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A Spanish Virgin and an Aztec Mother: The Virgen de Guadalupe and the Formation of a Mexican National Icon
Get PDFThesis (B.A. in Art History)--John Cabot University, Spring 2023.This thesis will investigate how the Spanish Catholic Church reshaped the image of the Aztec Goddess Tonantzin into a Catholic icon, the Virgin of Guadalupe. I will analyze how Nicolás Enríquez’s (1704–1790) painting of the Virgen de Guadalupe con Los Cuatro Apariciones (The Virgin of Guadalupe with the Four Apparitions) was designed, diffused, and received in the context of syncretism to convert the belief systems of the indigenous populations of New Spain to align with the ideologies of Spanish colonization. How is the use, reception, and dissemination of the image used to enact a transformation from the indigenous Aztec belief-system to that of Castilian Catholic faith in 18th-century New Spain? I will also focus my thesis on what remains of Tonatzin in this Hispanicized Virgin by looking at Church edicts, contemporary critical responses regarding the image, and its reproductive success. I will explain how the use, reception, and dissemination of the Virgin’s image was used to further inculcate new Spanish cultural values. This is an example of a larger intention of the Spanish conquistadors to overwrite the traditions and beliefs of the indigenous peoples of Mexico. With the hope, through this syncretism, their devotion will be transferred from Tonantzin to that of the Virgin of Guadalupe
On the Emergence of Cooperative Industrial and Labor Relations
No full textWe explore the long run determinants of current differences in the degree of cooperative labor relations at local level. We do this by estimating the causal effect of the medieval communes - that were established in certain cities in Centre-Northern Italy towards the end of the 11th century - and that contributed to the emergence of a cooperative attitude in the population on various proxies for current cooperative labor relations. Conditional on a large set of firm and municipality level controls, as well as a full set of province fixed effects, we find that firms located in municipalities that had been a free medieval commune in the past, have higher current probabilities to adopt two-tier bargaining structures and to be unionized. We also report IV and propensity score estimates that confirm our main results
Temporality on the Roman Wall: A Re-evaluation and Virtual Reconstruction of Cubiculum 19 in the Villa at Boscotrecase
No full textThesis (B.A. in Art History)--John Cabot University, Fall 2023.The Roman villa at Boscotrecase was built along the slopes of Mount Vesuvius in the late 1st century BCE and buried during the infamous eruption of 79 CE. Accidentally discovered in 1903, the villa was then partially excavated over the course of three years before Vesuvius erupted again in 1906 and destroyed what remained of the structure. Due to this untimely event, art historical scholarship on the fresco paintings yielded by the villa has been frustrated by the fragmentary state of its archaeological documentation. Nowhere is this more limitational than in cubiculum 19, a small room from which two central panels depicting mythological landscapes were extracted from the east and west walls. Reframed and hung against a white backdrop for display in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the paintings have since been divorced completely from the spatial context of the cubiculum for which they were commissioned as well as the holistic decorative scheme of its murals which survive only in conjectured two-dimensional illustration. Yet these panels hold a unique position among the extant corpus of Roman wall paintings. Together they constitute the earliest examples of a pictorial narrative method that conflates disparate moments of time, communicated through the repetition of protagonists within a single spatial setting and visual field. On the east wall of the cubiculum, the hero Perseus rescued Andromeda and met with her father in a conjoined scene; on the west wall, Polyphemus serenaded the nymph Galatea and hurled a boulder towards the retreating ship of Odysseus in a juxtaposed episode. Classified by scholars as strict continuous narrative, this storytelling strategy introduced a new mode of conceptualizing time on the domestic Roman wall. Taking the novelty of this temporal expression as its point of departure, this thesis offers a re-assessment of cubiculum 19 by investigating issues of time. Time as it was artistically manipulated on the walls is examined through narratological analyses of the mythological panels based on structuralist-formalist approaches. A three-dimensional virtual reconstruction of the villa — which restores the paintings to a simulation of their original architectural and decorative context for the first time — is later applied in discussion of the temporal-perceptual rhythms of viewing within the cubiculum. Together these research paradigms seek to synthesize notions of time as it was viewed on the walls of the room and experienced by an embodied viewer within the enclosed space
Finding One’s Place
