Architecture around the world has been very influential for determining the historical background of many cities. The architecture of the city of Havana in Cuba is etched with unique historical forces and signature buildings. This architecture embodies local reproductions of Western and European styles. The superimposing of Western and European styles led to the formation of a "strange baroquism" that defined the "lasting features of the overall idiosyncrasy of the city." Since Cuba's change of government in the 1950s, architecture has progressed very little. From the day Castro took power, Havana's skyline has hardly altered. After the fall of the former Soviet Union, Cuba had to rely heavily on its own resources and many projects begun in the 1980s had to be halted and still remain unfinished today. Many new buildings in Havana suffer from under investment, lack of resources and little vision. Of the one third of architects who stayed in Cuba after the Revolution their work is mostly limited to tourist hotels or restaurants, catering for the 1 million visitors every year. Most of them do not reflect or adhere to Cuba's rich historical past. Historical preservationists all over the world decided to inscribe La Habana Vieja into the UNESCO World Heritage List in 1982. They launched a safeguarding campaign a year later to restore the authentic x character of the buildings. While it is important to keep Havana's old charm, it is also imminently necessary to revitalize and meet the needs and functions of a modern society. The dilemma faced by architectural designers is best stated by Paul Ricoeur when he said that the challenge lies in ''how to become modern and to return to sources (while) reviving an old, dormant civilization (in order for it to) take part in a universal civilization." My project will focus on the integration of current needs, functions and modern architecture with the city's old architecture. The desirable site will be located on a public destination in Old Havana. It will focus on how the old and the new architecture will physically connect while meeting the characteristics of new uses and adaptive reuses of existing buildings. This research will be conducted by analyzing the site's existing conditions, by choosing contemporary uses that are missing within the city's structure, by analyzing other projects with similar conditions, and by doing an overall research on existing architectural, economic, and social issues that are related to Old Havana's development. This revitalization will create a new Havana that will preserve its value while meeting modern standards and architectural functionality.

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This research investigates contemporary conceptual understandings of Hollywood and Community, seeking to understand how the two, independently and in relation to each other, are made real for the participants ("insiders") engaged in the American film and television industry. The ethnographic field research was conducted over a period of eighteen consecutive months and supplemented by return visits over three of the years that followed. Data collection took place in locations where "Hollywood" was performed, primarily in Los Angeles, California, but also in the State of Utah and Cannes, France. I used anthropological methods, such as interviews and participant-observation, as well as what I term a "working methodology" that required working in a variety of short-term jobs as a means to access the population of study. This working methodology provided unique insight into the critical element of positionality in Hollywood and situated me as an "insider" at times in my own research. This exploratory research concentrates on "locating" Hollywood in a discussion that seeks to capture the invisible complexity of a map that is both literal and imagined: a "place" made up of social and economic networks, marked spaces, and historical connections to a literal landscape. The research suggests that Hollywood is perceived to be a community and, that community membership is defined by work and co-constructed through a dynamic of insider/outsider interaction. An individual's relationship to, and perception of, the Hollywood community is heavily influenced by her position as well by discursive tropes of Hollywood recognized by "insiders". The presentation of data is organized around examples that index Hollywood, in particular for "insiders": Hollywood-speak, time as it is perceived in the setting of Hollywood, and the material culture that is locally called "S.W.A.G.". The idea of Hollywood -- whether as an industry, an institution, or a myth -- has proven its staying-power over time, so too has the idea of Community. Both may prove to be intangible with the specifics up for debate among scholars, but both can also be expected to remain in public discourse and popular imagination for a long time to come.

