In reconstructing the meaning of prehistoric artifacts, the art historian's task is particularly difficult. Scholars dealing with this period of time have to build their arguments on scarce archeological data, often unaided by written documents. Due to this lack of information, prehistoric female figurines are the subject of innacurate iconographic interpretations. In the case of the Mesoamerican Preclassic, the missing data is supplemented by subjective perceptions about people who do not belong to the scholar's own sex or ethnic background. The resulting misinterpretations fill the interstices between the information available and the historical facts. The traditional view that considers these figurines nothing more than beautiful women stop any further inquiries into the subject. Sometimes, the scholar's own fantasies substitute for logical arguments. Scholars writing on Mesoamerican iconography must be careful not to follow many of their predecessors to avoid confusing their colleagues, students and the general public.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Ohio State University, 2007. / Title from first page of PDF file. Includes bibliographical references (p. 215-226).

Thesis (M.A. (Hons.)) -- University of Western Sydney, 2003. / "A thesis presented to the University of Western Sydney in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts (Honours) Creative Arts, December 2003" Includes bibliography.

Honors Project--Smith College, Northampton, Mass., 2009. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 101-106).

Zugl.: Diss.

Nessa tese de doutorado, efetuo uma análise crítica da produção artística brasileira no trânsito da década de 60 para 70 do século XX, dentro dos pressupostos das teorias feministas de crítica cultural, com ênfase nas possibilidades de subjetivação do feminino pela prática artística. Para ser mais específica, preocupo-me aqui com certos trabalhos realizados por trinta artistas mulheres atuantes no período, contemporâneas entre si e do advento do feminismo de segunda onda no país, que envolvam as preocupações estéticas e plásticas em voga, e que permitam uma abordagem de crítica feminista justamente por trabalharem com problemáticas corpóreas e identitárias, que abarcam principalmente os limites e/ou possibilidades dos processos de subjetivação pela ótica dos confrontos e subversões do gênero. / In this PHD Dissertation, I make a critical analysis of Brazilian artistic production in traffic of the 60 to 70 of the twentieth century, within the assumptions of feminist theories of cultural criticism, emphasizing the possibilities of female subjectivity by artistic practice. To be more specific, I am concerned here with some work done by thirty women artists working in this period, contemporary with each other and to the advent of the second feminism wave in the country, involving the aesthetic and plastic concerns in vogue, and that allow the approach of a feminist criticism, since they worki with body and identity issues, which mainly cover the limits and/or possibilities of subjective processes from the perspective of confrontations and subversions of the genre.

Orientador: Jorge Sidney Coli Junior / Tese (doutorado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Instituto de Filosofia e Ciências Humanas / Made available in DSpace on 2018-08-22T22:45:07Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 CostaJunior_MartinhoAlvesda_D.pdf: 155599444 bytes, checksum: f9af31b794d4119435386614a88bbad9 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2013 / Resumo: Partindo do estudo das figuras femininas na obra de Théodore Chassériau (1819-1856), a tese se desenvolveu em três eixos precisos: o nu, as vítimas e uma notória sensibilidade decadentista e simbolista, própria da cultura do fim de século. O trabalho se interessa, sobretudo, pelas ramificações das obras e visa compreender como as imagens de Chassériau mantêm sua presença ou, por outro lado, quais são os limites de determinados aspectos de sua produção. O fator preponderante é a comparação das imagens, demonstrando elementos peculiares em cada uma analisada. Deste modo não se trata de abordagens cronológicas; antes, são temas que se desenvolvem a partir da obra do artista. A produção de Chassériau, que voltou com ímpeto aos holofotes a partir de 2002 (ano da grande retrospectiva de seu trabalho), permanece pouco estudada pelos especialistas. Mesmo o tema das figuras femininas, que em inúmeros artigos aparece claramente, nunca foi sistematizado nem confrontado com os diversos caminhos que a obra do artista pode sugerir / Abstract: From the study of the feminine figures in Théodore Chassériau's (1819-1865) work, the thesis has been developed in three precise ways: the nude, the victims and an evident decadentist and simbolist sensibility, characteristic of the fin-de-siècle culture. Most of all, the study is interested in his works' ramifications and it aims to comprehend how Chassériau's images maintain their presence or, on the other hand, what are the limits of specific aspects of his production. The prevailing factor is the comparison of the images, showing peculiar elements in each one analyzed. Therefore it is not about chronological approaches; rather, those are themes that come forth from the artist's work. Chassériau's production, which returned with impetus to the spotlight since 2002 (year of the great retrospective of his work), remains little studied by the specialists. Even the theme of the female figures, which appears clearly in numerous papers, has never been systematized nor confronted with the several directions that the artist's work may suggest / Doutorado / Historia da Arte / Doutor em História

