IDSVA Dissertations are archived as electronic documents at the Maine State Library website. Click on the title of the dissertation (when available) to download the pdf.
Awarded to one graduate each year, The Ted Coons Dissertation Prize was established in 2015 to acknowledge outstanding IDSVA dissertations. It was made possible thanks to a generous donation by Dr. Ted Coons, Professor of Psychology, Cognition & Perception at the Center for Neural Science at NYU. Ted Coons is a pioneer in the field of neuroscience and a major contributor to early studies in neuroaesthetics.
The technological advancements of recent history have undeniably led to greater comfort in some parts of the world. These technological advancements stem from a pursuit of mastery in scientific endeavors. At their limit, however, these advancements also serve to isolate human beings from one another and from the world they occupy leading to an increase in mental health issues and a lack of empathy. This project addresses this problem by asking, “What if human beings turned toward the pursuit of an aesthetic type of mastery alongside a scientific one?” and “What would comprise the practice of such mastery?” I will argue that the artistic study of the phenomenological world of appearances is the simultaneous practice of empathy which harbors a spiritual connectivity between subject and object. Using Georges Bataille’s notion that the subject is indistinguishable from the object at the limits of the object’s study, Friedrich Nietzsche’s consideration of amor fati, and Soren Kierkegaard’s consideration of sacrifice, Love, and union with God, I will paint a picture of an aesthetic mastery that is grounded upon sincerity, detached-empathy, and patience.
The study of Latinx graphic novels is a form of continual resistance is an area of popular culture that, for a long time, evaded proper examination and analysis due to the lack of an effective philosophical approach in addressing the phenomenological complexity of shapeshifting and marginalized identities. Presently, however, scholars and contemporary Latinx artists-writers have actively reimagined the field of graphic novels and the figure of the classic superhero as an infallible figure and disrupted the hegemonic principles that have constrained storytelling within a heteronormative structure. The emergence of contemporary artworks has aided in shattering the hegemonic representation of the classic superhero, as well, focused renewed interest in the relevance of representing superheroes as divergent forms and their impact on popular culture, particularly in the way that Latinx, LGBTQ+ and BIPOC (black, indigenous, people of color) voices are represented and amplified within the unfolding process of alternative storytelling.
Furthermore, this analysis explores how artists’ reiterations of classic comic book characters in alternative visual-verbal forms expose their vulnerabilities that move them beyond the realm of patriotic symbols of propaganda. This dissertation therefore examines the disruption of mainstream interpretation of the field of comics and their insertion into popular culture as forms of continual resistance that decenter authoritative narratives and reflect expressions of desire and sexualities that are still being invented. Latinx graphic novels create a space that allows the reader-viewer to imagine and invent possible futures that are not tethered to identitarianism or sameness in embracing different cultural perspectives without labels. Through the work of contemporary Latinx artists borrowing from the imagery of early comic characters, a radical, rhizomatic, reinvention of classic superheroes emerges to disrupt, expose, and reimagine one’s views of what a superhero represents in mainstream culture while expanding the field of Latinx futurism that reveals while not concealing other marginalized voices.
The past decade has witnessed a marked increase of institutional interest in Black art production, particularly from women as they visualize and verbalize a multi-dimensional Black experience. Positioning at the intersection of historical race and gender subjugation in Europe and America uniquely situates women to maintain a gaze turned toward the self in which to create representations that conceptually, materially, and aesthetically personifies the complexities of Blackness. I examine representations of Black women created by Black women for the past century, that with the feminist traditions of care and regard, employ the use of the vernacular forms of African mythology, diasporic folklore, and storytelling. The aim of this study is to meet the profusion of institutional exhibitions and public interest in the creative labors of Black women with structure building in the form of an academic and critical framework that will make the moment substantive and sustaining. Through a methodology of case studies that presents the work and voice of an individual artist, I examine creative production across mediums that works to shape a collective genealogical trajectory. Connections among artists reveal how vernacular forms and feminist traditions are woven throughout the creative spaces of fiction, poetry, critical theory, and visual representations, and are active components in making whole the fragmented narratives that rise from interpretations of materials contained in the archive; thus expanding the boundaries that define a unique sense of Black time and space.
Delving into the intersection of philosophy and quantum mechanics, in this dissertation I explore the dynamic journey of information’s transition from quantum potential to contextualized artistic expression, as it runs the risk of being challenged-forth by information technologies. I will explore contemporary theories of consciousness to examine the role of sentient observers on the articulation of spacetime, blurring the lines between human consciousness and artificial intelligence. Accordingly, the central inquiry of this study is to discern the role and identity of the observer: Who or what counts as an observer? How does this observer, as a principal architect of information in spacetime, influence creative aspects of existence, reshaping our experience of being in the world? Positing the observer as an active sentient agent within spacetime – an ‘information generator’ par excellence – I argue that the role of the observer transcends mere observation, engaging in a continuous strife against chance to create narratives of being by actively participating in the materialization of streams of information.
