The paintings in Based on a True Story are at once illogical and concrete – implying both failure and the hope of figurative and architectural construction. Developed as a kind of psychological landscape, they suggest a depiction of contemporary societal / political, and environmental instability. Neither true nor false: the paintings are spaces in which one may become dislocated, anxious, and unsettled. Inclusion of architectural fenestration suggests one’s fractured location and continually shifting ground. Furthermore, literary and cinematic fiction plays an important role to the work in that they both suggest landscapes that may never exist literally. Fiction is also indicative of the close relationship between the utopia and dystopia as environments for escape. This sense of balance or lack thereof, becomes important to the development of the theatrically absurd, so that an audience may be implicated as the tragic and comic active participant. While investigating the work of Peter Doig, Stephen Bush, and Dana Schutz, for example, I suggest that the trail of the painter’s hand becomes a necessary mode of entrance into the work, offering a closer relationship to the act of painting as another form of escape. This gestural mark-making runs counter to current pushes toward technology, and suggests the re-emergence of painting as a primary approach in which to investigate the development of personal space and experience.

The paintings in Based on a True Story are at once illogical and concrete – implying both failure and the hope of figurative and architectural construction. Developed as a kind of psychological landscape, they suggest a depiction of contemporary societal / political, and environmental instability. Neither true nor false: the paintings are spaces in which one may become dislocated, anxious, and unsettled. Inclusion of architectural fenestration suggests one’s fractured location and continually shifting ground. Furthermore, literary and cinematic fiction plays an important role to the work in that they both suggest landscapes that may never exist literally. Fiction is also indicative of the close relationship between the utopia and dystopia as environments for escape. This sense of balance or lack thereof, becomes important to the development of the theatrically absurd, so that an audience may be implicated as the tragic and comic active participant. While investigating the work of Peter Doig, Stephen Bush, and Dana Schutz, for example, I suggest that the trail of the painter’s hand becomes a necessary mode of entrance into the work, offering a closer relationship to the act of painting as another form of escape. This gestural mark-making runs counter to current pushes toward technology, and suggests the re-emergence of painting as a primary approach in which to investigate the development of personal space and experience.

This essay examines the relationships between the different elements in Lisa Jonasson’s collage Existentiell Progg #6 and her very detailed technique. The essay has as its aims to understand and analyze both the details and the wholeness of the artwork and to try to put the collage in an art historical context. The thesis finds that Existentiell Progg #6 has a connection to the imagery of Africa and other collage artist such as Hannah Höch and Nancy Spero, which also gives the paper a perspective of feminism in the arts. The paper continues to create an understanding for the collage work by putting it in to Theodor Adorno’s theories about nature, the human being and the animal kingdom. The paper then comes to the conclusion that many of the elements in Existentiell Progg #6 are a part of its underlying meaning and purpose.

<p>The principle of respect for other persons is commonly invoked in contemporary liberalism as justification for the claim that a conscientious citizen in a liberal democracy is morally obligated to refrain from supporting a coercive law for which he lacks suitable public justification. This view has been challenged by Christopher Eberle in <italics>Religious Conviction in Liberal Politics</italics>, who argues that although a citizen has an obligation to pursue a convincing secular rationale for a coercive law, he does not have an obligation to withhold support for a law for which he lacks such a rationale.</p> <p>In this dissertation I attempt to develop a basic analytical framework which can be used to formulate a suitable conception of respect for persons in the public square. Only with such an underlying conception of respect in hand is it possible to adjudicate the competing claims concerning what the principle of respect for persons should be deemed to require of citizens in advocating and supporting coercive laws.</p> <p>The framework I propose views respect for persons as a complex and variegated concept. It separately considers four different forms or notions of respect, and takes the attitude of respect as foundational and prior to the other forms of respect. I conclude that any conception of respect will entail commitment to a broader ethical theory or set of ethical principles. Accordingly, in the final chapter, I suggest that Robert Audi's "value-based Kantian intuitionism," with its emphasis on respect and the dignity of persons as a grounding property, may constitute an auspicious ethical theory to which appeal may plausibly be made in completing a conception of respect.</p> / Dissertation

