Other Languages, Societies, and Cultures Commons^™

Tùn-Scene And A-Futurism: Biomythography, Opacity, And Posthuman Imagination, Minglu Du

Masters Theses

Grounded in the author’s position as a Chinese feminist, this thesis examines how East Asian women, as well as East Asian-coded femininity more broadly, are objectified and othered within futurist visual culture in the age of artificial intelligence. Through an engagement with ornamentalism, techno-Orientalism, and posthumanism1 , it argues that the persistent figure of the feminized humanoid cyborg continues to reproduce colonial and patriarchal structures of desire, rendering marginalized bodies as fetishized and violable surfaces. In response, the thesis develops Tùn-Scene, a biomythographic artistic framework and the first experiment in what the author provisionally names A-Futurism. Drawing on Donna Haraway’s …

Jadughar: The House Of Magic, Dhruvi A. Shah

Masters Theses

Jadughar or the House of Magic is what people call a 'museum' in parts of South Asia. The practice of museum making, at its origin, is the act of collecting, preserving, interpreting and representing a culture’s tangible and intangible heritage to make it accessible to diverse audiences. Since the early 19th century such practices have been performed at various kala bhandars (art centers) in India, without the need of a formal or institutional organisation. The British introduced the model of a ‘museum’ in South Asia, with the aim of not only preserving ethnographic collections, but also showcasing their power and …

Draw To Breathe, Ranran Ma

Masters Theses

This thesis explores visual expression in drawing as an intuitive mode of thinking suited to everyday life—a form of expression that runs parallel to language and surpasses it.

The project begins with a daily Post-it note drawing practice. These drawings often emerge before conscious understanding, subsequently accompanied by brief text, allowing image and word to resonate through emotion and intuition. Through the use of small-scale, portable, low-pressure materials, and with immediacy and intuitive freedom as the foundation of making, a visual language system grounded in the self develops. Through this sustained practice, I developed an instruction-based card system titled Draw …

Echoes Of Longing, Mahalexmi Mohan

Masters Theses

Loss lingers like a shadow, a weight no time can lift. Longing becomes a silent scream, echoing within, unanswered. Internal pain festers in the quiet, where unhealed wounds weave themselves into the fabric of being. Each breath is both survival and surrender, a fragile balance between hope and the hollow ache of what was, what will never be, yet could be.

Abstract

My work is deeply influenced by my experiences within a dysfunctional family structure and is explored through the relationship of emotional vulnerability and its effect on self-worth. Layered into the work is a confrontation with the scars, conflict …

Ecospiritual Entanglement, Ali Vedad Yüner

Masters Theses

Land breeds culture. It gives us the resources to thrive, and in that process we establish a relationship with its constituents. With a multitude of beings inhabiting the land, a complex web of relationships develop. Biology describes these relationships as food webs; the mass entanglement of organisms in a manner that each organism nourishes the other. These webs are not just mere scientific structures but rather an interpretation of existential connections that every organism in the world, humans included, are indebted to. Food webs are the first stepping stone in the formation of culture, as they account for the engagement …

Designing Between Worlds, Levon Kostandyan

Masters Theses

This thesis reimagines design as a means of cultural continuity—an act of memory, resistance, and transformation. Rooted in the diasporic Armenian experience, it explores how identity is carried not only through storytelling, but through materials, rituals, and objects that evolve across time and place. Through the transformation of pomegranate skin from waste into a meaningful design material, the project navigates the space between symbolism and substance, honoring both the fruit’s ancestral weight and its potential as a living material language.


The work moves between personal narrative, historical research, and material experimentation, engaging with themes of displacement, hybridity, and embedded knowledge. …

Sircling The Cquare, Latika Balachander

Masters Theses

As we journey into an increasingly virtual and intangible reality, is there an opportunity for our tactile fabrics to journey with, and even reorient us? Can they exist in our future worlds to remind us of the value of current traditional, low-tech practices that we may soon forget?

Referencing the fundamental fabric languages of knitted and woven structures, this collection of garments, that I term “Earthsuits,” embody the stages of metamorphosis as we adjust to a new phase of our perceptive reality. With an emphasis on circling, we loop through virtual squares like screens and pixels, to the circles of …

Embodied Abstractions: Identity And Representation In The Digital Era, Srikar Hari

Masters Theses

The digital image is a copy in motion. As it accelerates, it deteriorates.

It is a ghost of an image, a preview, a thumbnail, squeezed through

digital connections, resized, uploaded, downloaded, reformatted

and re-edited.

