Hood College Arts and Humanities
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Item Creepy-Cute Aesthetic in “Into the Bittersweet Wood”(2025-05-28) Boyer, Anne Kelly; Natalia Kormulek; Rebekah Bogard; Jenny Reed; Hood College Arts and Humanities; CeramicsThe aesthetics of “cute,” “creepy,” and “creepy-cute” are identified and researched. The influence of contemporary ceramic artists- painters, digital artists, sculptors, and historical and cultural art forms are discussed. The technical process of using clay as a foundation with mixed media elements is analyzed to support the idea that cute, creepy, and creepy-cute have a role in creating art. The surface treatments and mixed media applied to sculptures in the exhibition impact the perceived meaning of cute and creepy.Item Race, Space, and American Identity in the 20th and 21st Centuries(2025-04-29) Dawes, Eli; Huard, Mallory; Powell, Barbara; Verzosa, Noel; Hood College Arts and Humanities; HumanitiesThis portfolio project synthesizes three final papers in the Humanities Masters program that share themes of race, space, and American Identity, arguing that a true and inclusive understanding of the nation requires the recognition of African American identity as centreal to its formation. Through critical analyses of Jacob Lawrence's Migration Series, James Baldwin's existential thought, and the spatial history of Baltimore, the project demonstrates how African American cultural production and lived experience contest dominant national narratives. Drawing on historiography, spatial theory, literary analysis, and exploration of narrative authority, the thesis asserts that American identity remains a fundamentally contested and imagined construct--one that must reckon with its exclusions to become whole.Item Surrealism and the Reimagining of the Female Image(2025-05-04) Stang, Laura; Noel Verzosa, Ph.D., Thesis Advisor; Kimberly Morse-Jones, Ph.D., Committee Member; Didier Course, Ph.D., Committee Member; Hood College Arts and Humanities; HumanitiesFocusing on the female form and the concept of identity construction and its fluidity as reflected in works of surrealist art, this paper analyzes visual images, including painting, works of collage, sculpture and photography. As the surrealist movement migrated and transformed over the past one hundred years, so too has the image and meaning of the female form. This focus on the female image and the role of women in surrealism deals with notions of identity and gender norms, reframing the concept of the “ideal” woman, ideas of embodiment/disembodiment, existential tensions, and the various ways these concepts are portrayed. This paper touches on the theoretical Freudian influences of surrealism, investigates the ways artists over time have redefined the ideological grounds for the movement, and how it inspired interrelated transcultural exchanges. By looking at the influence and legacy of surrealism from a global scope, not confined to a time period, and not confined to those artists who attempted to lay claim to the label, its definition, and its membership, my research starts with and then moves away from a historically hegemonic Paris-centered viewpoint—instead as something dynamic and dislocated. The method of my research is influenced by Mark Miller Graham’s critique of art historical discourses in terms of canonicity, chronology, closure, and subjectivity, leading me to look at surrealism beyond traditional narratives and to apply that method to questions about the representation of the female body in surrealist art.Item THE MOTHER-WHORE DICHOTOMY IN WOMEN’S REPRESENTATION(2025-04) Ocharan, Helena Centeno; Hoffman, Karen; Hood College Arts and Humanities; Hood College Humanities, M.A.This portfolio examines the problematic presence and impact of the Mother–Whore dichotomy in the understanding and the representation of women across literature, philosophy, and visual art. It illustrates the persistent dissonance between the nurturing and passive roles that have been traditionally expected of women and the ways their bodies have been imagined and represented—often sexualized, objectified, and dehumanized. Through the flirtatious, ornamental depictions of women in Rococo art, the emotional and existential fragmentation of the self in Simone de Beauvoir’s "The Woman Destroyed," and a critical reflection on contemporary feminist perspectives of visual representations of the female body, this portfolio exemplifies the double-standards that society puts on women and their bodies—which ultimately undermines the complexity of their lived experience and strips them of their subjectivity.Item Unspoken Emotions(NA, 