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<p> More so than any other time in history, humans are being exposed to an enormity of digital images every day. The internet, combined with accompanying technological advancements in cellular communication has created an exceptionally chaotic visual experience within the daily lives of millions of people. Through the use of digital photomontage, my artwork attempts to quantify and evaluate the impact that thousands of digital images may have on the emotional and psychological state of human beings. Concurrently, I am in interested exploring the mental repercussions of visual overload, specifically, how chaotic digital experiences may impact the quality of the human condition as a whole. I use the internet to recontextualize found images through a variety of digital manipulation methods to create a system of aesthetic and conceptual relationships. Each collage is comprised equally from images I have produced myself, and appropriated images found on the internet to indicate the increasingly ambiguous boundary between our physical and virtual realities. I often use images that imply a war-like opposition between our natural and technological environments. I believe such images are indicative of the conflicts that take place on a psychological plane of consciousness within our minds every day as we strive to cope with our new digital reality brought forth by rapid technological advancement.</p>

<p> This thesis analyzes the reception of the work of contemporary artist Kara Walker and the critical debates it has engendered. Walker's work has received a mixed reception over the past twenty years: while she has won prestigious awards and received international acclaim, her work also enrages many African American artists and scholars who accuse her of perpetuating racist ideologies and insensitively mocking the history of suffering endured by slaves. I trace three major points within the critical reception of the artist's work: a letter writing campaign in 1997 initiated by the artist Betye Saar; the 2009 publication of the book, <i>Kara Walker&mdash;No/Kara Walker&mdash;Yes/Kara Walker&mdash;?</i>; and the veiling of Walker's work in 2012 in a New Jersey public library. I argue how Walker's strategy of employing "negative imagery" challenges the viewer to critically engage racist stereotypes on complex multifaceted levels.</p>

This study was (1) to determine the common characteristics in selected adolescent novels, excluding science fiction written during the years 1971-1980; (2) to compare and contrast these common characteristics with the theoretical assertions made by experts who wrote about these novels; and (3) to determine if the adolescent novels written during 1971-1980 underwent an evolutionary process or if they remained constant.A review of the research led to the formulation of the following hypotheses:1. The adolescent novels reviewed for this study would show that there would be an increase in the number of novels of character.2. It would be demonstrated that there would be a movement away from the third person point ofview and that other points of view would be used as well.3. Subjects which were taboo earlier would be presented openly in current adolescent novels.Procedural stages were developed to accomplish the goals of the study.The procedural stages were (1) reviewing the research already done on the subject; (2) selecting representative sources of novels; (3) selecting novels to be used; (4) determining the characteristics to be studied and developing the worksheet; and (5) selecting the methods to be used in reviewing the novels.A worksheet was compiled for each of the selected novels, then a composite was made for each year, as well as for the 10-year period. The composites showed the number of novels and the percentages for each of the categories. The categories were: (1) Novel of Incident or Novel of Character; (2) Time Span and Length of the Novel; (3) Plot Progression-Chronologically or otherwise; (4) Sex of Author versus Sex of Protagonist(s); (5) Viewpoint From Which the Story was Told; (6) Age and Sex of the Protagonist(s); (7) Social Concerns; (8) Social Classes; (9) Family Structure; (10) Setting and (11) Time of Setting.The findings showed that a majority of the adolescent novels of 1971-1980 were "Novels of Character"; the time span was considerably longer than the traditional three months; the length of the novels was slightly longer than months; the length of the novels was slightly longer thanthe expected two-hundred pages, or less; chronological plot progression was still dominant, but some other methods of plot progression were used, such as flashbacks and stream-of-consciousness; most of the novels were written by female authors and most protagonists were female; however, female authors were more likely to use a protagonist of the opposite sex than were male authors. About half of the stories were told in the first person and slightly more than half of these were told from the male point of view. The average age of the protagonist was 15.5 years; nearly four-out-of-five of the novels showed the traditional male/female sex role; many of the novels showed conflicts between the protagonist and an adult, particularly a parent.For the most part, the protagonist was of the white middle or working class and lived with both parents. If one parent was missing, it was usually the father.Settings were equally divided between the city and the country; and when the time of action was determined, it usually took place during the time frame of this study, the 1970s.This investigator concluded from his findings that. the adolescent novel was changing during the 1970s. It had evolved from a rather simple, single-line story of the earlier decades to a rather sophisticated novel with a variety of points of view, several kinds of plot progression, and multiple socioeconomic and geographical settings.The adolescent novel of the 70s depicted various family structures and sex roles not found in earlier adolescent novels. Perhaps most important was the fact that the adolescent novel of the 70s dealt with problems and situations which were common to the adolescent, the intended audience of such a novel.

The purpose of this dissertation is to trace the literary career of Flannery O'Connor and to show that the writer's dramatic sense could not be separated from her vision of faith and reality. This study focuses particularly on Flannery O'Connor's status in literary circles, on her critical essays collected in Mystery and Manners, on an assessment of her two novels, Wise Blood and The Violent Bear It Away, and her volumes of short stories. As a Catholic writer in the South, Flannery O'Connor observed and interpreted reality in the light of specific doctrines of the Church. Miss O'Connor's fiction puzzled and outraged her critics and readers by its tough Christianity, Southern grotesques, its themes and its violence. Implicit in this study is the premise that a critical approach to the fiction of Flannery O'Connor according to her own statements on her position of a Catholic writer in the fundamentalist South will give the reader a fuller understanding of the author's vision of faith and reality as exposed in her fiction.Chapter I traces Flannery O'Connor's literary career and shows how the author grew from a young, talented writer at the University of Iowa into an artist whose fictional output was remarkable. A study of the criticism accorded Flannery O'Connor's fiction follows a chronological pattern and shows how reviewers and critics, confused though they were by her early fiction, took her seriously during her lifetime and acclaimed her posthumous publications as unique contributions to American letters.Chapter II is devoted to both articles and essays that Flannery O'Connor published in her lifetime and several essays she never revised for publication. These essays as a whole shed light on her Catholic theological viewpoint expressed in her fiction.Chapter III is devoted to an analysis of Flannery O'Connor's early stories which remained uncollected until the publication of Flannery O'Connor: The Complete Stories (1971). These early stories, for the most part inferior in technique and maturity of expression, deserve attention because they contain many of the elements which foreshadow the excellence of the author's mature works.Chapter IV is concerned with the study of Flannery O'Connor's two novels, Wise Blood and The Violent Bear It Away. In both novels Flannery O'Connor is preoccupied with religious concerns and absorbed in her Christian vision with its deep concern for the redemption and salvation of the human spirit through trials of fire and love.Chapter V deals with the bulk of Flannery O'Connor's short fiction contained in the collections A Good Man Is Hard To Find and Everything That Rises Must Converge and Flannery O'Connor: The Complete Stories. The most prevalent themes in the short stories deal with man's flight from a pursuing God, sin, and the problems of salvation and death.Regarding the extent to which Flannery O'Connor's vision has been shaped by her Catholic faith, it is my thesis that the artist's theological implications are the touchstones on which she built the vision of faith and reality which she revealed in her fiction.

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