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- Genre: Doctoral Dissertation
Description
This project examines C.L.R. James, V.S. Naipaul, and George Lamming's appropriation of the European Bildungsroman, a novel depicting the maturation of the hero prompted by his harmonious dialectical relationship with the social realm (Bildung). I contend that James, Naipaul, and Lamming use the Bildungsroman genre to critique colonialism's effects on its subjects, particularly its male subjects who attend colonial schools that present them with disconcerting curricula and gender ideologies that hinder their intellectual and social development. Disingenuously cloaked in paternalistic rhetoric promising the advancement of "uncivilized" peoples, colonialism, these novels show, actually impedes the development of its subjects. Central to these writers' critiques is the use of houses, space, and land. Although place functions differently in Minty Alley, A House for Mr. Biswas, and In the Castle of My Skin, the novels under consideration here, the corresponding relationship between a mature, autonomous self and a home of one's own is made evident in each. Tragically, the men in these novels are never able to find communities in which they cease to feel out of place, nor are they ever able to find secure domestic spaces. Because the discourse of home so closely parallels the discourse of Bildung, I contend that the protagonists' inability to find stable housing suggests the inaccessibility of Bildung in a colonized space. Further, I assert that this literal homelessness is symbolic of the educated male's cultural exile; he is unable to find a location where he can live in dialectical harmony with any community, which is the ideal aim of Bildung. Leaving the Caribbean proves to be the colonized male's only strategy for pursuing Bildung; thus, these novels suggest that while Bildung is impossible in the Caribbean, it is not impossible for the Caribbean subject.
ContributorsPate, Leah (Author) / Castle, Gregory (Thesis advisor) / Codell, Julie (Committee member) / Bivona, Dan (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2012
Description
This dissertation project addresses one of the most critical problems in the study of religion: how do scriptures acquire significance in religious communities in ways that go beyond the meaning of their words? Based on data collected during ethnographic work in Maharashtra, India, in 2011 and 2012, I analyze the complex relationship between a religious text and its readers with reference to ritual reading of the Gurucaritra, a Marathi scripture written in the sixteenth century. I argue that readers of the Gurucaritra create a self-actualized modern religiosity both by interpreting the content of the text and by negotiating the rules of praxis surrounding their reading activity.
In particular, this dissertation analyzes the ways in which members of the Dattatreya tradition in urban Maharashatra ritualize their tradition's central text-- the Gurucaritra--in terms of everyday issues and concerns of the present. Taking inspiration from reader-response criticism, I focus on the pArAyaN; (reading the entire text) of the Gurucaritra, the central scripture of the Dattatreya tradition, in the context of its contemporary readings in Maharashtra. In the process of reading the Gurucaritra, readers become modern by making a conscious selection from their tradition. In the process of approaching their tradition through the text, what they achieve is a sense of continuity and a faith that, if they have the support of the guru, nothing can go wrong. In the process of choosing elements from their tradition, they ultimately achieve a sense of being modern individuals who work out rules of religiosity for themselves.
This dissertation contributes to the study of scriptures in two major ways: first, by bringing forth how religious communities engage with scriptures for reasons other than their comprehension; second, by showing how scriptures can play a crucial role in religious communities in the context of addressing concerns of their present. Thus, this research contributes to the fields of scripture studies, Hinduism, and literary criticism.
In particular, this dissertation analyzes the ways in which members of the Dattatreya tradition in urban Maharashatra ritualize their tradition's central text-- the Gurucaritra--in terms of everyday issues and concerns of the present. Taking inspiration from reader-response criticism, I focus on the pArAyaN; (reading the entire text) of the Gurucaritra, the central scripture of the Dattatreya tradition, in the context of its contemporary readings in Maharashtra. In the process of reading the Gurucaritra, readers become modern by making a conscious selection from their tradition. In the process of approaching their tradition through the text, what they achieve is a sense of continuity and a faith that, if they have the support of the guru, nothing can go wrong. In the process of choosing elements from their tradition, they ultimately achieve a sense of being modern individuals who work out rules of religiosity for themselves.
This dissertation contributes to the study of scriptures in two major ways: first, by bringing forth how religious communities engage with scriptures for reasons other than their comprehension; second, by showing how scriptures can play a crucial role in religious communities in the context of addressing concerns of their present. Thus, this research contributes to the fields of scripture studies, Hinduism, and literary criticism.