Central to this discourse is the concept of chance aesthetics, a term I have coined to encapsulate the aesthetics of serendipity and indeterminacy inherent to human experience. This concept emphasizes the aesthetic significance of the observer’s embrace of chance and serendipity in artistic endeavors. Consequently, I make a corollary argument that chance is not an ontological backdrop but a pivotal element of reality, playing a crucial role in both the creation and interpretation of art. With this in mind, using examples from photography the dissertation not only explores the role of the human observer, but expands the definition of an observer to include artificial intelligence, thereby opening new philosophical inquiries into the nature of consciousness, agency, and the subjective experience of existence.
This dissertation introduces a new conceptual and theoretical framework called Black Artistic Thought, which represents the creative thought process behind works of art originating from Black women artists and thinkers. Specifically, this work focuses on how Black women artists and thinkers express the spiritual as an art form. As Black women carve out spaces for themselves within the philosophical canon, historically dominated by white males, this work aims to counter these exclusionary practices by building bridges between philosophical inquiry and their artistic expressions. The goal is to foster new philosophical pursuits in the area of cultural production, particularly concerning the spiritual.
Black Artistic Thought contributes to the broader dialogue that emphasizes how using embodied knowledge, along with intellectual knowledge, acts as a performative tool that can be used to interpret the language of the spiritual. Furthermore, this work demonstrates how the framework of Black Artistic Thought can be used as a new pedagogical approach to implement ideas of the spiritual in contemporary thought, employing a methodology known as spirit-literacy. Spirit-literacy emerges from David Driskell’s notion of reaching through the spiritual element through the presence of symbolic form to connect us to the human spirit. Advocating for a transformative pedagogical approach applicable in academia and daily life, capable of reshaping our thinking in the wake of decolonizing the curriculum, this work challenges existing paradigms and fosters a more inclusive understanding of the spiritual in contemporary thought.
Using Maya Angelou’s poem “Phenomenal Woman,” as a foundational definition to characterize Black women artists and thinkers, including bell hooks, Ofosuwa Abiola, Yvonne Daniel, Lauryn Hill, Harmonia Rosales, Helina Metaferia, Ebony Wildcat Brown, Jen White- Johnson, and others, this work illustrates how these Black women artists and thinkers have become ‘self-empowered subjects’ who illuminate Black Artistic Thought and the art of freedom.
This dissertation argues that ceramic philosophy has the capacity to expand the curriculum of ceramics and its revolution. Furthermore, ceramics understood as a mode of philosophy and philosophy understood as a mode of ceramics, revolutionizes the way we think about clay, fire, and being. Grounded in the poetic ecology theory of material imagination of Gaston Bachelard, particularly his research on the imagination of matter, and reverie of fires, the project examines ceramics as a nexus of elemental thinking from the inside out. The project explores the practices of several modern ceramists, namely: Charles Binns, Bernard Leach, M.C. Richards, Lucio Fontana, and Peter Voulkos. Beginning with the question of ceramics situated between 1910- 1952 and continuing into Schelling’s notion of the mythological translated into clay myths, the theoretical arc follows Bachelard’s poetics of fire into a discourse that situates ceramics, ontologically and geologically, within the problem of a restoration ecology of material imagination. Engaging Leach’s notion of knowing goodclay and goodfire as a return to ceramics supports a fireclay philosophy grounded in materiality, I situate ceramic practice within John Sallis’s notion of the elemental gathering. Bachelard’s notion of reverie as a return to the awakening of material imagination supports a ceramic philosophy grounded in elemental thinking. The project concludes with an introduction to Kant and Schelling’s force of fire as a call to restoration ecology, a new curriculum of ceramic praxis grounded within mythological and geological forces. This final step situates the ‘ceramic turn’ as an important milestone in the history of philosophy, aesthetics, and the arts. Thus, just as ceramics once formally entered the canon of fine art, ceramic philosophy suggests a new language and opportunity, a radical alteration in how one thinks with clay and with fire, a mode of philosophy—one to which we all belong.
This dissertation will explore issues of inclusivity and underlying ethical questions that surround mainstream and independent creator-owned comic book characters in order to better understand what digital comic books mean and how they function in society. Mainstream comics, which developed in the early twentieth century and originated the idea of the female comic book superhero character, portray strong enduring females in metaphorical artistic narratives. Nonetheless, these female character concepts are today enhanced and expanded upon by creator-owned digital comics and multimedia art that provide gender and sexuality multiplicity, intersectional representations, and open-ended narratives. Although there is extensive scholarship on comic books in general, what is missing is an ethical exploration of the creator-owned digital comics portrayal of gender and sexuality of characters as they move into traditional art spaces and are seen through the lens of artistic free expression. Independent, creator-owned digital comics, such as Monstress, SAGA, and Moonstruck, provide more diverse representations of intersectionality, identity, and non-conforming narratives than mainstream comic books. I argue that the development of creator-owned comics presented as a new digital medium and in the realm of high art, opens the conversation to ponder broader cultural questions surrounding identity, performativity, and dissensus. I will form my argument by intertextualizing the sexuality and gender feminist theories of performativity of Judith Butler, the polyphonic carnival theories of Mikhail Bakhtin, and political dissensus theory of Jacques Rancière. Using contemporary works of art from Ian Cheng (Life After BOB and Bad Corgi), Alison Bechdel, (Fun Home, Are You My Mother, and Fun Home the musical), Ed Atkins (Old Food, and Corpsing), and Kerry James Marshall (Rythm Mastr), this study will contribute to a more thorough understanding of digital comic aesthetics and multi-media character representations as artistic open-ended expressions.