- Adapted from “In defense of the Poor Image” by Hito Steryel

With today’s digital technology, the image is no longer a stable

representation of the world, but a programmable database that

is updated in real time. It is not only part of a program, but it

contains its own operating code: the image is a program in itself.

Consequently, the image’s rhetoric has taken on …

Reintroducing Hemp (Rongony) In The Material Palette Of Madagascar: A Study On The Potential Of Hemp Clay Components And Its Impact On Social And Ecological Communities., Henintsoa Thierry Andrianambinina

Masters Theses

When mentioning the word hemp, especially in the local language of Madagascar, the literal translation does not set it apart from marijuana, as they are both called “rongony” - creating the stigma around hemp as the negative stereotype of marijuana. However, the material has been used by the ancestors of Madagascar, as well as across cultures, in its fibrous form to produce fabrication like textile goods and packaging. During colonization, the prohibition of hemp intensified, and since then, any activity related to either of these plants is prohibited and will end in severe punitive measures. This thesis explores the strengths …

Citizens Of The English Language: Sociolinguistic Perspectives On Postcolonial India, Prateek Shankar

Masters Theses

This paper introduces the concept of "extralingual citizenship," which I define as an expansion of translingualism to include the ethnoracial logic of the nation-state and demonstrates the entanglement of language, governance, and education in the policing of knowledge infrastructures and discursive practices. I am interested in the codification of postcolonial disparity into the teaching, social performance, and material assessment of English language users, and the infrastructural disqualification of World Englishes (and their amalgams) in favor of a standardized English. I frame extralingualism as a kind of citizenship, shifting the focus of English pedagogy/practice from the syntactical/etymological concerns of language …

Risd Cabaret 1987-2000 Retrospective Program, Agnieszka Taborska, Bill Newkirk, Risd Archives

RISD Cabaret 1987-2000 Retrospective

No abstract provided.

Risd Cabaret 1987-2000 Retrospective Poster, Agnieszka Taborska, Bill Newkirk, Risd Archives

RISD Cabaret 1987-2000 Retrospective

No abstract provided.

Risd Cabaret 1987-2000 Retrospective Program, Agnieszka Taborska, Bill Newkirk, Risd Archives

RISD Cabaret 1987-2000 Retrospective

No abstract provided.

Risd Cabaret 1987-2000 Retrospective Poster, Agnieszka Taborska, Bill Newkirk, Risd Archives

RISD Cabaret 1987-2000 Retrospective

No abstract provided.

Aha! Vivat Homo Sapiens, Agnieszka Taborska, James Bewley, Szymon Bojko, Conrad Armstrong, Vincent Balistrieri, Heidi Bochain, Sarah Brown, Vale Bruck, Lily Burickson, Marin De Charette, Sarah Dungan, Edie Faig, Matthew Fairbank, Amy Feldman, Jon Fernandez, Hal Forsstrom, Andrea Hackman, Leon Imas, Sherman Kew, Lara Kurtaman, Bri Mcdonnell, Lauren Nassef, Jesse M. Ragan, Allen Spetnagel, Adam Stanforth, Jenny Vovolvski, Ariana White, Chris Yates

Programs

Program for the twelfth and final annual RISD Cabaret held in the Cellar at the top of the Waterman Building. View the Performance Recording.

Astonish Me! Recalling The Cabaret Spirit, Agnieszka Taborska, Dawn Danby, Ian Freeman, Eric Urban, Hyun Hee Cho, Marin De Charette, Matthew Cottam, Carolyn Gehrig, Matthew Heitel, Aimee Estilow, Sarah Rundlett, Robert Van Varick, Issak Tobin, Antoine Revoy, Lee Savage, Erica Wolf, Kevin Lang, Allison Brabee, Hyun-Suk Kim, Helen Lee, Marco Cimatti, Nicholas Fuhrer

Programs

Program for the 1999 RISD Wintersessoin Cabaret intiated by the "Image and Word" class in collaboration with students of RISD Cabaret 1998 and held at AS220. The presentation was conceived and performed in homage and celebration of past RISD Cabaret shows 1987-1998. Graphic Design: Ron Winter, Ji-Ho Sohn and Eric Urban.

