revolution, and during the reign of Napoleon Bonaparte. His body of work represents an impressive journey from his Rococo roots to his Neoclassical political works to his many different portraits of Napoleon. In comparing his pieces, an observer can track the development of a variety of themes. Specifically, it is possible to see the different ways David portrayed the event of death in his history paintings. From there, a researcher can clearly tie the different views of death to the …

The Last Prisoners Of War: How Nazi-Looted Art Is Displayed In U.S. Museums, Monica May Thompson

Geifman Prize in Holocaust Studies

How art museums approach NLA is important today because much of the public relies on museums for their education. NLA cases are especially controversial because they are not only legal battles, but ethical ones so museums have to be extra careful approaching them. Even if the museum has won the legal battle the public may not see them as winning the ethical one therefore they might want to avoid displaying this information to the public. However, as we can see with the previous websites, it actually looks worse for museums not to be open and honest about their NLA pieces …

Pistore Panem Petimus: Specialization In The Late-Roman Baking Industry, Jared Benton

Art Faculty Publications

The traditional Roman baker (pistor) is typically thought of as having been horizontally specialized; that is to say he or she performed all the tasks involved in converting raw materials (grain, salt, and water) into bread. This means that they were, in early modern terminology, both millers and bakers. The two professions are generally thought to have vertically specialized within the industry sometime at the end of antiquity. Previously, scholarship has only casually treated this instance of specialization and for the most part it is thought to have been driven by technological innovation, specifically the watermill, which took milling out …

Witch Pamphlets, Tsea M. Francisconi

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

The witch hysteria that overtook Christian Europe during the Early Modern era inspired a mass paranoia over the conspiratorial belief that the Abrahamic religion’s personification of the world’s evils, also known as Satan, the Devil, demons, or Lucifer interchangeably, was attempting to rise up and cause harm to Christian communities during this time period. It was believed that in order to achieve this goal the Christian version of the Devil had been recruiting humans within Christian communities and turning these chosen humans into witches by granting them the ability to wield magical powers to spread their destruction, murder, and terror …

Moorish Revival Synagogue Architecture: Community And Style, Past And Present, Emily S. Jelen

Binghamton University Undergraduate Journal

The Moorish architectural style, originating in medieval Spain, was revived in the mid-nineteenth century. It became strongly linked with synagogues, first in Germany and then throughout the Western world. My research analyzes why the architects and Jewish communities were so attracted to the Moorish Revival style. During this period, European Jewish communities were tasked with constructing synagogues that could showcase their newfound freedoms as well as their history, culture and aspirations. Many argue that this style was chosen to demonstrate the connection between the communities and their ancient Middle Eastern history.

Reading Plague Images: Visual Literacy In The History Classroom, Katherina Fostano

Developing Pedagogy Graduate Student Showcase

In 2016 Peter Felten, Director of the Center for Advancement of Teaching and Learning at Elon University, wrote, “Our students live in a highly visual world, where images are fundamental in shaping their understandings of history before they ever enter our classrooms.” This observation prompted me to create a series of exercises that introduce students to general visual literacy skills in the History classroom. These exercises aim to help students use visual sources to make evidence-based interpretations of the past with rigor and efficacy. In this presentation, I focused on images of past plagues since the recent proliferation of plague-related …

Nazi-Confiscated Art: Eliminating Legal Barriers To Returning Stolen Treasures, Stephanie J. Beach

Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review

World War II ended over three-quarters of a century ago, but there still remain prisoners of war. Before and during the war, the Nazis confiscated approximately 650,000 works of art—an “art theft” orchestrated by Adolf Hitler to rid society of Jewish art and artists and to collect worthy works to build his own art capital. Seventy-five years later, looted Holocaust-era artworks are still either undiscovered or in the possession of museums across the globe without proper ownership attribution or payment to Holocaust survivors or their heirs. There are modern remedies, such as the 1998 Washington Conference on Holocaust Era Assets, …

Famine In Art - Imagery, Influences And Exhibition In Mid-20th-Century Ireland, Niamh Ann Kelly

Books/Book Chapters

No abstract provided.

