Aesthetics Commons^™

Away With Green Aesthetics!, Mateusz Salwa

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

No abstract provided.

Experience, Knowledge, And Appreciation In The Implicit Aesthetics Of Weather Lore, Mădălina Diaconu

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

[1] Weather sayings are empirical rules for the prediction of weather and have been studied, so far, only by paremiologists and meteorologists. The author argues that they also present interest for environmental aesthetics, and that their aesthetic dimension is not confined to their stylistic qualities and versified form but is mainly based on the experience that underlies them. The analyses of weather lore in English, French, and German emphasize that this pre-modern, expert knowledge produced and still can bring enjoyment and, conversely, that the sources of this aesthetic enjoyment are to a large extent cognitive, even if not scientific by …

Everyday Aesthetics And Everyday Behavior, Ossi Naukkarinen

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

This article addresses everyday aesthetics from the point of view of everyday behavior. I suggest that the ordinary daily interaction of people with each other is one of the most important areas of everyday aesthetics. I present an interpretation of the concepts of both the everyday and aesthetics, and argue that in the context of everyday social relationships, it is wise to understand everyday aesthetics in a way that emphasizes the very everydayness of aesthetics, not its opposite, namely non-everyday or extraordinary aesthetics. This does not mean that extraordinary aesthetics would not have its place in other contexts, but it …

Autonomania: Music And Music Education From Mars, Thomas A. Regelski

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

Traditional aesthetic theory has posited an account of music, and the other arts, as autonomous of social meanings, relevance, and conditions. In the case of music, “absolute music” is sequestered from social and other roots that bring music into being in the first place. The typical claim, thus, is that classical music is music for its own sake, divorced from the many and highly evident social dimensions that it serves. It ignores all other genres of music, most of which are more appreciated than can be accounted for by the theory of autonomania. This aesthetic theory of music, one of …

Material Blue, Justin Winkler

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

In the 1780s, de Saussure invented the cyanometer that was subsequently used by Humboldt on his research travels. It served to determine the blueness of the sky at various altitudes. This article examines the research context in which this device was used and seeks to trace an underlying aisthesis materialis (Barck). I raise the question whether this recourse to a supposed pre–art theory and aesthetic practice can help establish a better concept of the everyday aesthetics to come.

Recovery From Design, Cassandra J. Ellison

Theses and Dissertations

Through research, inquiry, and an evaluation of Recovery By Design, a ‘design therapy’ program that serves people with mental illness, substance use disorders, and developmental disabilities, it is my assertion that the practice of design has therapeutic potential and can aid in the process of recovery. To the novice, the practices of conception, shaping form, and praxis have empowering benefit especially when guided by Conditional and Transformation Design methods together with an emphasis on materiality and vernacular form.

To Paint A Queen, Anne-Taylor Cahill

Philosophy Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

La Configuration Du Monde Social Dans Le Discours Littéraire D’Alioum Fantouré, Buata B. Malela

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

This article examines how the relation is constructed in the social space and its effects in literary discourse of Alioum Fantouré. To develop this point, we first studied the question of historicity in connection with the postcolonial paradigm says. Then we talk about aesthetics mobilized by Fantouré in his novel The Circle of the tropics (1972). The aim is to show the general nature of the approach of Fantouré. He appears as a paradigmatic case of the post-independence period in literature.

Art's Disclosive Dimensions: Reflections On The Work Of Peter London, Aaron Darrisaw

Artizein: Arts and Teaching Journal

When I initially came to this project, I vaguely remembered hearing of Peter London once before – in passing perhaps. Yet I knew nothing really of his art or his work as an educator. Each day I came into work, however, I was met with a series of very interesting correspondences, articles, conference presentations, lecture notes, and more that offered a thoroughgoing vision of art as a personally, socially, and spiritually transformative and enriching enterprise. The collection contained document after document of valuable contributions to the instrumental role that art can and does play in opening up individuals to their …

Superiority In Humor Theory, Sheila Lintott

Faculty Journal Articles

In this article, I consider the standard interpretation of the superiority theory of humor attributed to Plato, Aristotle, and Hobbes, according to which the theory allegedly places feelings of superiority at the center of humor and comic amusement. The view that feelings of superiority are at the heart of all comic amusement is wildly implausible. Therefore textual evidence for the interpretation of Plato, Aristotle, or Hobbes as offering the superiority theory as an essentialist theory of humor is worth careful consideration. Through textual analysis I argue that not one of these three philosophers defends an essentialist theory of comic amusement. …

[Review Of] La Estética De Lo Mínimo: Ensayos Sobre Microrrelatos Mexicanos, Ed. Pablo Brescia, Cheyla Samuelson

Faculty Publications

A review of Brescia, Pablo, ed. La estética de lo mínimo: Ensayos sobre microrrelatos mexicanos. Guadalajara: Universidad de Guadalajara, 2013. 166 pp.

