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In nineteenth century English society, antisemitism resulted from long-standing antipathies towards Jewish people combined with societal conditions. Historians and literary scholars explain how Victorian authors encouraged antisemitism. However, they view these works as separate incidents of antisemitism, disconnected from both each other and places, like Eastern Europe. This limited perspective precludes a comprehensive understanding of the interwoven character and global ramifications of antisemitism during the Victorian era. By analyzing Charles Dickens’s Oliver Twist and George du Maurier’s Trilby, this paper argues that while Victorian authors used antisemitic stereotypes because of historically ingrained hostilities towards Jews, antisemitism also arose as a response to particular circumstances and conditions that emerged in England during the nineteenth century. Exploring these works in relation to each other reveals how antisemitism in Victorian popular culture is part of an interlinked historical phenomenon of hostility toward Jews.

A “supermodel” of the Victorian Era, Elizabeth Siddall (1829–1862) is forever memorialized in the paintings and poetry of the men she sat for, the Pre-Raphaelite Brothers, including her eventual husband, Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828–1882). However, the depictions of Siddall created by these men are not authentic. They captured her likeness to create characters, using her image to tell stories of literary and historical figures and heroines of myths and legends — all with an aesthetic, romantic, and sensual undertone. Siddall was a face and body used for the Pre-Raphaelite method of art for art’s sake. An artist in her own right, Siddall is survived by her poetry and paintings. After Siddall’s death, few of her letters and diaries remained. Any conclusions made about her actual life and personality are drawn from these bodies of work. The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood’s portrayal of Siddall in their art and poetry created a narrative of her life that, when compared with Siddall’s own art, romanticized and glorified a life of struggle, illness, and addiction. To tell the story of Siddall, one must acknowledge both her art and that of the Brotherhood.

The imaginary space is a significant element in any verse text, establishing a unique discursive situation between the poet and the reader. The creation of it involves a lot of riddles, hints, and specific pointing gestures, making it especially hard to translate. Is there even a way to translate the unique poetic effects of this section of the text into another language? In my research, various translations of Emily Dickinson’s poetry into German provide a source for the analysis of possible strategies of translators, among which Paul Celan is the most noticeable.

Although Frankenstein speaks exclusively through the voices of men, feminist ideals persist through the characters’ conflicts with each other as the novel unfolds. The prime example is Frankenstein’s protagonist, Victor Frankenstein, whose main conflict manifests between himself and his creation. This relationship parallels the emotionally complex experiences of women through the journey of pregnancy, childbirth, and parenthood. Shelley uses Victor, to introduce issues of birth and creation without disrupting the status quo of male-dominated narratives popular at the time she was publishing. Shelley effectively creates a monster, both literal and metaphorical, that induces the same fears of getting pregnant and giving birth that women encounter in a society that already restricts and controls most aspects of their lives.

When analyzing these snapshots of native and North Africans, a few questions start to emerge: If ancient historians discriminated against these individuals, what do their sculptural representations say? Were they depicted similarly to their Italian neighbors? If so, can we say that they were equals? The Romans’ view of their new African subjects is nuanced and paradoxical. I argue that although Roman artists depicted politically powerful North Africans such as Juba II of Mauretania (ca. 50 BCE–24 CE) and Septimius Severus (ca. 145–211 CE) with reverence, common Black Africans were depicted as household items with exaggerated physical characteristics.

In nineteenth century English society, antisemitism resulted from long-standing antipathies towards Jewish people combined with societal conditions. Historians and literary scholars explain how Victorian authors encouraged antisemitism. However, they view these works as separate incidents of antisemitism, disconnected from both each other and places, like Eastern Europe. This limited perspective precludes a comprehensive understanding of the interwoven character and global ramifications of antisemitism during the Victorian era. By analyzing Charles Dickens’s Oliver Twist and George du Maurier’s Trilby, this paper argues that while Victorian authors used antisemitic stereotypes because of historically ingrained hostilities towards Jews, antisemitism also arose as a response to particular circumstances and conditions that emerged in England during the nineteenth century. Exploring these works in relation to each other reveals how antisemitism in Victorian popular culture is part of an interlinked historical phenomenon of hostility toward Jews.