2025-04-28) Nations, Christina; Kormeluk, Natalia; Sherman, Tim; Kern, Bonnie; Hood College Art and Archeology; Hood College Master of Fine Arts CeramicsIn this thesis, the artist examines emotion in the context of art history, art creation, and personal experience. The wood-fired sculpture created for this body of work explores the ability to express emotions, utilizing the human female torso as a blank canvas. The choice of clay body, alteration of the form, firing process, and surface aesthetic treatments confront the emotions of love, grief, maternal joy, pain, the process of aging, emptiness, resilience, and rage. The creative process in each work is a metaphor for the unspoken emotions.Item Poetry, Protest, and Politics: The Building Blocks of Social Justice(2025-04-28) Story, Chelsea; Cozart, Daniel; Hood College History; Hood College Arts and HumanitiesThe following text is an examination of the pursuit of social and racial justice with emphasis on why such work is crucial for all people. Three analysis papers and a formal introduction project and amplify the voices of Black Americans and their allies at this critical period in United States history. Each paper examines one of three valuable and varied mediums used to create change: protest, poetry, and politics. The first paper zooms in on the poetic prose of Jason Reynolds’ novel "Long Way Down," written as a fictional but realistic and intimate portrait of how one Black American teenager wrestles with what justice on the street looks like following his brother’s murder and what it might look like should he break the cycle of relying on the rules of revenge he learned in his neighborhood. Reynolds’ work provides crucial context for the daily lives of many young Black men in America and the importance of examining how we define justice. The second paper examines how the outrage and heartache following George Floyd’s murder in 2020 was channeled into visual art as a form of protest and continues to impact interpretation and participation in current and historical events.The final paper adopts a wider lens again to examine the United States Congress where Jasmine Crockett is the representative for her district in Texas. Her voice, which has gone viral many times since her work in the House began, serves to emphasize how the past and present are colliding at this moment in United States politics and must be examined and disrupted to dismantle the dangerous resurgence of white supremacy in government and establish true justice in America.Item The Final Reef(NA, 2025-04-28) Anthony, Eden; Bachman, Craig; Muldowney, Jacob; Kormeluk, Natalia; Morse-Jones, Kimberly; Hood College Art and Archeology; Hood College Master of Fine Arts CeramicsThis thesis and exhibition are a tribute to the fragility and beauty of coral and to raise awareness of the impact reefs have on human life and marine ecosystems. The ceramic installation “The Final Reef” translates scientific research on living coral, coral bleaching, and marine degradation, into a tactile, visual language. The work explores the tension between beauty and loss, rendering coral forms in their living vibrancy and alternatively, when they are bleak and bleached. Assembled to function symbiotically within the exhibition space, the sculptures highlight the interconnectedness of reef systems while expressing their critical endangerment. Through sculpture and hand building with clay, this installation encapsulates and preserves the delicate essence of coral reefs, capturing their forms in both living and bleached states.Item AN ECOFEMINIST READING AND CRITIQUE OF EDITH WHARTONS' SUMMER (1917) AND CATERINA ALBERT i PARADÍS' SOLITUDE (1905)(2025-04) Anselmo Ballester, Paula; Dr. Scott Pincikowski; Hood College Arts and Humanities; HumanitiesThis study draws upon ecofeminist theory to analyze two early twentieth-century novels, Edith Wharton’s Summer (1917) and Caterina Albert i Paradís’ Solitude (1905). These novels challenge the definition of relationship between women and nature – as nature changes, the female characters change as well. A gendered ecological reading and an ecofeminist critique of these two novels uncovers the power structures and the limitations that rural and natural environments have for women, and how they restrict women’s experience in nature. This project intends to answer the questions: How does Ecofeminism help the reader to see how women perceive and experience nature and the environment differently than men? How useful it is to compare the degradation of nature with the degradation of women in patriarchal and dualistic societies? How does culture influence the way coming-of-age novels portray female