Imaging The Great Irish Famine: Representing Dispossession In Visual Culture, Preface & Introduction, Niamh Ann Kelly

Books/Book Chapters

‘Niamh Ann Kelly's lavishly illustrated book throws new light on the visual culture commemorative of hunger, famine and dispossession in mid-nineteenth-century Ireland. Located within the discipline of International Memorial Studies, the text and images both challenge and extend our understanding of Famine history. Examining the visual culture since the time of the Famine until the present, Kelly asks, how do we view, experience and represent the past in the present? To what extent does the viewer insert themselves in this complex process? Is there such a thing as ethical spectatorship? Kelly’s sophisticated yet sympathetic study of the “grievous history” …

Bernard Palissy: Early Career - Securing Patronage And Mimicking Nature In A Moment Of Crisis, Karissa Bailey

LSU Master's Theses

Early in 1562, France was experiencing a state of high religious tension between Protestants and Catholics that would precipitate the outbreak of the Religious Wars on March 1. A week before, Bernard Palissy, a Huguenot potter, wrote a letter to his Catholic patron from prison inBordeaux where he was being held on charges associated with an iconoclastic incident in his home city of Saintes. This letter would later be published as a dedication letter for the pamphlet Architecture et Ordonnance, which featured the description of a grotto commissioned by Anne de Montmorency, Palissy’s patron, seven years earlier. This thesis analyzes …

Centering The Black Woman As A Subject Of Portraiture In Nineteenth-Century French Art, Llyleila Richardson

XULAneXUS

Until the 19th century, artistic depictions of black women by European artists were rare. Often they were relegated to the background as domestic attendants to European noblewomen, serving as symbols of the latter’s colonial wealth and further provide contrast with the darkness of their skin against the aristocratic fairness of their white mistresses. The transition into the 19th century was a turbulent period in European history, especially for France, as the country saw multiple revolts and governmental changes at home. Simultaneously colonization overseas continued to expand, creating previously unheard-of access to foreign cultures and ideas.

Black women became an interesting …

Urban Palimpsests: Studying Enlightenment Influences In The Post-Earthquake Rebuilding Of Lima And Lisbon, 1746–1765, Emily Chung

The Forum: Journal of History

Urban renewal has long existed as a vessel for the assertion of authority, embodying hierarchy, policy, and culture in the most tangible way with architecture and civic landscaping shaped to accommodate the upper strata of society. Particularly interesting to study through this lens is the latter half of the eighteenth century which marks the turning point between royal absolutism and the emergence of competing forms of power in the European Empire, through the growth of the Enlightenment movement. This paper offers a comparison of two imperial cities, Lima and Lisbon, which due to similarly tragic earthquakes, were provided the opportunity …

Sedentary Flesh: Nineteenth-Century French Orientalists And Bodies Of The Female Other, Amelia Aitchison

The Forum: Journal of History

As visual texts of subjectivity and ideology, paintings are uniquely useful tools for historical analysis. Peaking in popularity in nineteenth-century Europe, the enduring erotic mystification of the Turkish seraglio manifested frequently in the form of paintings. At this time, French academicism and realism rose in status internationally and, bolstered by the esteem of the Paris Salon and the competitiveness generated by the advent of photography, so too did elaborately (and misleadingly) detailed depictions of the Orient. This paper concerns the inherent politics of French depictions of Turkish odalisques, focusing on the orientalist discourse generated by the quasi-realistic style of nineteenth-century …

Judith Leyster: A Study Of Extraordinary Expression, Nicole J. Cardinale

Theses and Dissertations

Judith Leyster’s innovative application of expression in her Self Portrait serves as the focus, whereby she is shown to blend conventional painting categories, preserve a sense of innocence, and confidently flaunt her skills. In turn, Leyster challenged the male-centric art market and stood apart from her artistic predecessors and contemporaries.

The Spiritual Nature Of The Italian Renaissance, Kaitlyn Kenney

Senior Honors Theses

This study seeks to investigate the influence of faith in the emergence and development of the Italian Renaissance, in both the artwork and writing of the major artists and thinkers of the day, and the impact that new expressions of faith had on the viewing public. While the Renaissance is often labeled as a secular movement by modern scholars, this interpretation is largely due to the political motives of the Medici family who dominated Florence as the center of this artistic rebirth, on and off again throughout the period. On close examination, the philosophical and creative undercurrents of the movement …

Art And Terror: Vergangenheitsbewältigung In Relation To The Red Army Faction, Joanie Lange

Calvert Undergraduate Research Awards

Advanced Undergraduate Winner

The Red Army Faction, active from 1970-1998, was an infamous West German far-left terrorist group. Its ideology and numerous terrorist acts not only left a lasting impact upon the politics and culture of Germany, but noteworthy is also the fact that the group inspired the creation of countless works of art. This research paper seeks to understand and explain this phenomenon. It argues that the artworks inspired by the RAF are a form of Vergangenheitsbewältigung, a peculiarly German concept “coming to terms with the past,” most often used in relation to fiction and art exploring the …

Gems Of Gods And Mortals: The Changing Symbolism Of Pearls Throughout The Roman Empire, Emily Hallman

Armstrong Undergraduate Journal of History

Born in the wombs of shells and polished by mother nature herself, pearls were regarded as gifts from the gods. For millennia, the creation of pearls was credited to the tears of heavenly creatures or the formation of sun-touched dewdrops. Countless civilizations, both Western and Non-Western, have their own myths and legends surrounding the pearl, a mark of their mysterious allure. The artform of jewelry, favored by the Roman aristocracy, took advantage of naturally perfected pearls to create stunning pieces with staggering prices. The pearl’s meaning evolved throughout the Roman Empire and into Early Christian Rome, setting up a contradictory …

The Frontispiece Woodcut In The Fasciculus Temporum In Portland State University’S Codex, Amanda Bonilla

Extra-Textual Elements

The frontispiece image in the PSU codex is in the tradition of ‘the education of the prince,’ a popular choice for early printed works, particularly historical chronicles and similar manuscripts related to ancient times.