archives@tulane.edu / In my thesis entitled “Deslocamentos na narrative contemporânea brasileira de autoria feminina” I argue that the novels and films that make up the corpus of this study break with essentialized constructions about female identities. In general, the works gathered here give prominence to female characters, their family, and their experiences, shifting modes of representation endorsed both by a literary and cinematographic tradition, and by practices of representation in the mass media. Heterogeneous among themselves, the novels and films selected here create symbolic territories where the subjectivity of women—be they black, white, indigenous, Jewish, daughters of political dissidents, or domestic servants—is valued and made visible in a multiplicity of representations and discourses. My dissertation contains an introduction, four chapters, and a conclusion. The first chapter analyzes how Elvira Vigna’s novel Deixei ele lá e vim (2006) explores contemporary paradigms of transsexuality and homo-affectivity, exposing the arbitrariness of gender roles. The second chapter analyzes Conceição Evaristo’s novel Becos da memória (2006). In this chapter I investigate how the narrator constructs her identity through a quest for the memories of her people, and by doing so she also challenges representations of black women and the fa-vela in literature and popular culture. In the third chapter I analyze the strategies used in the identity construction of indigenous women by the writer Eliane Potiguara in Metade cara, metade máscara (2004). The fourth chapter focuses on the authorial and autobiographical doc-umentaries directed by Sandra Kogut’s Um passaporte húngaro (2001), Petra Costa’s Elena (2014), and Maria Clara Escobar’s Os dias com ele (2012). In this chapter I investigate how the meaning of women’s bodies on-screen is changed through auto-representation and reflex-ivity. In this chapter I also analyze two long features, Anna Muylaerte’s Que horas ela volta? (2015) and Daniela Thomas and Walter Salles’ Linha de passe (2008), and how their main characters (housekeepers and their offspring) negotiate, and occupy spaces traditionally not al-lowed to them. My dissertation contributes to scholarly debates on authority and authorization pertaining to female authors and filmmakers in Brazil. It highlights how this group of artists reformulated long-established perceptions of representation and participation in the industry, while revealing new narratives with the power to influence signifying practices in contemporary Brazilian culture. / 1 / Angela Moura Rodriguez Mooney

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Wave: A Dance Composition and Performance is a choreographic work and performance that tells a personal narrative in comparison to a wave. I performed the modern/lyrical dance with two other dancers, Rachel Crabtree and Kate Trabalka, on the evening of November 16th, 2018 in room 205 of the ETSU Campus Center building. My previous technical dance training, and training as a dance minor at East Tennessee State University from 2015-2018 prepared me to proudly present a piece that was entirely choreographed by me. The following research of modern and lyrical dance shaped my choreography, as well as my musical choices that I carefully selected and edited. Using weight sharing and partner work, and pulling inspiration and direction from the Laban Movement Analysis, I thoughtfully created a ten-minute-long production. Through research and contemplation of my life, I dove head first into pouring my heart and soul into the choreography, and this thesis documents all of the aspects that came together to create Wave.

For my BFA Capstone exhibition Preying For a Miracle I analyzed the Biblical book of Job found in the Old Testament in relation to my own life. My interest in the Book of Job stems from a human desire to understand suffering, especially suffering that is unprovoked. At the beginning of the book of Job, Job is described as “blameless and upright; he feared God and shunned evil”. (Job 1:1) As the first chapter of the book progresses, Satan comes to God and presents a wager. Satan insinuates that Job is only faithful to God because God has “put a hedge around him”. (Job 1:9) Satan proposes that he can make Job curse God’s name if he removes the abundant blessings he has received. God accepts this wager and declares that as long as Job’s life is spared Satan can do with him as he wants, which begins a series of brutal trials. I found myself asking how can such violence and human suffering be justified?

Talking about spirituality can be uncomfortable. The topic is especially precarious within the sphere of education. Despite the discomfort and precarity, many scholars argue that there may be room in the postmodern curriculum for safe, open, and generative dialogue about religion and spirituality as cultural phenomena. These curriculum theorists (see Slattery, 2013; Doll, 2002; Huebner, 1991; Noddings, 2005; Whitehead, 1967a/1929; Wang, 2002) propose a sensitive critique of spirituality and religion that can lead to cultural healing, re-membering, re-integration and re-collection (Huebner, 1991). In an increasingly fractured world (Slattery, 2013), where spiritual and religious underpinnings cause an array of conflict, this study works toward critical dialogue in a secondary level public school art classroom. Through art-making, writing, and class discussions, the teacher and student researchers explored, critiqued, and de/constructed their own spirituality—with the aim of aggregating, accommodating (Rolling, 2011) and appreciating ways of thinking, being, and practicing that were different from their own. The project adopted A/r/tography as a qualitative research methodology, which views art-making, writing, and conversations as generative pools of data that can produce new understandings, meanings, and potentialities (Irwin et al., 2006; Irwin & de Cosson, 2004; Irwin & Springgay, 2008).