characters in relation to nature? The study answers these questions by following an anti-essentialism, anti-dualism and anti-anthropocentrism approach. The comparative reading shows that ecofeminism is a useful approach and demonstrates the inferiority and limitations of women in relation to the environment.Item Literacy, Representation, and Hybridization as Modes of Resistance Against American Colonialism: Case Studies of Kateri Tekakwitha, Gotebo, and Zitkala-Sa(2025-04-25) McCoy, Kaitlyn; Trevor Dodman; Mallory Huard; Noel Verzosa; Hood College Arts and Humanities; HumanitiesThe three case studies used in this essay follow the lives of Saint Kateri Tekakwitha (1656-1680), an Algonquin raised in the Mohawk nation who converted to Catholicism during the era of the Jesuit missionaries; Gotebo (1847-1927), a Kiowa artist who lived through the Pre-Reservation Era, the Reservation Era, and the Post-Reservation Era; and Zitkála-Šá (1876-1938), a Sioux Dakota author who experienced and survived the Residential School system and published literature and poetry about her search to return to her people. These individual case studies show on an individual and national level that Native Americans both changed and were changed by their interaction with American colonialism through their lifetimes through literacy, conversion to Christianity, and refusal to let go of kinship bonds that make these three good examples to study.Item PAINTING POETRY: THE INTERTWINING OF THE ART AND VERSE OF DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI(2008-12) Ivie, Janice L; Hood College Arts and Humanities; HumanitiesDante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882), painter and poet, was one of the founders of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. From a young age Rossetti was keenly aware of the interrelationships between art and verse and was convinced that painting and poetry were so closely related as to be inseparable. In both poetry and paintings, Rossetti's most frequent subject was Love, which he, like Dante, his namesake and guide, believed to be the driving force of his life. DGR chose to accept the opposing aspects of Sacred and Profane Love as a unified whole. He also chose to unify the sister arts of Painting and Poetry. Rossetti created what he called "picture-sonnets." These were double-works of art wherein a painting or drawing and a poem, both of his own invention, were made to be viewed and read simultaneously. The artist presented both the painting and poem to the viewer/reader by placing the verse within the painting itself or on the frame. Through an examination of the paintings and poetry of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, the intertwining of his verbal and visual images, one can trace Rossetti's gradual conflation of the Sacred and Profane aspects of Love and his understanding of his dual identity as painter and poet.Item PIERO DELLA FRANCESCA'S MISERICORDIA POLYPTYCH: ARTIST, PATRON, AND COMMUNITY(2011-01) Irani, Sarah Michelle Hempel; Hood College Arts and Humanities; HumanitiesIn 1548, Monsignor Zanobio de' Medici traveled to the chapel of the Misericordia in the small Tuscan village of Sansepolcro. He marveled at a remarkable century-old altarpiece, with images of the Madonna and other saints before the high altar (Fig. 1). At the time of his visit, he stated that the panel was painted by the hand of Piero Franceschi, otherwise known as della Francesca, a resident of Sansepolcro. Piero della Francesca had been hired by one of the most powerful confraternities iii Sansepolcro of the time, nearly one hundred years prior to the Monsignor's visit, in 1445. Piero painted the altarpiece nearly a hundred years after the Black Death decimated the population of Italy in 1348, which was also about the same time that the confraternity was established within Sansepolcro. The confraternity of the Misericordia, as it was called, was a charitable organization that emerged after the Black Death swept through the Italian peninsula during the mid-fourteenth century. The members would tend to the sick, bury the dead, and engage in anonymous acts of charity.Item ANA MARÍA MATUTE: A TRANSLATION OF SIX SHORT STORIES FROM THE COLLECTION HIS TORIAS DE LA ARTÁMILA(2012-03) Inman, Deirdre Rosemarie; Hood College Arts and Humanities; Humanities"Everything — or almost everything — I've related in this book has happened to me or to people I met a long time ago..." Ana María Matute, one of Spain's most prolific and iconic writers of the 20th century, chooses these words to introduce her reader to the literary world of her making in a collection of short selections entitled Stories