My research analyzes the portrayal of curses as symbolic literary devices reflecting socioeconomic anxieties in Shakespeare’s Macbeth and Joseph Conrad’s Nostromo. These texts serve as a lens to explore contemporary institutional failings, the rise of capitalism, and the impact of empire on resource-rich communities. Spanning nearly three centuries, this comparison highlights the persistent tragedy in human struggles with power and belief systems. Macbeth depicts a literal curse, under the cover of prophecy, leading to a relentless and bloody pursuit of power, and the central character's eventual downfall. Nostromo, in contrast, adopts a metaphorical stance on curses, with characters seeking absolution from their imported belief systems. The connection between these works lies in the evolution of cursed institutions – from the early belief systems in governance depicted in Macbeth to their manifestation as global capitalist structures in Nostromo. This study explores how these literary curses symbolize the tragic, cyclical nature of power and societal upheaval, mirroring modern global anxieties and the pursuit of institutional absolution. Employing a tragic thematic analysis, I integrate contemporary studies of current systems and institutions with historical source examination. Alongside a close reading of both texts, this method enables a nuanced understanding of the characters’ actions and their broader impact. My research aims to provide fresh perspectives on Macbeth and Nostromo, highlighting how magical language in both texts serves as a tool for understanding and navigating complex global challenges. It seeks to uncover insights into how literary curses and prophecies may mirror, and potentially forecast, power dynamics, societal disruptions, and ecological issues, offering novel interpretations of our current socioeconomic and political landscape.

Conceptual Threads explores the intersection of textile craft and conceptual art. Sewing, embroidery, and other textile works have long been treated as a craft rather than art, deserving of the same respect as painting or sculpture. Scholars starting in the late 20th century began to question whether this was due to the fact that textiles had often been associated with women, and was considered a leisure activity rather than a viable career. During this same time, the conceptualism movement was forming. Conceptualism focused around the intellectual concept behind art pieces, rather than their execution. Conceptual Threads focuses on the intersection between these two scholastic movements, and what artists can create when they're not confined to traditional media. I will be conducting my research mainly through written histories of the period, however I also plan to recreate several conceptual works that combine textiles with performance. I will also ask participants in my symposium to attempt a simple textile craft in order to gain hands-on experience with the topic.

The Japanese animated film Kimi no Na wa (Your Name), directed by Makoto Shinkai, premiered in 2016 and quickly became positively revered and awarded as the second-highest-grossing anime film at the time of its release. The movie contains romantic and fantastical elements to tell the story of Mitsuha Miyamizu, a girl from the rural countryside, and Taki Tachibana, a boy from Tokyo, who somehow begin to swap bodies with each other and attempt to meet in person. However, things get more complicated when they discover Mitsuha is three years in the past, just before a natural disaster strikes her town. This study aims to understand how Kimi no Na wa expresses modern Japanese identity. This investigation will contain an analysis of the Kimi no Na wa's visual and narrative elements, including framing, lighting, color, score, and iconography, and their relation to Japanese culture as depicted in the film. The characters Mitsuha and Taki will act as case studies to showcase identity and allow us to focus on specific facets of Japanese society. These facets comprise of gender, Japanese historical traditions, geographical differences within Japan, and the effects of disaster on Japanese culture. The findings of this research will help us understand modern Japanese identity as a whole and how it appears in film. This study offers a platform for discourse on portrayals of identity in film as well as an understanding of modern Japanese identity as it is portrayed in film, with an emphasis on views on gender identity in Japan, historical traditions, regional differences within Japan, and how living in a disaster-prone area affects Japanese society.

In the early 1990s as, feminist photography was gaining traction in contemporary Japan, young artists such as Rinko Kawauchi and Hiromix were emerging. As female photographers, their work was being labeled as, “onnanoko shashin,” or rather, “girl photography.” Twenty-year-old Yurie Nagashima had just returned from America and was completely astounded by this term; surprised to find out it had actually become a real photographic genre at all. Nagashima began to dominate the field (despite her dislike for the term) with her unique approach to photography.While her photographs vary in subject matter, themes of sexuality, body-image, and familial bonds remain consistent in her work. Her perspective as a woman allows her to capture emotions and experiences felt by not only her, but by all women thus allowing the viewer to reflect and recognize themselves in her pictures. Through self-portraiture, family portraiture, and photographic representation of the trials and tribulations of everyday life, Nagashima challenges the male gaze, and encapsulates the ever-changing roles that come with the experience of womanhood. A thorough visual analysis of her work will make clear the greater implications her photographs have on understanding the female experience, from a first-person perspective. Nagashima’s work is vital for not only “onnanoko shashin,” and contemporary Japanese art, but contemporary art internationally. Her personal connection to her work is vital to not only create meaning but to unite women in their shared experiences globally.

Frank Lloyd Wright’s Unity Temple was built for a Unitarian Universalist congregation in 1905-1908 in Oak Park, Illinois. Today, it continues to be used for its original purpose while also acting as an event venue and an architectural tourist destination. This paper addresses theories of performative viewership, especially performativity of space and performativity of religion, to argue that the architectural features, interior design, and collective behaviors performed in Unity Temple create an atmosphere that shapes viewers’ experiences and actions. This begins by detailing the architectural features and interior design that draw the viewer from the world outside to the sanctuary inside, then addresses the different types of viewers who experience the space. This paper also addresses the intent of the design of the space, then theories of performative viewership which can be applied to this setting, as well as discussing the way viewers make meaning. Throughout the paper, the idea of how the atmosphere of a space is not just its architectural features but also constructed by performative behaviors is addressed. This one building shapes the experiences of all viewers, but the different collective behaviors create a different atmosphere and experience for each of these groups of visitors mentioned. This perspective of performativity theory must be considered when studying Unity Temple. This can be used as a case study to consider performativity in other historical buildings that act as museums, especially ones that also fulfill their original purpose.

We live in an age of ever-pressing environmental crises. Scientists have determined that the cumulative impact of human activity on Earth in the last 300 years reaches a scale equal to that of a geological epoch—carving marks in the planet that will last longer than our species has existed. Practices of extraction—mining for coal, drilling for oil—are one collection of activities integral to that impact, prompting scholars to investigate the complex of cultural factors that drive and ultimately constitute these practices. Regarding these practices, scholars in the environmental humanities have raised an important question: how, in the first place, does nature get figured as a resource? How has Western humanity’s relation towards the natural world developed into one predominantly of exploitation? In this paper, I investigate the metaphysical basis of this relationship through Martin Heidegger’s ‘method’ of reflection [Besinnung]. My investigation begins with the thought of Descartes and Bacon, two philosophers who, at the commencement of modernity, interpreted the human as the relational center of being as such. This early-modern, anthropocentric philosophy prefigures an event Heidegger calls gestell—the disclosure of all beings exclusively as resources—which I argue is the underlying metaphysical basis of practices of extraction. I go on to argue that the very proliferation of extractive thinking reveals the crucial importance of poetry and philosophy today, both of which embody a kind of thinking that is antithetical to extraction and instrumentalization, a thinking that—rather than dominating, organizing, utilizing—lets things show themselves as they are. I conclude that art and philosophy both counter the ubiquitous logic of extraction and are therefore invaluable to any attempt at figuring a fuller, healthier mode of humanity’s relating to itself and the natural world.