The Cabaret Of Dead Souls: Harvesting Russian History, Agnieszka Taborska, Jake Mahaffy, Szymon Bojko, Gella Alhassid, So-Hee Cheong, Matthew Cottam, Dawn Danby, Lorreine Fedor, Andrew Gardner, Carl Henschel, Michael Hoard, Kevin Lang, Eric Leichner, Michael Libby, April Lin, Pia Restina, Markus Reyes, James Sanders, Nicholas Scappaticci, Brett Shagen, Michael Shih, Aika Tong, Araby Williams

Programs

Program for the eleventh annual RISD Cabaret held in the Cellar at the top of the Waterman Building. Graphic design: Mia Moran, Matt Murphy, James Wynn and Katia Popova.View the Performance Recording.

The Beat Generation, Agnieszka Taborska, Paula Hunter, Steven L. Jobe, James O. Barnhill, Helen Lee, Joshua Waldman, Nishira Fitzgerald, Brendan Meilman, Ismael Lawall, Zach Pitt-Smith, Kevin Walker, Tamara Carroll, Rhon Porter, Maleese Schick, Rhody Azcueta, Kevin Umbricht, Matthew Curry, Jee-Eun Kim, Michelle Lee, Marisa Nealon, Karelle Levi, Hilary Riley, Simon Potter, Antoinette Le Vaillant

Programs

Program for the tenth annual RISD Cabaret held in the Waterman Building, top floor coinciding "with the fiftieth anniversary of the year when Allen Ginsburg, William Burroughs and Jack Kerouac first met and started a movement which changed the face of postwar American and influenced the 1960s as well as the subculture of the '70s and '80s." Program, poster and tickets designed by Antoinette le Vaillant. View the Performance Recording.

Ubu Roi, Agnieszka Taborska, Sylvie Toux, Joseph Silva, Marisa Nealon, Jeremy Siew, Matt Desmith, Helen Lee, Roslyn Wiria, Janine L. Burt, Matt Moreau, Jessica Guarino, Kathy Leung, Jennifer Norton, Mutsuko Kasai, Raoul Kim, Simon Potter, Jenny Tu, Pei-Ju Chuang

Programs

Program for the nineth annual RISD Cabaret held in the Waterman Building commemorating the 100th anniversary of the premier of Alfred Jarry's 1896 play, "Ubu Roi". Graphic design: Matt DeSmith and Vivian Law.View the Performance Recording.

Hoppla! Here Comes Grosz, Agnieszka Taborska, Szymon Bojko, Marc Cannon, Denise Emerson, Aurora Gist-Yochum, Alex Hart, Arthur Jones, Laleh Khorramian, Scott King, Maki Koto, Sarah Kreiger, Ricahrd Lloyd, Luciana Mallozzi, Michael Mckenna, Pilar Newton, Heidi Sawyer, Jasmine Winkler, Sue Yoo, Heather Henson, David Medina, Doug Kim, Tara Markus, Hugh Watson, Yoon Cho, Yu-Kyung Chung, Arthur Jones, Polly Spencer

Programs

Program for the eighth annual RISD Cabaret held in Cellar at the top of the Waterman Building. Publicity, posters, cartoons and program designed by Yoon Cho, Yu-Kyung Chung,Arther Jones, Scott King, Richard Lloyd and Polly Spencer. View the Performance Recording.

The Life And Times Of Joseph Beuys, Agnieszka Taborska, Marcin Gizycki, Mark Snyder, Margaret Lewis, Julie Strandberg, Maki Koto, Yvonne Roe, Sven Armster, Ting-Ting Lee, Luciana Mallozzi, Lucinda Wolf, Christine Pellicano, James Bewley, Leah Smith, Matthew Saam, Dawn Marie Caulfield, Ellen Godena, Catherine Warner, Roy Fabian, Shirly Whong, Scott King, Megan Mclarney, Lucinda Wolfe, Andrew Feder

Programs

Program for the seventh annual RISD Cabaret held in the Waterman Building. Graphic design: Mark Snyder; program editor: Margaret Lewis; program photography: Marcin Gizycki. View the Performance Recording.

The Big Yes And The Little No, Agnieszka Taborska, Steven L. Jobe, David L. Campbell, Christopher F. Lowery, Paul Phillips, Elsie T. Hill, Priscilla Yeh, Adele Abide, Miriam Borchherdt, Dawn Marie Caulfield, Mimi Chung, Daniela Fiss, Hector Gonzalez, Akiko Hamazaki, Sarah R. Kreiger, Luciana L. Mallozzi, Ervin Ramos, Katherine Sheehan, Vanessa Sterbenz, Bruce Jason Tennis, Antanas Vainius, Andrea Winter, Julie Wollaeger, Ofra Yacobi

Programs

Program for the sixth annual RISD Cabaret held in the cellar at the top of the Waterman Building. Design and layout by Nonie Close. View the Performance Recording.