of the Artámila. These works are autobiographical and occurred during her recovery from chronic kidney problems in her childhood. This onset of this condition prompted her parents to remove her from their native city of Barcelona for a period of respite and recuperation. As a result, she was sent to live with her grandparents in a small town in the mountains, Mansilla de la Sierra in the province of La Rioja in northern Spain. The characters, experiences and places she shares with her readers in this collection are factual, and as a result they ring with an air of truth and genuineness that provides depth and meaning to the themes and message which pervade her work. There are twenty-two stories in the complete collection; of these, I have chosen six in order to present to the English-speaking community the opportunity to relish an accurate sampling of her work that extols the genius of her literary craft.Item LA GRANDE ÉRUDITION—UN DES QUATRE LIVRES CONFUCIANISTES: ÉCRIT PAR TZENG TZE: UN DES MEILLEURS DISCIPLES DE CONFUCIUS(2005-12) Huang, Lori; Hood College Arts and Humanities; HumanitiesThis project aims to conduct the translation of Tzeng-Tze's The Great Learning from ancient Chinese into French in adherence to the following three principles: fidelity, fluency, and gracefulness. The three principal objectives are announced at the beginning of this work in the most straight-forward manner: "What the Great Learning teaches, is to illustrate illustrious virtues; to love the people; and to rest in the highest excellence." These worthy objectives, followed by profound teachings on how to achieve them, render this work one of the four renowned Confucian classics. With the Great Harmony as the ultimate goal, spiritual guidance is given in a step-by-step fashion—with explanation and instructions for each—for the process of advancement. This process can be divided into two parts: Inner Sainthood and Outer Kingship; namely, the internal cultivation and the external practice.Item CREATING ST. THOMAS: IMAGES, TEXTS AND PILGRIM SIGNS IN THE MAKING OF A MEDIEVAL SAINT(2008-05) Hines, Nita; Hood College Arts and Humanities; HumanitiesAt the time of Thomas Becket's murder over church power just after Christmas in 1170, many both inside and outside of the church considered him an unlikely candidate for sainthood. Nevertheless, his death instantly all but guaranteed he would become a saint; and from that point a textual and visual hagiography began to be produced that fit him to his new role. Thomas's popular. and then official, canonization occurred at a time when the saints' cults, with their shrines and pilgrimages, were in a period of expansion. Relics of older saints, such as Cuthbert at Durham, were being elevated into shrines, furnished with expanded and illuminated Lives, with cathedrals enlarged or refurbished to accommodate them. Thomas was, in a sense, in the right place at the right time to become the most important saint in medieval England, and the center of one of the three largest cults in Europe. His hagiography was derived from the long tradition of sainthood. With a martyrdom that was recent and witnessed, more or less, by several eminent clergy, and that had been preceded by a -Passion" involving his comparatively well-documented dispute with Henry II, his cult had a currency that those of the ancient martyr saints and the more recent confessor saints did not. We can observe in his textual hagiography, and in the illuminations that accompanied and interpreted it, the manner in which the "factual" aspects of his cult were embellished with and made to fit hagiographic narrative tropes, to transform him from ambiguous human to martyr saint. Thomas's cult, providing miracles—the vast majority healing—to pilgrims, was founded on earlier practices, but its Gothic chapel at Canterbury with his miracles portrayed in stained glass was a new experience for many of the visitors who came to it. The popularity of the cult resulted in an overwhelming number of miracles, and the stained glass windows picturing the textual miracle collections compiled by monks at Canterbury represented a relatively new hagiographic form to support his cult—representing, attracting, and admonishing pilgrims. Thomas's cult was also the first in England to employ pilgrim "signs"—ampullae and badges—bearing a new form of iconography suited to mass production and serving the functions of pilgrimage as both amulets and souvenirs. Although much has been written about the history of Thomas Becket and surveys of his art have been undertaken, little has been done to examine the interplay of text and image. This paper will examine both the textual and