A portal with columns provides an entrance into the book, and also encloses and protects its contents. This shape, echoing the triumphal arches of classical antiquity, was a popular motif in renaissance publishing. Along with the king’s crown worn on top of a turban-like head wrap, the columns and arches suggest a connection to classical antiquity. Although most images do not reference an artist, making it …

Saving Adele: A History Of The Portrait Of Adele Bloch-Bauer I, Ariel A. Furman

Quest

Individual Research Project

Research in progress for HIST 1302: United States History II

Faculty Mentor: Kyle Wilkison, Ph.D.

Nothing ruins an enriching intellectual experience quite like having it assigned. Consequently, Honors History 1302 students began by identifying their own passions and interests. They then chose topics of immediate and abiding personal interest and produced research projects that reflected that energy and commitment. Their research probed a marvelous variety of historical topics from culture, medicine, science, politics, and economics. They researched and wrote about anti-fascist American comic books during World War II, disturbing historic treatments for the mentally ill, advances in …

Viktor Vasnetsov’S New Icons: From Abramtsevo To The Paris “Exposition Universelle” Of 1900, Wendy Salmond

Art Faculty Articles and Research

This essay examines Russian artist Viktor Vasnetsov’s search for a new kind of prayer icon in the closing decades of the nineteenth century: a hybrid of icon and painting that would reconcile Russia’s historic contradictions and launch a renaissance of national culture and faith. Beginning with his icons for the Church of the “Savior Not Made by Hands” at Abramtsevo in 1880–81, for two decades Vasnetsov was hailed as an innovator, the four icons he sent to the Paris “Exposition Universelle” of 1900 marking the culmination of his vision. After 1900, his religious painting polarized elite Russian society and was …

Arts Et Métiers Photo-Graphiques: The Quest For Identity In French Photography Between The Two World Wars, Yusuke Isotani

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation examines the evolution of photography in France between the two World Wars by analyzing the seminal graphic art magazine Arts et métiers graphiques (1927-1939). This bi-monthly periodical was founded by Charles Peignot (1897-1983), the artistic director of the largest manufacturer of typefaces in interwar France, Deberny et Peignot. Arts et métiers graphiques has been recognized in previous literature as one of the principal vehicles for the modernization of photography in France, primarily because it functioned as an essential conduit for the radical practices developed outside the country. The interwar period is regarded as the watershed in the history …

Ilya Repin In Paris: Mediating French Modernism, Allison Leigh

Department of Visual Arts

This article explores the development of a singular painting by Russia’s most famous realist painter, Il’ia Repin. First exhibited under the title Un café du boulevard, the work was conceived during Repin’s stay in Paris from 1873-75. Repin himself described the work as “the main types of Paris in their most typical place,” but what he produced proves a departure for the young artist not only in terms of its Parisian subject matter. Careful analysis of Repin’s letters and the work itself show him searching for a stylistic language that had universal translatability in this moment, one that he importantly …

Erotic Devotional Poetry: Resisting Neoplatonism In Protestant Christianity, Sarah M. Pruis

Honors Projects

A genre best known for its appearance in Eastern religions, erotic devotional poetry uses sensual imagery to access an experience of the divine. Historically, many Christian traditions, excluding the mystical ones, have pushed back against such literature, seeing it as an impure model that degrades divinity by association with the physical, especially in the specific physical ritual of sex. This stance is a hallmark of Protestant Christianity. The idea of a dichotomy and hierarchy between soul and body, though, comes not from theology but from the introduction theologians made between Western philosophy, particularly Platonic Dualism, and Christianity, which was then …

Freemasons: Patrons Of The Enlightenment Arts, Jacob Money

Honors Projects

The Enlightenment is known as a time of great advances in science, political theory and individual rights. What is often not given proper consideration are the advances made in the fine arts. Out of this time period came the Hudson River Valley School of painting, a return to Greco-Roman architecture, and the explosion in popularity of the performing arts. In each of these cases, the historically secretive organization known as the Freemasons had a role in the patronage of these artists, architects and composers. Most people are aware of the Masons through popular media and although countless conspiracy theories surround …

Janja Majstorovic, Marija Maracic, Josipa Karaca

SICANJE

No abstract provided.