ContributorsYeolekar, Mugdha (Author) / Feldhaus, Anne (Thesis advisor) / Henn, Alexander (Committee member) / Codell, Julie (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2014
Description
Multi-media votive sculpture, made from wax, papier-mâché, wood, terra cotta and textiles, is a long-neglected subject of study in early modern Italian art history. This dissertation focuses on an unparalleled seventeenth-century manuscript, the Libro dei miracoli, which reproduces in watercolor a number of the lost multi-media votive statues that once populated the church of S. Maria della Quercia in Viterbo. The names of votaries, along with a description of their miracles, accompany the watercolors and present an invaluable source of information that allows for this first comprehensive study of votary identity. Abundant archival material maintained by S. Maria della Quercia, situated within larger historical events and cultural trends, informs this dissertation which explores the democratic nature behind votive statuary effigies. The offerings granted male and female members of most socio-economic classes in early modern Italy the extraordinary opportunity to act as patrons of art. Moreover, the sculptures, and watercolors after them, were individualized representations of votaries that can be considered a form of portraiture available to rich and poor alike.
ContributorsAdams, Jennifer (Author) / Codell, Julie (Thesis advisor) / Wolfthal, Diane (Thesis advisor) / Vitullo, Juliann (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2012
Description
By focusing on photojournalists for LIFE and Ladies’ Home Journal, I investigate mental health care in state institutions located in America during the Great Depression and World War II immediately prior to the great deinstitutionalization that began in the 1950s. Relying upon scholars of medical humanities, social theory, disability studies, feminist studies, the history of psychiatry, and the history of art, I consider the iconography used to represent mental illness in photography during the first half of the twentieth century to explore the ways mentally ill individuals were presented as disordered and lacking humanity. I explore the didactic nature of both photography and film, emphasizing how the artists and directors imbued their mediums with medical credibility and authority. The photographs of Alfred Eisenstaedt, Jerry Cooke, and Esther Bubley from the 1930-40s reveal the state of mental health care in America during the Great Depression and World War II. I will investigate the stereotypes seen in representations of mental illness in photographs and how these depictions shaped and were in dialogue with popular films like Spellbound (1945), The Snake Pit (1948), The Three Faces of Eve (1957), and Marnie (1964). As a point of contrast to the images and films representing mental illness, I examine depictions of healthy people in mental health clinics during this time. Finally, I offer four examples of public, contemporary art, including House for a Gordian Knot (2013), Bloom (2013), 1000 Shadows (2013), and Faces of Mental Health Recovery (2013), that explore mental illness to illustrate the enduring legacy of the iconography and stereotypes represented in the photography and films explored in the first half of this dissertation.
ContributorsTaggart, Vriean Diether (Author) / Fahlman, Betsy (Thesis advisor) / Codell, Julie (Committee member) / Lussier, Mark (Committee member) / Moore, Sarah (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2019
Description
ABSTRACT
Art historians typically consider Chinese porcelain a decorative art, resulting in scholars spending little time analyzing it as a fine art form. One area that is certainly neglected is porcelain produced during the late 19th and early 20th century during the late Qing dynasty (1644–1911) into the early Republic period (1912–1949). As the Qing dynasty weakened and ultimately fell in 1911, there was a general decline in the quantity of porcelain produced in China. Due to this circumstance, porcelain of this era has not received the detailed analysis, characterization of styles, comprehension of themes, and understanding of patronage evident in other periods of Chinese porcelain production. Ultimately, limited research has been conducted to establish the styles associated with late dynastic porcelain into the early Republic’s establishment.
This dissertation utilizes a new perspective that considers the patronage of the Empress Dowager Cixi (1835-1908) as a high point of late dynastic porcelain. Concrete documentation establishes that motifs were appropriated from Cixi’s painting, suggesting a direct connection between schools of painting and the imagery selected for porcelain during her reign. The porcelain Cixi influenced directly guided the porcelain produced during the Hongxian era (1915-1916), making Cixi’s patronage the key turning point from dynastic porcelain to early Republic porcelain. Utilizing predominately British collections, this study identifies the styles, symbols, and themes associated with porcelain of the 19th and 20th century, elevating late dynastic and early Republic wares to the status of fine art.
Art historians typically consider Chinese porcelain a decorative art, resulting in scholars spending little time analyzing it as a fine art form. One area that is certainly neglected is porcelain produced during the late 19th and early 20th century during the late Qing dynasty (1644–1911) into the early Republic period (1912–1949). As the Qing dynasty weakened and ultimately fell in 1911, there was a general decline in the quantity of porcelain produced in China. Due to this circumstance, porcelain of this era has not received the detailed analysis, characterization of styles, comprehension of themes, and understanding of patronage evident in other periods of Chinese porcelain production. Ultimately, limited research has been conducted to establish the styles associated with late dynastic porcelain into the early Republic’s establishment.
This dissertation utilizes a new perspective that considers the patronage of the Empress Dowager Cixi (1835-1908) as a high point of late dynastic porcelain. Concrete documentation establishes that motifs were appropriated from Cixi’s painting, suggesting a direct connection between schools of painting and the imagery selected for porcelain during her reign. The porcelain Cixi influenced directly guided the porcelain produced during the Hongxian era (1915-1916), making Cixi’s patronage the key turning point from dynastic porcelain to early Republic porcelain. Utilizing predominately British collections, this study identifies the styles, symbols, and themes associated with porcelain of the 19th and 20th century, elevating late dynastic and early Republic wares to the status of fine art.
