Academie to atelier : the artistic education of American women in nineteenth-century Paris

This paper puts forth an alternate reading of the artistic climate in late nineteenth-century Paris than that which has traditionally been suggested. I propose that the expansion of creative opportunity during this time reveals a climate of communal support, consent, and progressive reform for women artists, rather than a struggle to undermine central (masculine) control, as many scholars have claimed. Specifically, I explore the work of American expatriates living in Paris, including but not limited to Cecilia Beaux, Anna Klumpke, Alice Kellogg, and Ellen Day Hale. The birth of the private academy in Paris offered women the chance to develop their artistic ability and assert their independence. The Académie Julian in particular provided a comparatively accepting and progressive environment where American women studying abroad could study from the nude model, receive proper training, and explore their full creative potential. Through an examination of a) these women’s self-portraits, and b) depictions of them painted by their contemporaries – both male and female – I further investigate the artistic education of American women in the highly-gendered cultural milieu of late nineteenth-century France.

The First Century of Right to Arms Litigation

This Article examines state court cases involving the right to arms, during the first century following ratification of the Amendment in 1791. This is not the first article to survey some of those cases. This Article includes additional cases, and details the procedural postures and facts, not only the holdings. The Article closely examines how the Supreme Court integrated the nineteenth century arms cases into Heller and McDonald to shape modern Second Amendment law. Part I briefly explains two English cases which greatly influenced American legal understandings. Semayne’s Case is the foundation of “castle doctrine” — the right to home security which includes the right of armed self-defense in the home. Sir John Knight’s Case fortified the tradition of the right to bear arms, providing that the person must bear arms in a non-terrifying manner. Part II examines American antebellum cases; these are the cases to which Heller looked for guidance on the meaning of the Second Amendment. Part III looks at cases from Reconstruction and the early years of Jim Crow, through 1891. As with the antebellum cases, the large majority of post-war cases are from the Southeast, which during the nineteenth century was the region most ardent for gun control. The heart of gun control country was Tennessee and Arkansas; courts there resisted some infringements of the right to arms, but eventually gave up. Heller and McDonald did not look to the Jim Crow cases as constructive precedents on the Second Amendment.

Graveyards to Glamour : Development of Sexualized Angel Imagery in American Art and Advertising

Images of female angels in American art and advertisements have been sexualized in the late twentieth and early twenty-­‐first centuries. Companies such as Victoria’s Secret have appropriated the image of female angels, which first appeared at the beginning of the nineteenth century, and clothed them in lingerie in order to sell a product. This Masters Research Paper explores the evolution of female angelic imagery in the United States in order to understand how and when the image of angels began to be sexualized and used in advertising. Angels in art have been studied extensively; however, there has been no work done which examines how the angels in art and advertising have been sexualized. Nor has any work been done to map the evolution of female angelic imagery in American art. This Masters Research Paper will fill that gap in scholarship.

Portrait of Josephine Evans: 1887-1969

The genre of historical women's biography has a moderately short history, and has evolved into the twenty-first century as women's studies. Simultaneously, biography has become a multifaceted genre that keeps a close relationship between biography, history, women's studies, and cultural studies. The biography of Josephine Evans embraces the genre as a vehicle to enlighten broader historical issues, as the life of an ordinary woman and her position in an historic Colorado family is revealed. Her story contributes to the history of women's roles and rights in the late nineteenth and twentieth century as her life story is representative of the time period. This biography of Josephine Evans is an illustration of a biography written from personal letters, diaries, and recollections.