Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Seeing Is Believing: Observing Trans Spirituality Through The Smith-Waite Tarot, Phoebe Santalla

MFA in Illustration & Visual Culture

In 1909 the Rider Company published the Smith-Waite Tarot deck which featured 78 illustrated cards by Pamela Colman Smith. With heavy use of appropriated and ambiguous symbology, the Smith-Waite deck became a meditation tool for realizing alternative realities. By observing the history of the deck, analyzing Smith’s approach to illustration, and retracing the counterculture occult explosion in the 1970s, this essay argues that the Smith-Waite deck is an object the reflects the queered body and self. The modern, trans-contentious, Western political climate creates an environment that obscures the fact that transgender people exist beyond the medicalization of their bodies. To …

The Perfect Model: Exploring Gender Differences Within Commercial Graphic Design Preferences, Adeline Roberts

Undergraduate Theses

Personal preferences within graphic design are heavily shaped by social factors, including cultural practices. This project explores the effect of gendered-based experiences on visual design preferences, through investigating men’s and women’s preferences regarding graphic design elements, and the source of these opinions. The data was then used to create two educational images, which mimic contemporary magazine covers, visually illustrating the effects of gendered marketing and experiences on personal design preferences. These images were then attached to an interactive website, so that the findings and pieces from this project can be easily accessed by future audiences.

Young Romans: Status, Dress, And Gender, Mary Harlow, Lena Larsson Lovén

Textile Crossroads: Exploring European Clothing, Identity, and Culture across Millennia

The demographics of the Roman world suggest that it was a world full of children. Demographers argue that in order simply to maintain population levels in a period where life expectancy was very short by modern standards, and infant mortality high, a woman should, on average, have six children, on the assumption that not all would live to adulthood. Despite much research in the last fifty years, children still remain partly invisible in the Roman world. This is primarily because they leave little evidence produced by themselves and are seen through the prism of adult eyes. Inevitably, given the nature …

Exploring Dress, Gender, And Bodily Capital Through Pre- And Protohistoric Funerary Contexts: Case Studies From Southwestern Europe, Francisco B. Gomes, Catarina Costeira, Anna Maria Desiderio, Arianna Esposito, Giacomo Bardelli

Textile Crossroads: Exploring European Clothing, Identity, and Culture across Millennia

While uneven in their scope and reach, studies of dress and dress complements (fibulae, belt buckles, buttons, etc.) have a significant tradition within the broader study of the pre- and protohistory of Mediterranean Europe. Many of these studies, however, have had a strong focus on the typology of the dress complements and ornaments themselves, either as chronological indicators, ethnic markers, or both. In more recent years, however, a shift in research agendas has ushered in the introduction of new perspectives and new ways of thinking about dress and bodily adornment.

This contribution explores one such perspective in particular — namely, …

Textiles, Dress And Politics: A Diachronic Perspective Through The Case Studies Of Ancient Rome And Medieval Iceland, Meghan Korten, Zofia Kaczmarek

Textile Crossroads: Exploring European Clothing, Identity, and Culture across Millennia

People dress for more than just aesthetic reasons. Over the centuries, dress became a sign of human civilization, allowing us to identify the origin, gender, and status of the wearer. Textiles and clothing influence our body, posture, movements, and the way we are perceived by society. Textiles are also a tool used by people to further their agenda, that is why they found their place in the political life of many ancient and modern societies.

According to Michel Foucault, power can be understood as a set of activities influencing the life of the other: It provokes, forbids, or permits, but …