visual hagiography of St. Thomas and how these worked together to create a persona consistent with sainthood and to serve the different facets of his cult.Item Chimeras, Dreams and Nightmares: Utopian Theory and Rhetoric in Post-Colonial Egypt(2013-05) Hillers, Kristin; Hood College Arts and Humanities; HumanitiesUtopian theory and rhetoric has influenced politics in Egypt since Free Officers Revolution. This study first analyzes utopian theory and rhetoric and the Arabic words for. Utopia, then analyzes the philosophies and speeches of Egyptian presidents Gamal Abdel Nasser, Anwar Sadat and Hosni Mubarak. The Utopian theory and rhetoric of those presidents are juxtaposed with the utopian theory found within Naguib Mathouz', Arabian Nights and Days and Ahmed Khaled Towfik's Utopia. Utopian theory and rhetoric is also exhibited in the 2011 Revolution and has serious implications for the political situation in Egypt.Item SOCIO-POLITICAL COMPLEXITY AND RELIGION AMONG THE ANCESTRAL PUEBLO OF CHACO CANYON, NEW MEXICO(2006-05) Hawkinberry, Jennifer K.; Hood College Arts and Humanities; HumanitiesFor the Ancestral Pueblo or ancient Anasazi, life in the American southwest meant continual adaptation to a constantly changing environment. Extremes of temperature and variations in rainfall impacted every area of Anasazi life, often making food production difficult, influencing population and settlement size. However, the people were not overcome by this harsh environment but used the resources available to their advantage, enduring and flourishing for more than six centuries, from approximately A.D. 800-1450 (Lekson, 1999; Pike, 1974; Stuart, 2000). Building on knowledge passed down through the generations, the Anasazi developed innovations during the eleventh and twelfth centuries that not only increased their quality of life but allowed the society to grow in both size and complexity (Lekson, 1999; Pike, 1974). This is particularly true of the residents of Chaco Canyon, New Mexico, a people who constructed monumental Great Houses, integrating them into a system encompassing surrounding small sites and distant outliers (Cordell, 1997; Lekson, 1999). Much remains to be understood about life in Chaco Canyon, yet a high level of sociopolitical complexity can be inferred from a variety of sources, including comparison of the Great Houses to smaller habitation sites, indicating a distinction in social status between the residents of each architectural type (Frazier, 1999; Lekson, 2004; Sebastian, 1992). The nature of Chacoan exchange remains unclear, yet pottery and exotic imports found within the Great Houses suggest interactions over a wide geographic area, with unequal access to material culture between Great Houses and small sites (Neitzel, 1989; Sebastian, 1992; Toll, 1991). Extensive labor was invested in the construction of the Great Houses as well as the roads and irrigation networks, indicating organization beyond the level of loosely connected societies, requiring coordination of labor over extended periods of time and continual maintenance (Frazier, 1999; Sebastian, 1992). When coupled with ethnographic information from the Hopi and Zuni, descendants of the Anasazi, archaeological evidence suggests that socio-political complexity was directly influenced by religious practices within Chaco Canyon. The alignment of the Great Houses and roads with the cardinal directions indicates an attempt to recreate a sacred landscape, representing the ancestral journey to the Middle Place. The Great Houses then became pilgrimage destinations, with hundreds of people traveling along sacred roads to this area, walking from villages in and around the canyon (Pringle, 1996). Astronomical markers, incorporated into geological and architectural features suggest that religious authority was derived from observations of the heavens, with a select few able to predict eclipses, equinoxes, and solstices, events relating to agricultural cycles and the planning of festivals (Pringle, 1996; Roberts, 1996). Socio-political complexity can be inferred from site-size hierarchy as well as extensive trade, irrigation, and road networks, with ethnographic and archaeological evidence indicating strong religious influences.Item Conflict as the Accelerant of Social Change(2024-11) Rogers, Cameron; Verzosa, Noel; Dodman, Trevor; Campion, Corey; Hood College English & Communication Arts; Humanities (M.A.)Even as humanity has advanced and become “civilized” over its existence, conflict clings to it in varying scopes and impacts. The changing power of war, conflict, and bloodshed stretches far and wide, from benefits like medical advancements to its numerous