Thesis (M.S.)--West Virginia University, 2001. / Title from document title page. Document formatted into pages; contains xi, 119 p. : ill. Includes abstract. Includes bibliographical references (p. 108-119).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--UCLA, 2009. / Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 109-114).

Thesis (M.S.)--Rochester Institute of Technology, 2009. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 85-86).

Nigerian sculptor Peju Alatise and British/Kenyan video artist Grace Ndiritu create works centered on the female form. In these works the artists turn to flesh, their own and representations of, in order to expose prevailing notions of the black female body. Peju Alatise’s mixed-media sculpture, 9 Year Old Bride (2010), depicts the hollow bodies of seven small female figures created from fabric and frozen in motion by resin and white paint. Ndiritu’s video paintings, Still Life: Lying Down Textiles (2007)and Still Life: White Textiles (2005-2007) similarly employs cloths as means of covering and creating the body. In Still Life: Lying Down Textiles, Ndiritu reclines on the floor amongst a rich array of fabrics. Completely covered by cloth, except for her right arm, Ndiritu breathes heavily and twitches for entirety of the five-minute film. In her second film, Still Life: White Textiles, Ndiritu manipulates a large piece of fabric between her bare legs and arms which hints at, but never grants nudity. This thesis argues that both Alatise and Ndiritu incorporate wax-printed fabrics to conceal/reveal and construct/deconstruct the female form. Both artists do so as means of destabilizing dominant essentialized notions of black womanhood rooted in colonial visual practices. The paper draws similarities between Alatise and Ndiritu’s works to colonial photographic practices and historical figures of curiosity, such as Sara Baartman, which both inform contemporary understandings of the black female body. Rather than simply repeat—and therefore perpetuate—Western imagined qualities of deviant sexualities and sexual availability, this thesis asserts that Alatise and Ndiritu allude to and ultimately undermine these notions through a careful control of nudity. The last section of the thesis distinguishes the artistic practices of Ndiritu and Alatise from artists working in similar mediums. Though artists like Yinka Shonibare and Lalla Essaydi incorporate textiles into their works, Ndiritu and Alatise are unique for their use of textiles as extensions of the body rather than simply coverings for the figure. Lastly, the thesis argues that Alatise and Ndiritu straddle both Orientalist and Occidentalist understandings of African culture, incorporating elements of both, seemingly inverse, theories into their artistic practices. / text

Looking primarily at the family photographs in Anne Carson’s epitaph in book form, this essay explores how Nox multiply exhibits translation as the approximation of an imperfect nearness. The replica of a testimonial object Carson created after her brother’s passing, Nox is a resolutely non- narrative work of poetry structured around a belabored translation of a Catullan elegy, prose poems, photographs, and other fragments of memorial matter. Examining Nox as an intimate archive made public through Carson’s act of curation, my project draws attention to how this work analogizes translation to the understanding of affective life. Inspired by Marianne Hirsch’s critical work on vernacular photography, I demonstrate that the exhibited family photographs in Nox not only thematize Carson’s focus on illumination and darkness, but also materially amplify the inaccessibility of the felt lives they encapsulate. I argue that Nox, like the photographs it houses, models a memorial practice insistent simultaneously on materiality and the incomplete proximity to what remains. / text

Photographs contain a wealth of information which may be used effectively in historical research. Visual images may be used as evidence, for illustration, for comparison and contrast, and for analytical purposes. Somewhat perplexing is the relatively minimal use of photographs as primary sources in historical inquiry concerning schooling. Many visual clues exist which can help to explain the activities, methods, resources and quality of schooling, and the people involved in schooling, in selected locations. Visual clues may be coordinated with text and with other artifacts to present a more complete picture of schooling in a specific time and place than text alone can provide. Photographs provide opportunities to compare systems of schooling and to engage in longitudinal analysis of a single school system. They can be useful in helping to investigate elements of schooling that may have elevated selected school systems to exemplary levels. The presence of a large collection of educationally related photographs reveals opportunities for utilization which are not present with individual photographs or small groups of photographs. The potential uses of photographs as primary sources for inquiry are not limited to professional historians, but may be taught to, and used by students, as well. This study shows benefits and possibilities of utilizing photographic images as primary sources in historical research in education, and in teaching historical research methods, through the use of examples contained in the Albert W. Achterberg Collection of photographs. The collection was developed during the period of 1940-1999 over an 8,000 square mile area in south-central Nebraska and features a school system in the town of Holdrege, Nebraska.

