Presentation Abstracts

Australian WWI photographer Frank Hurley was hired to record the events of WWI for the Australian Imperial Force (AIF). Better known for his photographs of the Endurance expedition into Antarctica, Hurley’s photographic recordings of WWI have generally been overlooked. Experiencing war firsthand, he felt that he could not accurately represent the war without being permitted to make composite photographs, images derived from multiple photographic negatives.

Environmental philosopher Ingrid Stefanovic believes today’s cities fail to foster an awareness of the interconnection among humans, their settlements, and the natural world. She envisions a new city that preserves moments of spectacle capable of showing urbanites that their past and present routines and contributions are not isolated from, but an essential part of, the world’s ecology.   

In the almost two decades since Tracey Emin premiered My Bed, it has largely been interpreted as being purely autobiographical (as has most of her work) and simply part of her “bad sex aesthetic.” This paper contends that upon closer examination, Emin’s work is more than bad sex and dirty sheets but can bee seen as a creative space for both Emin and other artists.

Throughout the history of western society, there has been an underlying theme of objectivity in image making that has evolved with each new technological advancement.   The strictly objective nature of the medical profession has mirrored this argument surrounding objectivity in the field of scientific image making and stems from long standing conventional philosophies engrained into the teaching of medicine.  This approach to medical care is called biomedicine.  However, in modern times, philosophies are

To access what was the main Soviet war memorial in East Berlin and more broadly in East Germany, the tourist in Berlin must make a conscious decision to leave the city’s center, which is saturated with the city’s main tourist and memorial sites, and move out into the periphery. By public transportation, one must take two S-bahn lines and then walk through one of the city’s large parks, Treptower Park, to finally reach the memorial.

This spring we challenged a group of high school students from Pittsburgh Science and Technology Academy to create a public exhibition of original works. The History of Art and Architecture Department from the University of Pittsburgh and the Pittsburgh Assistance Center for Educators and Students (PACES), joined forces to create the Encounters Project: Art in the City, to bring Art History out of the University setting and into the high school classroom.

Museums often display objects that were integral to their original culture but are now functionally obsolete and thus unfamiliar to the public. Engraved cylinder seals are one such object. Averaging at only an inch in height, a seal was made of stone or faience whose curved sides were carved with a design ranging from figural to abstract. The seal was then rolled into clay to create a raised design that is the mirror image of the seal.