Thesis (Ph.D.)--City University of New York, 2007. / (UMI)AAI3283178. Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 68-09, Section: A, page: 3639. Adviser: George A. Corbin.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2006. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 67-11, Section: A, page: 4017. Adviser: Jonathan Fineberg. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 316-353) Available on microfilm from Pro Quest Information and Learning.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2006. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 67-11, Section: A, page: 4025. Adviser: David Desser. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 226-230) Available on microfilm from Pro Quest Information and Learning.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2006. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 67-07, Section: A, page: 2359. Adviser: Eric Hostetter. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 163-176) Available on microfilm from Pro Quest Information and Learning.

<p> Stereotypes of Indigenous peoples, formed according to Western notions of cultural hierarchy, as savage, exotic, and only existing in a distant past, are still prevalent in the popular imaginary. These stem from misunderstandings and misrepresentations of Indigenous peoples that developed after contact between Indigenous peoples and European settler communities, and exist in concepts such as the noble savage, the wild heathen, or the vanishing Indian. In this thesis I argue that contemporary artist Gregg Deal (Pyramid Lake Paiute) successfully challenges and disrupts such stereotypes by re-channeling their power and reappropriating them through his strategic use of humor and irony in performances, paintings, and murals. Through these tools, Deal is able to attract audiences, disarm them, and destabilize their assumptions about Indigenous peoples. I frame Deal&rsquo;s use of humor and irony outside the trickster paradigm, drawing instead on Don Kelly&rsquo;s (Ojibway) theorization of humor as a communicative tool for making difficult topics accessible, and Linda Hutcheon&rsquo;s theorization of irony as a discursive strategy for simultaneously presenting and subverting something that is familiar. </p><p> In a second line of argument, I foreground Deal&rsquo;s agency as an artist through analysis of his strategies to reach audiences and gain visibility for his art. Contemporary Indigenous artists are often excluded from mainstream art institutions, and can struggle to find venues to exhibit their work. I argue that Deal&rsquo;s strategic use of public space and the internet to show and publicize his art is significant. It has helped him to reach audiences and gain recognition for his work. He now exhibits and performs in university and state museums. I argue that the authority of museum space, in turn, gives him a greater opportunity to disrupt stereotypes and educate people about misperceptions of Indigenous peoples.</p><p>

abstract: This project is a critical look at Chicano artist Vincent Valdez's 2002-2004 series Stations. The theoretical framework for this work is the concept of cultural citizenship, which refers to a variety of ways in which marginalized groups of people create, fight for, and retain space, identity, and rights within American society through acts of daily life. This research considers how the ten large-scale charcoal drawings that comprise Stations contribute to the construction and representation of distinct and unique Latino spaces and identities. Valdez establishes space in the sense of belonging and community engagement that his work allows. Within this context, thoughtful attention is paid to the cultural meaning of the artist's subject choices of boxing and religion. This research considers the significance of these subject choices and how the connections between the two create unique spaces of shared experience and consciousness for a viewer of the work. However, the parallels that Valdez draws between the Christ figure and his boxer also allow for a careful examination of the representations and contradictions of contemporary constructions of masculinity that are present in the series. Within this project, the work of Gloria Anzaldúa is critical in understanding and discussing the fluid nature of Chicano identity. This study also considers how in the tradition of Chicana writers, Valdez expresses and affirms identity through autobiographical methods. Further, the artist's use of charcoal to create these large scale drawings is considered for its narrative qualities. This study concludes that Valdez's series Stations is an act of cultural citizenship. / Dissertation/Thesis / M.A. Art History 2010

Boston University. University Professors Program Senior theses. / PLEASE NOTE: Boston University Libraries did not receive an Authorization To Manage form for this thesis. It is therefore not openly accessible, though it may be available by request. If you are the author or principal advisor of this work and would like to request open access for it, please contact us at open-help@bu.edu. Thank you. / 2031-01-02

<p> <i>Photography in the First Person</i> offers an alternative account of postmodernism in American art during the 1970s and `80s by examining the work of five photographers. Robert Mapplethorpe. Peter Hujar, Nan Goldin and Sally Mann, who are united, not by circumstance, style or acquaintance, but rather by how each one of them used aspects of their personal lives as subject matter, whether it was their friends, lovers, families or children. Collectively their art explores many of the same themes as that of the Pictures Generation, but is structurally opposite to it. Where the Pictures artists appropriated images from popular culture in order to demonstrate how identities were not given or natural, but were discursively and institutionally constructed, the practitioners of what I call photography in the first person set their sights on the ostensibly neutral viewer predicated by these same discourses and institutions&mdash;a viewer who is invariably male, white and heterosexual. Through a series of four case studies, it is shown how each of the aforementioned artists used the medium of photography and the specific contours of their personal lives through strategies of excess and indeterminacy to establish a different ethical stance towards the work of art. from one of detachment to one that forces us to consider our own bodies, desires and identifications. </p><p>

xiii, 136 p. : ill. (some col.) / The Demosion Sema ["Public Tomb"] was an area of the Kerameikos in Athens that in the 5th and 4th centuries BCE functioned as the state burial ground--the repository of mass graves for those who had lost their lives in war. In an annual ritual known as the patrios nomos ["the ancestral custom"], the war-dead were eulogized and publicly mourned. Their mass graves [ polyandria ] were regularly marked by marble monuments with reliefs of soldiers in combat, under which the names of the dead were listed according to their tribe, but without demotic or patronymic information. This thesis explores the various aspects of the patrios nomos and the iconography of the funerary monuments of the state burial ground. By analyzing features of the ritual, such as the attendant funeral orations ( epitaphios logos ), and aspects of the imagery found in the polyandria , we are able to learn not only about the function of the Demosion Sema within the Athenian polis but also how Athenians mourned and remembered their war-dead within the context of a democratic ideology. / Committee in charge: Jeffrey M. Hurwit, Chairperson; James Harper, Member; Christopher Eckerman, Member

<p> An Egyptian archaeological textile, accessioned in the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) (Cat.No. 95/2444), from the Tomb of Hatnofer and Ramose, Eighteenth Dynasty (1550-1295 B.C.), Western Thebes was studied, with two textiles (Cat.Nos. 95/2443 and 95/2445) from the same tomb used as comparanda. The textile&rsquo;s finely spun fibers, plain-weave balanced structure with selvedge fringes and lower edge fringes, and with various weavers&rsquo; marks, stains, and losses, provide invaluable historical data about finely woven, royal linens of Eighteenth Dynasty Egypt. </p><p> Scientific analysis used for this study include: visual annotations, polarized light microscopy (PLM), scanning electron microscopy (SEM) including fiber diameter measurements, and carbon-14 dating. Closely examining a textile and its fibers can provide information about the condition of the textile, linen quality, weaving techniques, and the life of the textile itself. While the linen fibers in the Study Textile (Cat.No. 95/2444) and the Comparanda Textile #1 (Cat.No.95/2443) have been identified, it is still uncertain whether or not the fibers in the Comparanda Textile #2 (Cat.No.95/2445) are of a different quality linen or of a different plant material which is very similar to linen within the bast fiber family. Further studies would be required to answer this and several other questions that remain.</p><p>