No full textThesis (B.A. in Italian Studies)--John Cabot University, Spring 2023.Negli ultimi decenni è apparsa una consistente mole di letteratura sul senso del luogo e su come individui e comunità si identificano tra loro e con l'ambiente circostante. Questo lavoro sibasa su studi provenienti da campi di studio interconnessi che si concentrano su comunità (in particolare l'attaccamento a essa) e luogo (la sua identità, il suo senso, la sua perdita,l'attaccamento a esso). Uno degli obiettivi principali di questa tesi è descrivere e spiegare le relazioni tra le persone e lo spazio ed esaminare gli elementi sociali, culturali, visivi e ambientaliche le collegano ad esso. La ricerca mira a individuare le ragioni e i modi in cui il senso del luogo e dell'identità venga alterato dagli investimenti, dalla presenza e, più in generale, dai cambiamenti apportati dagli stranieri. Inoltre, esaminando le forme di presenza che possono essere dannose per le comunità si analizzano i potenziali metodi di trasformazione che possono avvenire senza impattare sull’autenticità del luogo. Attraverso queste linee di ricerca, la tesi fa dei passi avanti teorizzando come i rapidi cambiamenti sociali, gli investimenti immobiliari stranieri e lo sviluppo espansivo, che si verificano nei piccoli villaggi italiani, influenzano il senso di appartenenza e di luogo della gente del posto all'interno della comunità
Temporality on the Roman Wall: A Re-evaluation and Virtual Reconstruction of Cubiculum 19 in the Villa at Boscotrecase.
No full textix, 85 pagesThe Roman villa at Boscotrecase was built along the slopes of Mount Vesuvius in the late 1st century BCE and buried during the infamous eruption of 79 CE. Accidentally discovered in 1903, the villa was then partially excavated over the course of three years before Vesuvius erupted again in 1906 and destroyed what remained of the structure. Due to this untimely event, art historical scholarship on the fresco paintings yielded by the villa has been frustrated by the fragmentary state of its archaeological documentation. Nowhere is this more limitational than in cubiculum 19, a small room from which two central panels depicting mythological landscapes were extracted from the east and west walls. Reframed and hung against a white backdrop for display in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the paintings have since been divorced completely from the spatial context of the cubiculum for which they were commissioned as well as the holistic decorative scheme of its murals which survive only in conjectured two-dimensional illustration. Yet these panels hold a unique position among the extant corpus of Roman wall paintings. Together they constitute the earliest examples of a pictorial narrative method that conflates disparate moments of time, communicated through the repetition of protagonists within a single spatial setting and visual field. On the east wall of the cubiculum, the hero Perseus rescued Andromeda and met with her father in a conjoined scene; on the west wall, Polyphemus serenaded the nymph Galatea and hurled a boulder towards the retreating ship of Odysseus in a juxtaposed episode. Classified by scholars as strict continuous narrative, this storytelling strategy introduced a new mode of conceptualizing time on the domestic Roman wall. Taking the novelty of this temporal expression as its point of departure, this thesis offers a re-assessment of cubiculum 19 by investigating issues of time. Time as it was artistically manipulated on the walls is examined through narratological analyses of the mythological panels based on structuralist-formalist approaches. A three-dimensional virtual reconstruction of the villa — which restores the paintings to a simulation of their original architectural and decorative context for the first time — is later applied in discussion of the temporal-perceptual rhythms of viewing within the cubiculum. Together these research paradigms seek to synthesize notions of time as it was viewed on the walls of the room and experienced by an embodied viewer within the enclosed space
Adaptation and Continuation in the Art and Religion of Roman Britain
No full textThesis (B.A. in History, Minors in Classical Studies)--John Cabot University, Spring 2023.Following Rome’s first century invasion of Britain, significant changes occurred on the island politically, economically, and culturally. This thesis examines the adaptation and continuation of artistic and religious traditions on the island of Britain spanning from the Late Iron Age through Rome’s three hundred-and sixty-seven-year occupation. Within the introduction, a brief historiography will be given on the study of Roman Britain, identifying the major changes that have occurred within the field of study over the course of approximately five hundred years. Additionally, it will also discuss the effect of Roman culture on British society from three differing modern interpretations. The second chapter serves to provide a background on Britain by first reviewing what the Romans knew and thought of the island and its inhabitants, followed by what the archaeological record reveals about the society that existed during the Late Iron Age. Chapter three explores the developments in the artistic styles used by the Britons between the Late Iron Age and the Roman period. The fourth chapter explores the conflation and syncretism between the religion observed by the Britons and that which was practiced by the Romans. Both chapters three and four will seek to demonstrate the ways in which the Britons adapted to the introduction of Roman culture, while simultaneously continuing the artistic and religious traditions of their ancestors