The ontological nature of “play” has been overlooked throughout our philosophical tradition. Too often play is lived out in human activity such as games and sports, but does not fully encapsulate the ontological nature of the topic, typically posing play in the context of competition with a winner and a loser or as an alternative to serious endeavors such as work. This project aims to move beyond and through these predetermined outcomes and various stances to reveal a valuable encounter within the essence of play and the interaction of players. Being in Play traces the history of how play as an aesthetic construct has been defined and documents influential thinkers, presenting carefully the tensions found within the paradigm of play itself. This project prioritizes the space of play as found in Martin Heidegger’s Spielraum. In this play-space, the ontological inquiry describes what I term “the playful event.” Relying on thinkers such as Hans-Georg Gadamer, Gianni Vattimo, Reiner Schürmann, Emmanuel Levinas, and Hannah Arendt, I employ an ontological approach to the event to reveal a movement that weakens a logocentric focus. The intersubjective aspects of play bring the distinctiveness of the Other to the surface. The intimacy of the playful event transforms the competitive and dominating approach of play to one that has the freedom to form a dialogue. Through themes such as winning and losing, anarchy, hospitality, socio-economics, asymmetrical relationships, and community, I incorporate artworks as events and praxis to disclose otherness as a possibility of emancipation.
This project argues that Black/ness embodies a uniqueness that is communicated through its poetic and aesthetic expression. This uniqueness is posited here as the Black Sublime. It addresses the conditionality of Black/ness in a state of constant historical and ongoing oppression this thesis calls Black State. This is the conditionality of DuBois’s Veil, or Glissant’s matrix, which screams for Opacity. Christina Sharpe aligns this historical context in her work, In the Wake: On Blackness and Being with what she calls, “Wake Work”. The process of Wake Work moves through DuBois’s Veil, and Glissant’s aquatic reality, as a baptism, a violent submersion into nothingness that becomes a rebirth into thinglyness.
Exploring the realms of Black/ness as Black Sublime read with and against/despite the Kantian Sublime, is to understand more fully the connections between Black/ness and the possibilities of representation, this is to say, the As If. This as if, which is an abstraction, allows for the construction of race, which challenges Black/ness and its pursuit of Being, but is also a chaotic and poetic realm which ironically allows for possibilities outside of the fixed Black State of impossibility.
We will argue how its beingness or its ontology is disclosed through aesthetics and poetics, acting not only as a disruption to Western standards of language and the binding narrative of Black/ness as contrary to the “Reasoning” human, but also opens to something transformative and beyond it. This project explores the As Is of Black/ness and its relation to spirit, soul, abjection, and the sublime. We will show how the gesture of a Black Sublime allows for a generative liberational praxis that motivates and exists beyond the performativity of resistance and the metaphor of freedom. It is the possibility of the impossible.
This project explores the relationship between wonder and trauma within the realms of philosophy, art, and human existence. The inquiry begins with the etymological and mythological kinship between the ancient Greek words for wonder (thauma) and trauma (trauma). It reveals a reciprocal correspondence that goes beyond linguistic and symbolic affinities to the origins of basic thinking. The central thesis is that wonder and trauma are the same—where the ‘same’ means opposing, nonidentical aspects—in the experience of thaumazein. This primordial, disclosive wonder signifies a disposition, attunement, pathos, or mood. Thaumazein is also a philosophic wonder because it signifies the experience, in thought, said to be the beginning, archē, of philosophy and the one true pathos of the philosopher. Although wonder is named as the beginning of philosophy by the pre-Platonics, its meaning changes over time through its usage by Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, and modern scientists. A sub-thesis of this dissertation is that while metaphysics, modern science, and logical thinking still claims to be able to wonder as the ancient Greeks did, wonder’s meaning has been radically flattened and forgotten. The history of metaphysics is the history of its repression of the trauma inherent to all life and human existence. This inquiry expands on Heidegger’s claim that the history of metaphysics is the forgetting of Being by investigating how the process of forgetting is intimately related to the neurotic repression of the traumatic in the experience of wonder. This project explores possibilities for the recovery and cultivation of this forgotten attunement, in which wonder and trauma are one. To that end, the medium of photography in general and the photographic work and life of Garry Winogrand in particular offer real-world examples of how the wonder and trauma in thaumazein can inform the creative process and its results in today’s world.