detriments of killing, destruction, and crimes against humanity. While most conflicts are regarded as tragedies and needless bloodshed, they still spur change through the actions taken during or after their occurrence. Some small-scale conflicts can spark massive social changes, such as the Wounded Knee Occupation of 1973. Other conflicts can lead to gradual changes in perception about war and its necessity, such as the Wars in Vietnam and Iraq. In my portfolio, I will examine conflict’s ability to accelerate social change through specific engagements, arguing that it can serve as a harsh but necessary tool for societies to advance and to right past wrongs.Item Specificity of the Unlabeled Antibody Hemocyanin Bridge Method to Label Virion And Cell Surface Antigens Using Hyperimmune Serum and Monoclonal Antibodies(1981-05) Gregg, Marybelle; Hood College Biology; Biomedical and Environmental ScienceThe unlabeled antibody hemocyanin technique (UAHT) was evaluated for specificity of detection of retrovirus antigens gp70 and p15(E). UAHT used infected cell monolayers incubated stepwise with primary hyperimmune or monoclonal antibodies, secondary bridging antisera, tertiary anti-hemocyanin sera, and hemocyanin (hey) and was amplified by additional anti-hcy sera and hcy incubations. Further, the detection of p15(E) and gp70 by UAHT was compared with the antibody binding (AB) assay. UAHT using hyperimmune sera detected gp70 viral antigens at dilutions >10³ and was increased five-fold with amplification steps. Surprisingly, the detection of these same antigens decreased to <10³ using monoclonal antibodies in place of the hyperimmune serum. The AB assay however detected viral gp70 and p15(E) using monoclonal reagents: 16-11C1, 19-F8 and 19-IIIA2. The only positive UAHT detection of gp70 was with the monoclonal antibody 16-11C1 and 19-F8 for p15(E). The presentation of the antigenic sites may therefore be different in the AB and UAHT assays. Finally, detection of gp70 and p15(E) was determined by the UAHT assay during virus maturation. Hcy labeling was observed in the stages of virus morphogenesis in retrovirus-infected cell monolayers but not in the NSI/1 myeloma parent cell pellets although these cells contained intracisternal type A and extracellular type C viruses.Item DEVELOPMENT OF A METHOD TO IDENTIFY CANCER STEM CELLS IN SOLID TUMORS(2007-02) Gignac, Michelle; Hood College Biology; Biomedical and Environmental ScienceRecently, there has been an abundance of research on the presences of stem cells in solid tumors. Cancer stem cells are characterized as those cells capable of regenerating a tumor (1-3). Not all tumor cells have this ability. These cancer stem cells make up only a small fraction of the tumor, but are resistant to chemotherapies and radiation treatments (2). These cells may also lead to metastases to other locations (3). We propose to develop a method to identify the cancer stem cells in solid tumor biopsies. This will enable researchers to study the arrangement of the stem cells within the tumor and their interactions with the surrounding cells. If this method is adapted to the clinical arena, knowing the number of stem cells in a solid tumor could lead to better treatment selections and higher patient survival rates.Item IMAGES OF READING AND INTERPRETATION IN THE DIVINA COMMEDIA(2016-04) Fornwalt, Jessica; Hood College Arts and Humanities; HumanitiesThis essay looks closely at imagery and allegorical interpretation in the Divina Commedia by Dante Alighieri. Specifically, this paper explores the images of reading within the work and what appears to be Dante's attempt to shape his readers. In this essay, images of reading from all three sections of the Commedia: Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso. In Inferno, the images of blocked interpretation are discussed. It is in these images where Dante provides his readers with characters who are either unable to reach the allegorical interpretation, and these examples serve to educate the reader of the importance of being able to allegorically interpret images as they read the Commedia. In Purgatorio, the images of the Pilgrim's dreams are analyzed, looking specifically at the increasing capability of allegorical interpretation on the part of the Pilgrim. Finally, in Paradiso, the discussion focuses mainly on the shortcomings of human intellect. Here, examples of the Pilgrim's inability to interpret what he sees without divine intervention and how in retrospect, readers are able to more fully understand the allegory of the Commedia just as the Pilgrim is able to fully understand everything in the moment of his epiphany at the end of the poem.