Tabou, Agnieszka Taborska, Julie Strandberg, Vivienne Cho, Jennifer Delventhal, Yvonne Roe, Yutaka Sho, Tamira Estes, Rosanna Garcia, Mariví González, Diana Brozek, Stephanie Hall, Jennifer Hayward, Dawn Marie, Michelle Regan, James O. Barnhill, Nonie Close, David Duvall, Jay Haon, Christopher Schaie, Michael Weiss, Jeff Southard, Candice Goldfarb, Charity Macdonald, Jennifer Delvanthal, Sylvie Toux, Gabriel Albarelo, Erika Munro, Aaron Abroff, Jay Haon, Olexa, Ian Smith, Ming Gale

Programs

Program for the fifth annual RISD Cabaret held in the Waterman Building. Design and layout by Nonie Close. View the Performance Recording.

The Unknown And Awakening Europe, Agnieszka Taborska, Borys Pugacz-Muraszkiewicz, Daniel Kraft, James O. Barnhill, Paul Andrejco, Bo Joseph, Christopher Kazlauskas, Ralph Kelliher, Timothy Mcelreath, Sol Armada, Carrie Bloomston, Alice Gould, Courtney Herman-Taylor, Renée Venditti, Treva Offutt, Mylene Santos, Dawn Caulfield, Joshua Wood, Carrie Caldfield, Gabriella Norton, Adriana Spurr, Hunter Marshall

Programs

Program for the fourth annual RISD Cabaret held in the Cellar at the top of the Waterman Building. Design by Daniel Kraft. View the Performance Recording.

The Ox On The Roof (Le Boeuf Sur Le Toit), Agnieszka Taborska, Aleksander F. Wierzbicki, Malcom Coelho, Lucy Bourgealt, John Donalds, Georgy Harvey, Michael J. Townsend, Rene Dimanche Jr., Mila Hermanovski, Marly J. Rogers, Susan Becker, Treva Offutt, Christopher Watts, Michael A. Tashji, Sol Armada, Mark Borok, George Page, Sean P. Oakes, Edward L. Guttman, Susan Unger, Timothy Mcelreath, Michael Wodkowski, Carsten Stehr, Julie Grass, Andrea Dassow, Julianna Ellman, Lynn Jaworski, Donna Lavalle, Judith Ribicoff, Vivienne Cho, Matthew Mcguire

Programs

Program for the third annual RISD Cabaret held in the Cellar of the Providence Art Club. Design and layout by Treva Offutt. View the Performance Recording.

Vienna, Paris, Berlin: The Golden Age Of European Cabaret, Agnieszka Taborska, William Damkoehler, Anne Johnson, Susan Sellers, Georgie Stout, Mark Borok, Michael Zimmerman, Bill Gold, Charles Oestreicher, Edward Guttman, Caroline Provost, Ed Hemingway, Holly Heerens, Eugene Mollica, Susan Unger, Michelle Talbot, Sarah Bishop, Malcom Coelho, Heather Frith, Charles Baudelaire, Paul Verlaine, Jacques Prevert, Don Keefer, Emliy Cohen, Martha Crawford, Susan Becker, Hanns Eisler, Molly Komacker, Vivienne Cho, Carsten Stehr

Programs

Program for the second annual RISD Cabaret held in the Cellar in the Pit. Design and layout by Anne Johnson, Susan Sellers and Georgie Stout.

View the Performance Recording.

From St. Petersburg To Krushchev's Boot, James O. Barnhill, Justin Kerr, Edward Guttman, Caroline Provost, Jennifer Bull, Marguerite White, Nancy Bach, Steve Overman, Josh Pearson, Jean Wasil, Mark Borok, Vivienne Cho, Karen Frishmann, Heather Firth, Lisa Hurwitz, Treva Offutt, Beth Whitney, Sarah Bishop, Richard Ross, Cara Reische, Walter Clarke, Rene Dimanche Jr., David Ross, Malcom Coelho, Andrew Sklar, Michael Wodkowski, Susan Ockerse, Paul Scagnetti, Martha Crawford, Holly Su Heerens

Programs

Program for the first annual RISD Cabaret held in Memorial Hall. Design and layout by Justin Kerr.

View the Performance Recording.