"A Return To Reality": Mark Hansen's Metaphysics: Towards A New Relationality Of Twenty-First-Century Media, Sandra Moyano Ariza

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This project is framed in the recent turn to speculation in philosophy which aims to develop new ontologies that deprivilege the human and human cognition, in turn claiming the capacity of all entities to hold agency in experiential processes. New philosophical scholarship is seeing the resurgence of an old problematic within this turn: the ontological debate of substances vs. relations. The study is structured around these two positions, represented by Graham Harman's object-oriented ontology which claims the essence of all entities and Steven Shaviro's understanding of relationality through Whitehead's structure of experience and becoming, respectively. These two positions will help …

Contributors To Indian Catholicism: Interventions And Imaginings, Mathew Schmalz

Journal of Global Catholicism

Contributors to Indian Catholicism: Interventions and Imaginings, the inaugural issue of the Journal of Global Catholicism.

Dalit Catholic Home Shrines In A North Indian Village, Mathew Schmalz

Journal of Global Catholicism

This article examines three Catholic home shrines in a Dalit community in North Indian and argues that it is misleading to think that home shrines and other collections of material objects are somehow static conveyors of meaning. “Meaning” can mean many things or nothing at all, depending upon the terms we are using and the scholarly methods we deploy. The crucial aspect of Dalit Catholic home shrines is that they are literally open to interpretation and reinterpretation, to touching and being touched. Their significance—their meaning—depends not on decoding their structure or symbolic logic, but interacting with them as part of …

In Continuity With The Past: Indigenous Environmentalism And Indian Christian Visions Of Flora, James Ponniah

Journal of Global Catholicism

This article considers whether Indian Christianity can be said to have a distinctive ecological vision. The first two parts of the article examine Christian environmentalism in two native forms of Indian Christianity: Tamil Christianity and Tribal Christianity. Continuing with the theme of conformity to the local culture—though of the elite—the third part of the article investigates how Christian Ashrams function as dynamic centers for ecological praxis. The last part of the article considers how contemporary Indian Christian communities can respond to the ecological challenges confronting them.

Thoughts On The Aesthetics Of Water, Tom Baugh

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

No abstract provided.

Review Of Bug Music: How Insects Gave Us Rhythm And Noise, Jonathan L. Friedmann

Between the Species

Review of Bug Music: How Insects Gave Us Rhythm and Noise, by David Rothenberg. This book proposes that the human sense of rhythm derived in part from insect sounds.

Explication Of Events And Dialogues In Samuel Beckett’S Waiting For Godot, Erick Verran

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

No abstract provided.

Alone In The Crowd: Appropriated Text And Subjectivity In The Work Of Rirkrit Tiravanija, Liz Linden

Faculty Publications

The practice of Thai artist Rirkrit Tiravanija is perhaps the best-known exemplar of relational aesthetics, a distinction first made by Nicholas Bourriaud and affirmed in the writings of many subsequent art critics; but the critical focus on the interactive aspect of his works has tended to rely on utopian modes of community engagement, which ignore Tiravanija's strategic deployment of relational, interactive structures to implicate the viewer, publicly, in problematic political positions. Tiravanija commonly uses appropriation in his artworks as a way of exposing viewer's biases and this paper focuses specifically on his use of appropriated text to explore divided subjectivities …

The Effect Of Orthodontic Appliances On The Evaluation Of The Professionalism And Esthetics Of An Adult Employee, Laura Hanson Vaccariello

Master's Theses (2009 -)

This study explored the influence of fixed and removable orthodontic appliances on participants’ ratings of the job performance, intelligence, and attractiveness of an adult female. Ninety-four adult subjects were recruited from the Graduate School of Management at Marquette University. Each subject received an identical employee performance review with an attached photograph of a female employee. The smile of the photo was manipulated to represent one of four conditions: no orthodontic appliance, a metal orthodontic appliance, a ceramic orthodontic appliance, or a clear aligner. Subjects then rated the employee on three continuous Likert scales. Ratings of job performance, intelligence, and attractiveness …

Art As Display, Frank M. Boardman

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Art is essentially a type of display. As an activity, art is what we do when we display objects with certain intentions. As a set of objects, art is all of those things that are displayed for those purposes. The artworld is the social atmosphere that surrounds this particular activity of display. And a history of art is an evolving narrative of change in the practice of this sort of display.