Giosetta Fioroni’s Ragazza TV
No full textMaster of Arts in Art History -- John Cabot University, Spring 2023.Giosetta Fioroni, a prominent figure of Italian Pop Art, generated a storm in the 1960s as a woman artist when she exhibited silver-painted portraits of women appropriated from the mass media. Her choice of iconography, namely, her focus on female figures, distinguished her art from that of her male peers and engaged critical attention. One of these silver portraits was her anonymous idol figure, Ragazza TV. Ragazza TV is greatly understudied, yet it provides insight into the sixties’ perception of womanhood and women artists’ concern about the representation of women, in Italy in particular. While some research has been carried out on the female subjects of Fioroni’s silver paintings, no single study has focused on Ragazza TV from the dual perspective of Italian feminism in the ‘60s and ‘70s and consumer critique. This thesis asks: Is it possible to discuss Fioroni’s Ragazza TV from a feminist perspective through a critique of mass consumerism and mass media? Fioroni’s works with female figures have been commonly regarded as “feminine” or having a “feminine essence.” What is “feminine essence” in the context of the ‘60s and ‘70s Rome? How was it part of a larger, very public debate on feminism? Thus, this thesis aims to provide a better understanding of potential feminist readings of the artwork by focusing on the viewer’s and subject’s gazes and by investigating Fioroni’s view on consumerism that emerged in Italy in the post-war era. It develops a hypothesis about the female experience in the ‘60s in Italy that Fioroni sought to convey through a comprehensive analysis of the artwor
Splitting Vertices in 2-Layer Graph Drawings
No full textBipartite graphs model the relationships between two disjoint sets of entities in several applications and are naturally drawn as 2-layer graph drawings. In such drawings, the two sets of entities (vertices) are placed on two parallel lines (layers), and their relationships (edges) are represented by segments connecting vertices. Methods for constructing 2-layer drawings often try to minimize the number of edge crossings. We use vertex splitting to reduce the number of crossings, by replacing selected vertices on one layer by two (or more) copies and suitably distributing their incident edges among these copies. We study several optimization problems related to vertex splitting, either minimizing the number of crossings or removing all crossings with fewest splits. While we prove that some variants are NPNP-complete, we obtain polynomial-time algorithms for others. We run our algorithms on a benchmark set of bipartite graphs representing the relationships between human anatomical structures and cell types
The Uses and Impact of Silphium on Everyday Lives in the Classical World: Mystery Plant, Luxury Spice, Miraculous Cure-All
No full textThesis (B.A. in Classical Studies, Minor in Art History, Minor in History)--John Cabot University, Spring 2023.The rise and fall of the silphium plant tells a complex story of the ancient Mediterraneanworld: its farming practices and trade routes, medical practices and reproductive care, treatmentand freedoms of women. Silphium was a highly-coveted agricultural product used as a flavorfulspice in hundreds of recipes and as a cure for over 50 different medical ailments from skinproblems to respiratory illness, dog bites to epilepsy. Silphium was a miracle plant, unique inclassical antiquity. Its extinction around the second century B.C. has led to so much speculationand mystery among scholars. Most recently, the 2021 discovery of a Turkish professor whobelieves he found silphium in contemporary Turkey, sparks a range of questions that fuel thisthesis: Who had access to silphium and most commonly used it in recipes and remedies? What dowe know and can we learn about the women who used silphium as a contraceptive andabortifacient over two thousand years ago? How and why did silphium go extinct, and what roledid shifts in the Mediterranean climate and farming practices play in its decline and demise?Through researching ancient source material including Apicius’ famed cookbook De ReCoquinaria and Dioscorides’ De Materia Medica, as well as more recent classical historians andtheir hypotheses about silphium, this thesis will try and get a closer look at the everyday lives ofthe Mediterranean people who used silphium. Across three core chapters, this project challengeslong-held scholarly assumptions about medicine, reproductive care, contraception, and familyplanning in the ancient world. It also rewrites food history and the history of women’s controlover their bodies, unearthing a more accurate picture of the lives of the ancients, and women inparticular. Ultimately, it helps us to consider connections between the past and present — and tolearn from the successes and failures of those who came before us