My doctoral thesis uses the ‘institutional approach’ to analyse the mechanics of the production and distribution of lianhuanhua (comics) from 1949 to 1966. From this analysis, I extrapolate what made the medium unique and therefore what insights lianhuanhua can offer into Maoist ‘political culture’. Lianhuanhua originated in the Republican era and the unique characteristics of its publishing and distribution had important consequences for the medium’s subsequent development after 1949. During the ‘seventeen years’ lianhuanhua functioned as a propaganda tool, supporting political campaigns and celebrating CCP history. Despite these functions however, the themes inherent in the medium were a lot more varied. Analysis reveals that what was allowed and disallowed was considerably more ad hoc than what we might expect of a strictly controlled totalitarian state. Irregular approaches to production and censorship were also mirrored in the lack of an overall national publishing strategy before 1966. Meanwhile, as the producers of an art form which managed to successfully reconcile the inherent contradictions in CCP art policy, lianhuanhua artists developed a complex give and take relationship with Party-State agencies. Comics were disseminated through highly regulated channels, including bookshops, libraries and factories to ensure ‘revolutionary’ content reached a wider audience and Party-State agencies also sought to advocate ‘appropriate’ reading through ‘reading tutorship’. However, these agencies simultaneously faced challenges in regulating the stocks and location of the highly popular lianhuanhua ‘guerrilla vendors’ and this had profound implications for the kinds of content which persisted in circulating in the early PRC.

I dagens samhälle har den psykiska ohälsan ökat det senaste decenniet, och speciellt bland ungdomsgrupperna – tidigt i tonåren samt hos unga vuxna.  Oftast uppstår psykiska besvär under tonåren och om detta inte behandlas ökar risken att det förvärras. Visionen med detta arbete var att visualisera psykiska besvär och uppmana ungdomar att söka hjälp i tid innan det övergår till psykiska sjukdomar. För att uppnå detta behandlar detta examensarbete inom informationsdesign, hur visuella metaforer kan gestaltas och vara identifieringsbara för gymnasieungdomar drabbade av psykiska besvär. Arbetet består av en teoretisk – och praktisk del. I den teoretiska delen redogörs teorier inom klassisk retorik, visuell retorik, semiotik, samt tidigare forskning om hälsomeddelanden. Här används även två metoder; kvalitativa intervjuer i två omgångar samt en platsanalys för de kontexter gestaltningen skall befinna sig inom. Den teoretiska delen lade en grund för den praktiska delen av arbetet. Ett flertal skisser utformades med hjälp av visuella metaforer för att konkretisera och gestalta känslorna som hänger ihop med psykiska besvär. Strategin för att framhäva samt effektivisera budskapet var att skapa identifierbara visuella metaforer. För att undersöka hur metaforer uppfattades och tolkades av personer som kan relatera till psykiska besvär utfördes kvalitativa intervjuer. Resultatet var att alla deltagare hade möjligheten att identifiera sig själva i metaforen och dessutom implementera sina egna erfarenheter och känslor som en utgångspunkt. Den praktiska delen inkluderade ett gestaltningsförslag med tre olika informationsaffischer för att exemplifiera hur en hel serie av uppmanade affischer kan utformas. Även om affischernas målgruppspåverkan inte kunde testat i arbetets omfattning, påvisar resultatet en god grund att de kan uppmana drabbade personer till hjälpsökande. / Mental illness in today’s society has grown tremendously during the past decade, particularly among youths. Psychological problems often arise during the teenage years and if not addressed can increase in severity. The aim with this work is to visualize psychological problems and encourage youths to seek out help before the problems transform into a mental illness. To achieve this, visual metaphors were used and illustrated into identifiable emotions and feelings for affected youths to relate to. The work is made of both theoretical and practical parts. In the theoretical part, theories within classical rhetoric, visual rhetoric, semiotics and existing research within the topic were explained. Two methods, qualitative interviews and a site analysis, were used to develop a baseline for context to which the design would affirm to. The theoretical part laid the ground for the practical part of the work. Many sketches were designed with help of visual metaphors to concretize and shape the feelings which portray the psychological problems. The strategy to bring forth and optimize the message was to make identifiable visual metaphors. To study how the metaphors were understood, interviews were carried out on subjects who could relate to the psychological problems. The result was that all the participants could both identify and relate to the metaphors and implement their own experiences and feelings. The practical part of the thesis included design suggestions of three different informational posters to exemplify how a series of these posters could exist to touch the entirety of the spectrum.  Even though the posters were not tested within the target group, a conclusion was drawn that the resulting series of informational posters carried weight which could urge the affected to seek out help.

This dissertation engages America's illustrated sheet music through topical analyses of political and social ruptures from the Civil War to World War I. In so doing, it demonstrates that music illustrations fit into larger networks of American picture making, participating in the recording and redirecting of contemporary American anxieties. Chapter 1: Bloody Banner, Silent Drum: The Material Wounded on Civil War Sheet Music argues that violated flags and drums in music illustrations transcended their martial functionality to signify loss of innocence and life; in so doing, they took on their own subjectivity. Chapter 2: Banjos, Rifles, and Razors: Picturing American Blackness investigates the transition from black-face minstrel songs to the "coon song craze" of the 1880s and 1890s, arguing that the stock character's razor, a weapon frequently figured in the songs, was not only a symbol of violence but of white fears of black social mobility. Chapter 3: Hoopskirts and Handlebars: Gender Construction and Transgression in Victorian America offers two case studies, one of cross-dressing pictures after the Civil War, the other of gendered bicycle images, arguing that the American public between the war and the turn of the century enjoyed contemplating the flexibility of gender roles and boundaries. Chapter 4: "There Were Giants in the Earth": Monsters of the First World War argues that popular pictures of American giants and monstrous war machines engaged in symbolic battle with monstrous Huns, who symbolized German atrocity for a Euro-American public uncomfortable with the idea of war with European peoples. At the same time, giants represented the common belief of America's special role in international peace, as neutrality gave way to declared war. Sheet music illustration was a vibrant part of American visual culture. By assessing the layered meanings of these often ignored pictures, my dissertation seeks to recover and restore lost memories of America's usual but fraught visual romance with popular song.