Specifically, to focus for convenience on art as a set of objects, this is what we can call the “displayed-object thesis”:

x is a work of art iff: (a) …

Sources Of Dignity For Persons: Capacities, Friendship, Love And Subjectivity, Matthew Nevius

Masters Theses

Many people seem to understand the term 'dignity' as applying to all human persons regardless of their race, creed, sex, or religious beliefs. As to what the concept 'dignity' means is a difficult and complex problem. Is the concept 'dignity' an empty concept, void of meaning? What does it mean when we say that this or that person has dignity? Most of the current philosophical literature has very little to say as to what dignity is. I will argue that what we need to find is a concept of dignity that accounts for both the infinite and the irreplaceable value …

Peer Disagreement And Rationality: An Analysis Of Richard Feldman's Conciliatory View, John Molinari

Masters Theses

How should one's beliefs be affected by one's knowing that other people, who are equally well-informed, rational, and intelligent – in other words, persons who are epistemic, or intellectual, peers – believe differently? In this thesis I look at a certain answer to this question. Richard Feldman argues that when two persons who have (roughly) the same level of intelligence and who are (roughly) equally well-informed disagree, the only rational response is for both persons to give up their disputed beliefs and suspend judgment. I look at two objections to Feldman’s view, one from Ernest Sosa and the other from …

Peer Disagreement And Rationality: An Analysis Of Richard Feldman's Conciliatory View, John Molinari

Masters Theses

How should one's beliefs be affected by one's knowing that other people, who are equally well-informed, rational, and intelligent – in other words, persons who are epistemic, or intellectual, peers – believe differently? In this thesis I look at a certain answer to this question. Richard Feldman argues that when two persons who have (roughly) the same level of intelligence and who are (roughly) equally well-informed disagree, the only rational response is for both persons to give up their disputed beliefs and suspend judgment. I look at two objections to Feldman’s view, one from Ernest Sosa and the other from …

The Problem Of Evil And The Probity Of Theodicy From William Rowe's Evidential Evidential Of Evil, Olaoluwa Apata

Masters Theses

In this research, we discussed the types of evil: moral and natural, which are cited by atheistic philosophers as evidence against the existence of God. The so-called evidence from evil has been used by the atheistic and other non-theistic scholars to raise hypothesis on evaluating the possibility or likelihood that an omnipotent, omniscient, and wholly good God exists in a world that is littered with evil. Moral evil is evil that arise from the misuse of free will by moral agents, while natural evils are natural disasters such as: earthquakes, famine, floods, hurricanes, tornadoes etc. We discussed moral evil and …

A Case For A Husserlian Willardarian Approach To Knowledge, Joseph Gibson

Masters Theses

This thesis introduces certain aspects in the thought of Dallas Willard and Edmund Husserl as a new way forward in the internalism externalism debate. Husserl’s detailed analysis of cognition has application to epistemology and addresses in great depth an area which in the current discussion is often tertiary and shallow at best. It is argued that in both internalist and externalist camps there is a common assumption about cognition which Husserl argues forcibly against. This assumption is that thought, or cognition, is essentially linguistic. (The notion that ‘thought is essentially linguistic’ means that thought requires the use of language.) Whatever …

Using Soundscape Ecology In Design And Function, Wieteke Holthuijzen

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

No abstract provided.

Thoughts On A Holographic Aesthetics Of Nature, Tom Baugh

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

No abstract provided.

From Things To Relationships: Architecture Of The Ecological Mind, Lejla Vujicic

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

No abstract provided.

It's Always Better With A Good Dm, David Colannino

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

It’s Always Better With A Good DM is about our relationship with objects and maps as a vector for fantasy. Beginning from the premise that humans understand the world via narrative, I am concerned with the loss of imagination in adulthood in lieu of ideology, which is no more real than stories of future and fantastic places.