ContributorsGreene, Carolyn Ann (Author) / Brown, Claudia (Thesis advisor) / Baker, Janet (Committee member) / Codell, Julie (Committee member) / Fahlman, Betsy (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2019
Description
Situated within seminal debates on the questions of liberation and justice viewed from the postcolonial context, this dissertation evaluates freedom narratives from both sides of the colonial divide during the period of high imperialism. Creating a transnational grouping of three diverse historical figures, E. M. Forster, M. K. Gandhi, and James Joyce, I argue for similarities in these writers’ narrative construction of “freedom” against colonial modernity. I argue that despite these writers’ widely disparate historical and cultural determinations, which uniquely particularize each of their freedom formulas as well as freedom “ideals” – the ideal of culture for Forster, renunciation for Gandhi and aesthetic apprehension for Joyce, these writers conceive of a commensurate/globally related form of “freedom” as postcoloniality and demonstrate cosmopolitan ambition. I also argue that the global form of postcoloniality they each practice can only be articulated through a close attention to each of their specific and local difference.
The key contribution of the dissertation is to establish a new significance of the notion of fetishism for postcolonial studies, from both historical and theoretical perspectives. From a background that emphasizes the primacy of the concept of fetishism in its historical evolution within colonizing narratives of various Western discourses, especially fetish’s constitutive role in Enlightenment philosophy’s othering narrative of “primitive” natives, the work foregrounds a novel theoretical and narrative insight that the fetish demonstrates a unique potential to articulate/embody freedom as post-coloniality. Through a detailed critical analysis of each freedom narrative, I demonstrate how the clashes of particular contradictory cultural ideologies, in fact, determine each freedom narrative and how these contradictions are projected onto and galvanized by a fetish object(s). The work extends the ideas of Sigmund Freud, William Pietz, Homi Bhabha, Anne McClintock and Jacques Derrida on fetishism. Employing the framework of fetishism it brings into view similarities among the said three writers’ definition and practice of freedom. The work weighs in on critical debates between Marxist and Post-structural camps in postcolonial studies and proposes a new form of cosmopolitanism.
The key contribution of the dissertation is to establish a new significance of the notion of fetishism for postcolonial studies, from both historical and theoretical perspectives. From a background that emphasizes the primacy of the concept of fetishism in its historical evolution within colonizing narratives of various Western discourses, especially fetish’s constitutive role in Enlightenment philosophy’s othering narrative of “primitive” natives, the work foregrounds a novel theoretical and narrative insight that the fetish demonstrates a unique potential to articulate/embody freedom as post-coloniality. Through a detailed critical analysis of each freedom narrative, I demonstrate how the clashes of particular contradictory cultural ideologies, in fact, determine each freedom narrative and how these contradictions are projected onto and galvanized by a fetish object(s). The work extends the ideas of Sigmund Freud, William Pietz, Homi Bhabha, Anne McClintock and Jacques Derrida on fetishism. Employing the framework of fetishism it brings into view similarities among the said three writers’ definition and practice of freedom. The work weighs in on critical debates between Marxist and Post-structural camps in postcolonial studies and proposes a new form of cosmopolitanism.
ContributorsMehta, Bina P (Author) / Bivona, Daniel (Thesis advisor) / Codell, Julie (Committee member) / Lussier, Mark (Committee member) / Mallot, Jr., Jack (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2017
Description
After the opening of Japan in the mid-1800s many foreigners flocked to the
nation. San Franciscan Helen Hyde (1868-1919) joined the throng in 1899. Unlike many
of her predecessors, however, she went as a single woman and was so taken with Japan
she made it her home over the span of fourteen years. While a number of cursory studies
have been written on Helen Hyde and her work, a wide range of questions have been left
unanswered. Issues regarding her specific training, her printmaking techniques and the
marketing of her art have been touched on, but never delved into. This dissertation will
explore those issues. Helen Hyde's success as a printmaker stemmed from her intense
artistic training, experimental techniques, artistic and social connections and diligence in
self-promotion and marketing as well as a Western audience hungry for "Old Japan," and
its imagined quaintness. Hyde's choice to live and work in Japan gave her access to
models and firsthand subject matter which helped her audience feel like they were getting
a slice of Japan, translated for them by a Western artist. This dissertation provides an in
depth bibliography including hundreds of primary newspaper articles about Hyde who
was lauded for her unique style. It also expands and corrects the listing of her printed
works and examines the working style of an American working in a Japanese system with
Japanese subjects for a primarily American audience. It also provides a listing of known
exhibitions of Hyde's works and a listing of stamps and markings she used on her prints.