The aim of my work is to investigate the conditions of contemporary art and self-colonising tendencies in the production, perception and circulation of art between the online and offline space as well as the theoretical, contextual and political background of this process. The self-promotional character of mediating my own artwork over the internet is given by the widely used technology options, the preset architecture of web content for distribution of visual content, as well as the dominant aesthetic canon of documentary artwork and exhibitions dictated by influential visual blogs from the Contemporary Art Daily to the Ofluxo , Tzvetnik or others. I recognize the artistic practice in this context as an aesthetic loop and the accelerative impotence of a digital image given by the political conditions of information technology. The practical output of the work will consist of two textile objects.Design of objects and the DIY part of it will be created by me, but the objects stiching will be realized by Slovak designer / model Michal Šumichrast, who creates his own branding under the name SUMICRAFT. I think that the aesthetics and the process of producing his work and life itself corresponds to the social policy of the new global class of cultural producers. His artistic practice is contextually similar to my practice and to the social / political economic issues of the current precariat class that I examine in my theoretical and practical work. As a final result of the research the objects will be documented in "high resolution" and sent back to the Internet. Either in the form of an Instagram post, or as a self-colonising process within some of the "most up-to-date" online platforms for contemporary art.

Le banal objet manufacturé a pris une place de plus en plus importante sur la scène artistique depuis son irruption, via le geste de Marcel Duchamp en 1913. De 1913 à aujourd’hui, cet objet pose problème : 1/car il est à la fois objet quotidien et objet d’art ; 2/ car exposé, il est soumis à un dispositif communicationnel qui tout à la fois en montre le sens et en génère ; 3/ car plus l’objet se réduit plus le discours tissé autour est important. Le sens qu’il revêt au long du siècle change et une évolution se dessine : plus l’objet tend à s’abstraire, à se numériser plus il va revenir sous la forme du discours et de la communication nous donnant à voir quelque chose d’irréductible, ce que l’homme dépose en lui de fondamentalement humain. Envisagé sous les angles esthétique, anthropologique et institutionnel, l’objet, apparemment simple, nous montre son indéniable complexité. Il est fonctionnel, utile, décoratif parfois, objet d’art plus rarement et en lui se fixe quelque chose du sujet qui l’utilise, le regarde, le crée. L’objet, comme paradigme de la communication humaine, suit, induit, en tout cas entérine les progrès et les régressions de la société. Et l’objet d’art, dans les dispositifs d’exposition de plus en plus prégnants, interactifs et sophistiqués, est un révélateur essentiel pour une meilleure saisie du présent. / The mundane and manufactured object has taken an increasing place on the artistic scene since its irruption, by the act of Marcel Duchamp in 1913. From 1913 to nowadays, this object is problematic: 1/ because it is both an everyday thing and a piece of art; 2/ because, when it is exhibited, it is submitted to a device of communication which simultaneously reveals and creates the meaning; 3/ because more the object is reducing itself, more the discourse about it is important.Throughout this century, the meaning of the object has changed and an evolution is discernable: more the object is abstracting or digitizing itself, more it exists by the discourse and the communication. This gives us to see an irreducible thing, a fundamentally human leftover.Analysed by aesthetic, anthropologic and institutional perspectives, the object, apparently simple, reveals its clear complexity. It is functional, useful, sometimes decorative, and more rarely a piece of art; and something of the subject, who uses, peers, creates its, sets in itself. The object, as a paradigm of the human communication, follows, induces, endorses at any rate progresses and regressions of society. In increasingly significant, interactive and sophisticated exhibitions’ devices, the piece of art is an essential indicator for a best understanding of the present time.