M.A. / During the second half of the fifth-century B.C. there was a sudden proliferation of Attic vases depicting adornment scenes. These scenes showed groups of women making themselves desirable and for the first time women were eroticised within the context of marriage. Some scholars have argued that this sudden abundance reflected a change in the Attic attitude towards women, reflecting their increased social standing. These scholars proposed various hypotheses. It is conjectured that Perikles' Citizenship Law of 451/450 increased the social standing of Athenian daughters. The Peloponnesian War that raged from 431 to 404 BCE might also have forced women to take on more public responsibilities; to fill the gaps left by the military men's absence. This would explain why private activities of women became the subject matter of vase paintings at that time. According to this viewpoint women became the new customers of the potters. There are even scholars who maintain that these scenes contain hints of sexual liaisons between women. A competing hypothesis is that these scenes were used to impose a patriarchal ideal of femininity onto girls preparing themselves for marriage. Both these approaches imply that women were the primary viewers of these scenes. The aim of this study is to evaluate these hypotheses and to explore whether there may be other explanations. In order to investigate these issues a visual semiotic analysis was performed of thirteen painted vases representative of a variety of painters and vase shapes. This analysis was done in two parts: a structural analysis and a pragmatic analysis. The structural analysis consisted of a syntactic and semantic analysis, and helped to identify the pertinent signs and what they refer to. Artistic principles and the theory of Gestalt played an important role in identifying key signs. The pragmatic analysis delved deeper and was used to establish what message Athenian men and women might have read into these painted vases. This brought to light the master narrative prescribed by the patriarchy as well as women's acceptance thereof and how women used it to condition their daughters. A new hypothesis is proposed to explain the increase in this type of subject matter on painted vases. It is concluded that the buyers of the vases were mostly men but that the consumers of these artistic scenes were both male and female. It is also probable that after the Peloponnesian War these vases depicted a return to basic patriarchal values that may have degenerated during the war. It was also found that Perikles' Citizenship Law would have contributed more to the social standing of the male guardian, than to that of a girl of marriageable age. The eroticisation of women within the confines of marriage would thus have propagated the message of procreation within the patriarchal family structure, rather than referring to erotic encounters between women. These scenes, instead of showing the increased social standing of women, reflect a reinforcement of patriarchal values.

My study explores the politics of viewing and the gaze. I argue that the gaze both arrests and objectifies the body, which in turn transforms subjects into objects therefore regulating social behaviour. The basic notion of the gaze will be explored throughout this thesis and thereby contextualizes my sculptures, which are casts of my naked body. My particular concern lies in how the ideas of surveillance have had an influence on architecture and buildings in Grahamstown. Throughout this mini thesis, I will explore a number of architectural spaces of Grahamstown such as the Provost prison, Fort Selwyn and the Camera Obscura which I argue were all designed based on the ideas of surveillance. The entanglement of Grahamstown architecture and the female form as a subject of voyeurism forms an important part of this thesis, as the context of Grahamstown architecture is centered on visibility, which in turn subjects people to a form of discipline. The Provost Prison, the Camera Obscura and the forts of Grahamstown are all good examples of this. Outside of this, the female body is also subjected to the gaze, which in turn suggests that the female body is also under surveillance and as a result also becomes disciplined. My installation is a response to Antony Gormley’s Event Horizon, in which he placed 33 steel and fibreglass casts of his own naked body at an elevated level on buildings around Manhattan and Brazil. In this discussion I have contextualized my work with reference to the ideas of different theorists. The three main theorists I have cited are Michel Foucault, Jonathan Crary and Laura Mulvey. Foucault is specifically cited due to his discussion on Panoptic power, surveillance and docile bodies. Crary makes a number of important points with regards to the ideological operations of the Camera Obscura as well as its history while Laura Mulvey’s writings form the basis of the voyeuristic gaze from the perspective of a feminist.

This thesis investigates the figure of the cyborg as conceptualised by Donna Haraway in The Cyborg Manifesto (1991). The figure of the cyborg, as a transgressive figure in the late twentieth century within socialist feminist discourse, is problematized with regard to its efficacy as a creature that challenges the constructed nature of gender and contests the boundary between human and machine through its ambiguous nature. Haraway’s notions of the cyborg, which she bases partly on cyborg characters from Science Fiction literature, deny the ocularcentric traditions that have structured gender and the body. Similarly, Haraway does not engage adequately with the figure of the cyborg with regard to situating it historically. This thesis unpacks both the visual and the historical aspects that have structured the cyborg body. By engaging with these concepts, the cyborg emerges as a figure that is identified through visual signifiers of female deviance and pathology. By reading female deviance and pathology on the body of the nineteenth-century hysteric, similarities can be drawn between the hysteric and the cyborg. Through a reading of Alien (1979); Blade Runner (1982); and Star Trek: First Contact (1996) key cyborg texts of the late twentieth century, the figure of the cyborg, and its relation to the deviant pathologised female can be understood when read against the body of the hysteric and how it was visually coded and communicated