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- Creators: School of Art
Description
This project explores the cultural identity of a refugee group named Meskhetian Turks, an ethnic group forced to relocate multiple times in their long history. Driven from their original homeland and scattered around Central Asia and Eastern Europe for decades, approximately 15,000 Meskhetian Turks have been granted refugee status by the American government in recent years. The focus of this study is a group of Meskhetian Turkish refugees in the Phoenix metropolitan area. This is a narrative study conducted through twelve open-ended in-depth interviews and researcher's observations within the community. The interview questions revolved around three aspects of Meskhetian cultural identity, which were represented in each research question. These aspects were: how Meskhetian Turks define their own culture; how they define their connection to Turkey and Turks; and how they define Americans, American culture and their place within the American society. The first research question resulted in three themes: history, preservation of culture, and sense of community. The second research question revealed two themes: Meskhetian Turk's ties to Turkey, and the group's relationship with and perception of Turks in the area. The final research question provided two themes: the group's adaptation to United States, and interviewees' observations regarding the American culture. Exploring these themes, and examining the connection between these aspects provided a complex and intertwined web of connections, which explain Meskhetian Turkish cultural identity. Meskhetian Turks' cultural self-definition, relation with the Turkish community, and perceptions of American culture are all inter-connected, which supports and furthers a dialectic approach to cultural studies. The study also contributes to refugee adaptation literature by examining cultural identity influences on the group's adaptation in the United States and offering insight and suggestions for improving the adaptation process.
ContributorsBilge, Hatice Nurhayat (Author) / Broome, Benjamin J. (Thesis advisor) / Martinez, Jacqueline (Committee member) / Margolis, Eric (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2012
Description
Whitney Nicoson’s Honors thesis exhibition, Tripoli Shores, is a collection of photographs that stems from an initial interest in portraiture—a desire to observe and render the change of identity shown by the artist and her mother during a particularly difficult period in their lives. While experiencing paralleling hardships, the two spent time together living at her grandfather’s cottages along the St Lawrence River in Upstate NY. The traditional notion of portraiture gradually grew beyond the representation of self to the documentation of the space. This space was once the epitome of structure, stability, and strength. Over the years, neglect and disrepair caused an inevitable breakdown in the structure. Nicoson seeks to create a permanent documentation of a home that is changing. With an interest in how the photographs of space relates to the change seen in the artist and her mother, the exhibition pursues the idea of forming identity in a place that is also forming its own.
ContributorsNicoson, Whitney Rae (Author) / Jenkins, William (Thesis director) / Anand, Julie (Committee member) / Shipley, Rosalind (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / School of Art (Contributor)
Created2013-05
Description
Excavating Self was created between January and April 2023 and is comprised of two series and other additional works. It starts and ends with a set of self portraits that reflect on the experience before and after creating this body of work. The first series, On Sacrifice, draws on experiences from a previous relationship, the feelings surrounding them, and the emotional fallout of the breakup. The second series, Juntos, explores relationships with family, past and current loves, and the way these relationships shape understanding of identity. The remaining pieces focus on topics such as ancestry, gender expression, and sexuality. Other central themes include self discovery, preserving memory, and love in all of its multiple truths. All pieces were created using intaglio printmaking techniques with hand written text.
ContributorsSoza, Bronson (Author) / Hood, Mary (Thesis director) / Cabrera, Margarita (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / School of Public Affairs (Contributor) / School of International Letters and Cultures (Contributor) / School of Art (Contributor)
Created2023-05
Description
Art history, while vast in scope, is a male-dominated topic. Textbooks predominantly feature male artists, and generally when artists look to the “masters,” they look to men. Although the field is becoming more diverse every day, this discrepancy in what is taught to young artists can have a profound impact on how and why art is produced. As a young female artist who is focused on my own self-identity and developing a body of work, I look to other women in art, past and present, to orient myself in the context of art history. I am interested in how these women came to terms with their identity in a field that acknowledges them less than their male counterparts, and how their self-perception is reflected in their work. Researching other women in art—for example, how do these artists extrapolate from the world around them to create, and how does their work affect their own self-identity? —has gradually shifted the way I looked at myself. Witnessing other female artists be bold with self-portraiture or brave with their honesty through art has shaped how I view myself and how I want to create art. Through employing self-portraiture in my creative practice, this project aims to utilize my personal experiences and perspectives to contemplate the way I engage with my own identity.
ContributorsWelch, Rachel (Author) / Solis, Forrest (Thesis director) / Hogden, Heidi (Committee member) / School of Art (Contributor) / Department of Psychology (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2019-05
Description
A zombie wanders around towards an unknown destination and interacts with the world around her. All the while, the voice of the late Dr. Lauren Maldonado's essays plays overhead, completely unaware to the corpse's behavior. The essays, explorations of zombies' roles in media, are revealed to have been written by that zombie before she was turned. Dr. Maldonado's body eventually stumbles into her old self’s office. Here, she begins to eat the papers she finds on the desk.
The Zombie as the Undefinable Monster is a non-fiction analysis on the zombie metaphor in media paired with a fictional narrative. For each scene, there is a short analytical essay to match. In conjunction, the five scenes with the five essays explore the relationship between zombies and identity. Within the narrative, those five essays are written by the deceased character Dr. Lauren Maldonado. Her zombified body serves as the main character of the story.
Preceding the storyboards and the essays, there is an appendix written outside of the narrative containing two additional essays. The first is an artist statement detailing my creative and thinking process. The second is a written explanation of the zombie mechanics within the narrative.
ContributorsTorres, Anastasia (Author) / Schmidt, Peter (Thesis director) / Davis, Turner (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / School of Art (Contributor)
Created2022-05