Although many critics, and Eavan Boland herself, have written about how her poetry functions to reclaim the Irish feminine image from its static position as lyric representation of the nation, much remains to be said about how Boland represents and reimagines Ireland in her poetry. Using the metaphor of cartography, which Boland frequently refers to in her writing, I argue that she lyrically "maps" the nation across space, time, and language. Her palimpsestic poetic maps of Ireland include what a mere pictorial representation could never, and what prior male-written poetry never did, show: the space of a Dublin suburb, the history of her marriage, the mental scarring of an imposed English language represented as physical fractures on skin or land. Her own subjectivity is the most important component of this map, and so she liberally inserts fragments of her own life into pre-existing national narratives. Through close readings of poems published between 1990 and 2007, I explore how Boland mixes national history, geography, family stories, and memories of her own life to arrive at a poetic "structure extrinsic to meaning which uncovers / the inner secret of it" (ITV 47). This is not a truth about history, nor merely a declaration that women, particularly Irish women, have been silenced in poetry and history. Instead, the inner secret is her own recognition of the connection between herself and the women of whom she writes, as well as her readers; that the framework she builds from pieces of the past provides a way to understand our current selves. Boland remains conscious of the constructed nature of this framework in each poem where she challenges official narratives and maps of the nation, replacing their truth with her own. She loads specific places, histories, and uses of language, as well as the ideas of these things themselves, with complex and even contradictory meanings. Her poems represent not the truth but a truth, and one which has been carefully crafted at that. Put together, these explorations of "Ireland" and all its various truths constitute an imaginative map of the nation as she perceives it.

Thesis (M.S.)--West Virginia University, 2003. / Title from document title page. Document formatted into pages; contains iv, 38 p. Includes abstract. Includes bibliographical references (p. 36-38).

This dissertation is an in-depth investigation of the manner in which Peruvian Andean identities are represented and constructed in Cusqueñan literature after José María Arguedas’s posthumous publication of El zorro de arriba y el zorro de abajo (1971). In this text, fragmented language reconstructs itself in the form of a new community for the future that can be seen as the symbolic “body” of a possible nation, a “utopia under construction.” Peruvian Andean authors after Arguedas echo his perspective on language through their literary production: they pick up the fragments of the Andean past to recreate and reformulate a new Andean identity through language. Subsequently, they transform their perceived marginality into the “new center” of Peruvian contemporary identity by positing choledad (a term originating in the Colonial era used to negatively denote a person’s Andean or indigenous characteristics) as a defining trait of all Peruvians. / text

Conceptual practices developed in Colombia towards the end of the 1960s and into the 1970s. Even a cursory look at surveys of Colombian conceptual art shows that the collective El Sindicato, active between 1976 and 1979, secured its space in these accounts with its 1978 work Alacena con zapatos, which won the top prize at the XXVII Salón Nacional. However, Alacena con zapatos was neither the only, nor the most significant, contribution of El Sindicato to the development of conceptual practices. The collective’s rich oeuvre, while concise, was nonetheless remarkable in its interventions on public spaces as a means for social change. A number of factors have led to the critical misunderstanding and, ultimately, the historiographical neglect of these interventions. This thesis problematizes these factors in order to reframe and expand El Sindicato’s role within the narrative of Colombian art. To elucidate El Sindicato’s contributions, and taking into account that much of Colombian conceptual art remains unknown in the United States, this thesis also registers Colombia’s artistic field as it stood in the 1970s. In all, my project situates El Sindicato’s practices within the broader narrative of Conceptualism as a means to both enrich our understanding of contemporary art in Colombia and help expand the familiar boundaries of the map of conceptual art. / text

Over the course of theatre's history, villains had stereotypical traits: revenge, greed, and power. Contemporary villains, though, evoke more empathy and sympathy from audiences than classic villains. In an effort to understand the roots of villainous behavior in contemporary characters, this thesis surveys a few notable classic villains to help compare the classic to the contemporary. While holding on to qualities of the classic stereotypes, contemporary playwrights create frequent moments of sympathy and empathy for villains who appeal to audiences' desires to connect, justify, and understand the reasons for their villainies. This thesis investigates despicable yet empathetic villains in three plays: Tony Kushner's Angels in America, Martin McDonagh's The Beauty Queen of Leenane, and Stephen Sondheim and John Weidman's Assassins. An analysis of the playwrights' manipulation of characters and traits, as well as audience expectations, provides a theory on the new villain type and the lessons that can be learned.

In this work it is presented the characteristics of the author, in consideration of biography, what critics wrote. Separate autobiographical motives from hers creative work. In this work are also presented main women characters characteristics and famous women from religion, films, literatures, cultures, pop cultures, also women who had influence to history, politics. Likewise are analyzed feminine titles who are defining family relations, work titles, vulgar and nice callings.