December 1989, Romania – a culture steeped in secrecy-fuelled paranoia is reflected in the family of six-year-old Adam Stan, whose father is missing and no one concedes to even talk about it. In the first of two sections of 2, a novel, through the eyes of Adam the child, the narrative explores the fall of Ceaușescu's regime and the incandescent bouts of hope brought on by the first Romanian democratic summer, but overshadowed by the presence of an absent father. Adam keenly experiences the joys and injustices of private and public life in both urban and rural Romanian landscapes, before he is forced to emigrate with his mother to the United States. The latter half of the novel sees the adult Adam return to his native Romania after an absence of over two decades, having been reunited with his father and fully assimilated into American life. Adam’s first impressions are of a country still in social and political turmoil, but his Romanian senses are dulled, his outlook cynical, his father’s prohibitive voice never far from his mind. However, the seemingly new scenery and the people he meets end up exposing forbidden memories which prompt Adam’s curiosity for coming to terms with his family’s past. Dualities construct the framework of Adam’s journey: innocence and experience, child- and adulthood, nationhood and otherness, (post)communism and capitalism, personal and national trauma, culture and identity. 2, a novel is a story about family, displacement, language, but most of all about finding a sense of self despite the ambivalent responsibility that comes with inheriting one’s history.

No description available.

The artist discusses her Bachelor of Fine Arts Exhibition, Confessions, held at the Tipton Gallery, from November 14th to November 25th. The exhibit portrays how the artist responds to issues such as organized religion, war, and politics. Being drawn to art from the Renaissance to Baroque era, the work encorporates an "old world" aesthetic, also with an emphasis on Gothic architecture.

No description available.

Orientador: Rita Luciana Berti Bredariolli / Resumo: Esta pesquisa tem como eixo central o tema da ilustração, com foco no ofício do ilustrador no contexto da narrativa visual presente em livros ilustrados. A discussão desenvolvida percorre a diversidade de dinâmicas possíveis a serem estabelecidas no jogo semântico entre palavras e imagens, bem como na tessitura de relações entre a arte narrativa e a faculdade da imaginação. Ponderando acerca do lugar ocupado pela faculdade da imaginação na construção de conhecimento, reflete-se acerca da possível função social e pedagógica do livro ilustrado, ou, de modo mais amplo, da imaginação. Um dos aspectos fundamentais que norteiam a pesquisa consiste no entendimento da própria dissertação como um processo criativo em ilustração. Dessa forma, a visualidade e materialidade da dissertação são compreendidos como elementos de equivalente importância em relação ao texto, proporcionando também possibilidades poéticas de compreensão do trabalho por meio da a­­­bordagem artística da ilustração. / Abstract: This research focuses on the theme of illustration, especially with regard to the illustrator’s craft in the context of the visual narrative present in picturebooks. The discussion developed goes through the diversity of possible dynamics to be established in the semantic game between words and images, as well as in the relationship between narrative art and the faculty of imagination. Pondering about the place occupied by the faculty of imagination in the construction of knowledge, there are considerations about the social and pedagogical function of picturebooks, or, more broadly, of imagination. One of the fundamental aspects that guide this research is the understanding of the dissertation itself as a creative process in illustration. Thus, the visuality and materiality of the dissertation are understood as elements of equivalent importance in relation to the text, also providing poetic possibilities of understanding the work through the artistic approach of illustration. / Mestre

Six flash nonfiction comic essays composed in direct conversation with the combination of the flash nonfiction form and the comic form make up the body of this creative thesis. In addition to this creative work, a comparison of several essential craft aspects of flash nonfiction and comic composition are discussed, and an argument is made for the benefit of melding the two forms. This hybrid genre of flash nonfiction comics benefits from aspects of both forms craft, including: heightened potency of images and themes, a dependence on association, and narrative structures based on expanding larger ideas from “miniatures.” The comic form’s difficulties in dealing with nonfiction approaches to authorial presence and figurative language is also discussed. Ultimately, the melding of the flash nonfiction form and the comic form creates valuable opportunities for both genres and their writers—as the six flash nonfiction comic essays, which make up the body of this creative thesis, illustrate.

Research Doctorate - Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) / How may ancient Hebrew texts be presented to a contemporary audience, remaining faithful to the original and at the same time relevant yet timeless? I am painting four series of watercolours, each focussing on a particular Australian habitat. These artworks form decorative borders to the four biblical texts of Lamentations, Ruth, Ecclesiastes and Esther, four of the Jewish Scrolls, and act as visual metaphors of underlying themes and indicators of structure and literary devices. My research is into the texts themselves, reading and responding to them; into natural subjects that express my response; and into the art-making process from which the final artworks are created. The end product of my research is an exhibition of these watercolour works and an A4-sized book combining the complete printed text of the Scrolls in the English Standard Version (ESV) as I have formatted it, with my illustrations as border designs. My aim is that through the manuscripts’ overall design, I honour the authors’ literary artistry, including symmetry, acrostic and reversal. Through my choice of subjects for each illustration, I aim to suggest themes in the adjoining text.