nation. San Franciscan Helen Hyde (1868-1919) joined the throng in 1899. Unlike many
of her predecessors, however, she went as a single woman and was so taken with Japan
she made it her home over the span of fourteen years. While a number of cursory studies
have been written on Helen Hyde and her work, a wide range of questions have been left
unanswered. Issues regarding her specific training, her printmaking techniques and the
marketing of her art have been touched on, but never delved into. This dissertation will
explore those issues. Helen Hyde's success as a printmaker stemmed from her intense
artistic training, experimental techniques, artistic and social connections and diligence in
self-promotion and marketing as well as a Western audience hungry for "Old Japan," and
its imagined quaintness. Hyde's choice to live and work in Japan gave her access to
models and firsthand subject matter which helped her audience feel like they were getting
a slice of Japan, translated for them by a Western artist. This dissertation provides an in
depth bibliography including hundreds of primary newspaper articles about Hyde who
was lauded for her unique style. It also expands and corrects the listing of her printed
works and examines the working style of an American working in a Japanese system with
Japanese subjects for a primarily American audience. It also provides a listing of known
exhibitions of Hyde's works and a listing of stamps and markings she used on her prints.
ContributorsMcMurtrey, Shiloh (Author) / Brown, Claudia (Thesis advisor) / Baker, Janet (Committee member) / Codell, Julie (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2016
Description
This dissertation will examine particular aspects of Yuan and Qing dynasty Chinese art historiography and argue that Chinese artistic creation is built on a transreligious and transethnic aesthetic, rather than an aesthetic centered on a single unitary culture. My project has two primary goals. The first is to propose that transreligious and transethnic factors fundamentally altered Chinese aesthetics, and discuss specifically what those changes were. The second goal of this dissertation is to evaluate the importance of interdisciplinary research approaches — including literature, ceremonial traditions, religious scriptures, and multiethnic material culture — to the study of art history, and specifically to non-Han Chinese art historiography. By studying four artists of different ethnic backgrounds — Uyghur (Gao Kegong, 1248–1310), Nepali (Anige, 1245–1306), Manchu (Manggūri, 1672–1736) and Mongol (Fashishan, 1753–1813) — this dissertation intends to answer several questions: how did these artists’ native cultural and religious aesthetics influence their artworks? Might further examination of the transethnic and transreligious aspects of later Imperial artistic production bring new focus to previously unnoticed aspects of Chinese art? And, on the individual level, what new insights can be uncovered when art historians consider the works of a non-Han Chinese artist from these transethnic and transreligious perspectives? The materials used for this research include a close visual study of artworks from the Rubin Museum of Art, the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
ContributorsAIERKEN, YIPAER (Author) / Brown, Claudia (Thesis advisor, Committee member) / Berger, Patricia (Committee member) / Bokenkamp, Stephen (Committee member) / Codell, Julie (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2023
Description
This dissertation is the first detailed and extensive study dedicated to the life and art of the master artist and scholar-official Chen Rong (active 13th century), and offers an expanded analysis of his most famous work, the Nine Dragons scroll (1244). It provides a reconstruction of Chen Rong's biography, character and political career, and discusses his significance and impact in the study of Chinese painting during the late Southern Song dynasty (1127-1279) and beyond, by highlighting the reception and interpretation of the Nine Dragons scroll in the past and in modern times. This is achieved by addressing writings such as eulogies, poems and commentary about Chen Rong by his contemporaries and later biographers, and also analysis of recent works by contemporary Chinese artists that reinterpret Chen Rong's Nine Dragons motif directly. In addition to offering an expanded reading and interpretation of Chen Rong's inscriptions on the Nine Dragons scroll and inscriptions by subsequent viewers of the scroll, this study sheds light on the artistic context, significance, and historical development of dragons and dragon painting in China. This dissertation also offers the first full English transcription and translation of Emperor Qianlong's inscription on the Nine Dragons scroll, and that of his eight officials. Furthermore, this dissertation includes two detailed appendices; one is a detailed appendix of all of Chen Rong's paintings documented to exist today, and the second is a list of paintings attributed to Chen Rong that have been mentioned in historical documents that no longer appear extant. This interdisciplinary study provides insight into the processes that influence how an artist's work is transformed beyond his time to that of legendary status. This clarification of Chen Rong's biography and artistic activity, particularly with respect to his most famous work the Nine Dragons scroll, contributes to modern scholarship by providing an expanded understanding of Chen Rong's life and art, which in turn, adjusts prevailing perceptions of his life and work.
ContributorsChao, Jacqueline (Author) / Brown, Claudia (Thesis advisor) / Codell, Julie (Committee member) / Baker, Janet (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2012