My thesis aims to explore how John Ruskin's idea of the workman's "freedom of thought" was disseminated to late Victorian female consumer culture, through the transformation of its ideal from Gothic architecture into Eastern decorative art. By examining both elite and popular Aesthetic texts, I will argue that references to Eastern art are not only about the issue of style, but also involve theoretical interests about how to integrate art, consumption, women and the home. In chapter one, I examine Ruskin's conception of workmen's free thought, and how the architect William Godwin adapted it by transferring his ideal example of it from Gothic to Eastern architecture. In chapter two, I discuss how manual books by Mary Eliza Haweis acknowledged the authority of wealthy middle-class women's consumption by using Ruskin's ideas alongside Eastern dress examples. In chapters three and four, I examine the Art at Home series, an affordable set of household manuals, to see how they acknowledged less wealthy middle-class women's capacity to be effective house decorators by raising the status of inexpensive Eastern art. Chapter five analyses the catalogues of Liberty's, an Oriental goods shop, and examines how they presented the principles of Eastern art as their own. In chapter six, I discuss The Woman's World, edited by Oscar Wilde, to show how the perspective of Eastern art can crystallise the definitions of female artists by both elite and popular Aesthetes. In chapter seven, I will examine the representation of Eastern art in Vernon Lee's Miss Brown, and show how her text is a critical response to the definition of female artists in elite and popular Aestheticism. By focusing on these various approaches to Eastern art, we can see that Aestheticism was engaged in a process of critiquing and customising Ruskin's ideas in order to acknowledge the artistry and autonomy of consumers.

Not available / text

The purpose of this thesis is to examine the artistic production of photo artist Louise Lawler and the evolution of critical response to her work between the 1970s and 1990s. Of main concern are the manner in which early scholarship and exhibition reviews effectively situated Lawler's work within the discourse of institutional critique, a field of critical scholarship and artistic production that examines institutions of art such as museums and galleries. The objective of this thesis is to reexamine Lawler from a feminist art historical perspective using French feminist theory to investigate how her work can arguably be considered to be a feminist intervention into the patriarchal structures of museums, galleries, and connoisseurship. Lawler's dominant practice is photographic in nature, yet she does not consider herself a photographer. Like many artists of her generation Lawler has capitalized upon the indexical nature of the photographic medium, using it as a tool to create images that "document" art objects in situ. She has made her art in all the places in which artworks circulate or are displayed, be it the curated spaces of museums, an auction house or a private house, well-lit gallery show room walls or crowded and dark storage rooms. Throughout her forty-year career Lawler has worked to disrupt the patriarchy of the art world by drawing attention to philosophies of display and exhibition. She has shown us what is not on display within art systems by consistently showing us what is on display. She has refused to comply with systems or organization, crafting textual interventions that disrupt the linguistics of wall labels and titles of artworks. She has fragmented and dislocated the authorship of artists to their works, and she has appropriated curatorial practices to claim both the physical spaces of display and gain control of what objects are deemed valuable enough to be shown there. Lawler's work has consistently interrupted normative practices of art institutions, effectively disrupting the patriarchy inherent within the systems and structures to define art.

Interpretation of large-scale color infrared and color aerial photography can be a labor and cost-effective means for inventorying and monitoring rangelands while maintaining accuracy. Ground measurements of vegetation cover at Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument were taken in 1975 and 1984. Large-scale (1:1200) color and color infrared aerial photo estimates were compared to these ground measurements through regression and correlation to check photo accuracy. Relationships between photo estimates and ground measurements of total vegetation and shrub cover were strong when using either film type. Color infrared photo estimates corresponded better with ground measurements for both tree cover and cactus cover than color photo estimates. Large-scale aerial photography is also useful for determining some of the causes of vegetation change. Evidence gathered from both sets of photos suggested that vegetation change at OPCNM was largely the result of domestic livestock removal and short-term climatic fluctuations.