Francisco Goya (1746-1828) created a series of prints entitled The Disasters of War (1810-1820) (Los Desastres de la Guerra) depicting the Napoleonic Wars in Spain, the famine that subsequently occurred in Madrid, and symbolic representations similar to his print series Los Caprichos (1797-1799). This thesis will consider Goya’s use of the unclothed human body in his series of prints The Disasters of War. This thesis will place these representations within the contexts of other works produced by Goya that portray the unclothed figures, as well as within the Spanish artistic tradition of Goya’s time. Through this investigation, I will situate the role representation of the unclothed body serves throughout the series.

Several years ago, a professor suggested to me that my work was like a series of conversations. At the time, I was reading everything I could find about spirituality in art including the writings of Wassily Kandinsky. He asserted that the vital element in a work of art is the emotion in the soul of the artist, which has the capacity to evoke a similar emotional response in the observer. He believed that painting is in no way different from a song; each is communication. As I reflected on everything I had read and on my instructor's comment, I began to think of my work as a quiet soulful conversation with myself, with other artists, and with my surroundings. In a conversation, as in an artwork, it is important not to say too much or monopolize the conversation.

The study focuses on how American and Thai shopping centers have evolved and concludes with an example for future Thai retailing: the one-stop shopping center, which is currently enjoying much success in the United States, but which has not yet been introduced to Thailand. The information about the history and development of American and Thai shopping centers, including types and trends, provides directions for a new Thai shopping center development. In addition to the history, Thai and American cultural and social issues must be considered as well. The study looks at American consumers and their behavior reflected in the space and organization of the American mall as a model for designing Thai shopping centers with respect for Thai culture. In addition, this study reviews the major features of American retail design and their interpretation for Thailand. American contributions (such as one-stop shopping concept, code applications, and technology) and Thai conditions (location, trends, Thai cultural and social issues) are incorporated into the final design of the one-stop home furnishings shopping center, located in Bangkok, Thailand.

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A collection of poems by Megan McHugh

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The purpose of this thesis is to analyze New World Baroque art as a medium of syncretism allowing the reconciliation and fusion of discrepant cultures. This study will explore the region of New Spain as defined by the Baroque period by analyzing Mexico as a place whose identity was defined by the transcultural and hybrid components of the Baroque and as a place where a New World Baroque aesthetic first started to appear. Transculturation and hybridization will be analyzed historically and aesthetically as factors for the creation of a New World Identity. The term New World Baroque will be used to define art in the Spanish colonies during the Baroque period, the term New Spain will be used to refer to colonial Mexico, transculturation will refer to the exchange of ideas and intermingling of cultures and hybridization will refer to the outcomes of such. This analysis will begin by providing a definition of Baroque with the purpose of establishing an understanding of the main characteristics of the movement aesthetically and chronologically. Spain will be analyzed to provide evidence of the effects of coming into contact with a multicultural society on the Baroque aesthetic; followed by a historical analysis of the events that would result in the creation of the new world. Then transculturation will be analyzed as an answer to the conquest and as guided by the Catholic Church. Then a timeline will list important events leading up to the Baroque period, and finally an exploration of hybrid art will serve to exemplify a well-established hybrid identity culminating with a brief analysis of some of Frida Kahlo’s work as an embodiment of the New World Baroque aesthetic.

The artistic contributions of Portinari, and of many other Brazilian and Latin American modern artists, have not been adequately examined as part of the visual history of the twentieth century. Although by no means comprehensive, this study employs an holistic approach to re-examining Portinari's Library of Congress murals in an attempt to understand better not only these distinctive murals, but also the historical significance of this twentieth century artist.

Abstract My dissertation seeks to bring aesthetics into conversation with the epistemological concerns of three Victorian texts, in response to the prevalence of beautiful feminine faces and bodies in Victorian texts, their presence amplified through the use of copious description. I examines the ways that Thomas Hardy, Oscar Wilde, and Robert Browning complicate traditional contemporary assumptions regarding behaviors and moralities through their constructions of feminine beauty. These writers challenge and dispute a variety of Victorian social norms imposed upon both men and women, most notably the mandate to adhere to prescribed behaviors that codify in order to regulate gender normativity. My project begins with a historical review cataloging beauty's constructions and uses. Then, in Chapter two, I argue that Thomas Hardy elevates imperfect women through descriptions of their natural beauty in order to question and reject popular constructions of proper femininity. Chapter Three transitions from presentations of subversive feminine beauty offering a fairly straightforward disputation of contemporary values in Hardy, to shedding gender constraints in Oscar Wilde, as the author disputes gender rigidity by crafting beautiful men with "feminine" desires and by reassessing the desirability of women. Finally, Chapter Four notes the ways that Robert Browning artistically subverts Victorian literary conventions by rejecting the typical practice of objectifying women by his near-total absence of descriptions of female features, and by placing his emphasis on the spiritual life of his heroines. My dissertation observes that given that beautiful images are so powerful, they could and did (as they still can and do) serve as a means of social control, and never more so than in Victorian England, when details use, particularly in the construction of feminine bodies, so consistently and pervasively worked to exclude healthy female sexuality, to scorn and shame deviant masculinities, and to annihilate the feminine body. Ultimately, though, the crux of my project is to detour away from traditional observations regarding the potential for objectification beauty allows, and to engage with Foucault's idea of a "reverse-discourse" which employs "the same vocabulary, using the same categories" as the dominant discourse. The central argument of my dissertation is that certain Victorian writers produced subversive texts which appropriated recognizable constructions of physical beauty in order to transform their societies toward a more just, more liberal, more compassionate morality. With each of the three texts I examine, I work toward establishing that claim by situating the text within its historical and cultural context within the long nineteenth century. I also pay attention to how these writers engage and instruct the reader. This is integral to my central argument because if literary narratives offer the mode of transformation aimed at improving societies, then the act of reading, and the actor, the reader, must be the primary recipient of the message that the constructed beautiful body holds. I have worked to illustrate the ways that by constructing characters possessing great physical beauty, and displaying or withholding descriptions of the crafted body, Victorian writers challenged, disputed, and supplanted a variety of nineteenth-century social norms. I claim and then support that beautiful characters functioned within literature as persuasive agents of change, subverting social norms by arousing and then inverting conventional associations between beauty and goodness.

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