A “supermodel” of the Victorian Era, Elizabeth Siddall (1829–1862) is forever memorialized in the paintings and poetry of the men she sat for, the Pre-Raphaelite Brothers, including her eventual husband, Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828–1882). However, the depictions of Siddall created by these men are not authentic. They captured her likeness to create characters, using her image to tell stories of literary and historical figures and heroines of myths and legends — all with an aesthetic, romantic, and sensual undertone. Siddall was a face and body used for the Pre-Raphaelite method of art for art’s sake. An artist in her own right, Siddall is survived by her poetry and paintings. After Siddall’s death, few of her letters and diaries remained. Any conclusions made about her actual life and personality are drawn from these bodies of work. The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood’s portrayal of Siddall in their art and poetry created a narrative of her life that, when compared with Siddall’s own art, romanticized and glorified a life of struggle, illness, and addiction. To tell the story of Siddall, one must acknowledge both her art and that of the Brotherhood.

The imaginary space is a significant element in any verse text, establishing a unique discursive situation between the poet and the reader. The creation of it involves a lot of riddles, hints, and specific pointing gestures, making it especially hard to translate. Is there even a way to translate the unique poetic effects of this section of the text into another language? In my research, various translations of Emily Dickinson’s poetry into German provide a source for the analysis of possible strategies of translators, among which Paul Celan is the most noticeable.

Although Frankenstein speaks exclusively through the voices of men, feminist ideals persist through the characters’ conflicts with each other as the novel unfolds. The prime example is Frankenstein’s protagonist, Victor Frankenstein, whose main conflict manifests between himself and his creation. This relationship parallels the emotionally complex experiences of women through the journey of pregnancy, childbirth, and parenthood. Shelley uses Victor, to introduce issues of birth and creation without disrupting the status quo of male-dominated narratives popular at the time she was publishing. Shelley effectively creates a monster, both literal and metaphorical, that induces the same fears of getting pregnant and giving birth that women encounter in a society that already restricts and controls most aspects of their lives.

When analyzing these snapshots of native and North Africans, a few questions start to emerge: If ancient historians discriminated against these individuals, what do their sculptural representations say? Were they depicted similarly to their Italian neighbors? If so, can we say that they were equals? The Romans’ view of their new African subjects is nuanced and paradoxical. I argue that although Roman artists depicted politically powerful North Africans such as Juba II of Mauretania (ca. 50 BCE–24 CE) and Septimius Severus (ca. 145–211 CE) with reverence, common Black Africans were depicted as household items with exaggerated physical characteristics.

When immigrants move to the United States, they are searching for a better life than the one they were dealt. What they do not expect are the problems they will experience while doing so — especially problems within themselves. Using my own personal experience with feeling that I didn’t fully belong and representations in Sandra Cisneros’s 1983 novel The House on Mango Street Julia Alvarez’s 1991 novel How the García Girls Lost Their Accent, I will demonstrate how young Hispanic/Latino girls experience identity crises because of their different cultures clashing.

While the American perspective argues that painter John Ferren introduced abstraction to Beirut, contemporaneous Lebanese paintings and mapping data suggest that the city boasted strong cultural foundations prior to the American’s arrival. Rather than attribute Ferren with sparking Beirut’s artistic development, I propose that Beirut’s existing status as a cultural hub within the Middle East rendered it attractive to American diplomatic efforts and shaped Ferren creatively, as revealed by the evolution of his oeuvre following his time abroad.

Though living document theorists allow for some “revamping” of the Constitution through interpretation, the core document still remains an authoritative and sometimes oppressive force through interpretative devotion to content. Both the originalist and living constitutionalist interpretative lenses hinder progress and uphold a document that may no longer be fully relevant in its current state. Instead of a new method of interpretation, following the logic proposed by Sontag, the form of the Constitution should be considered. Thus, when issues of this strange new world arise that could not have been envisioned by the founding fathers, we need not guess what their stance would be or twist ancient texts to fit modern needs. 

Two lovers are locked in an embrace. The woman folds her swan like neck over her lover, the weight of her body rests atop his. And yet the man appears strangely distracted. He looks away from her, toward a framed painting to his left —a portrait he made of the same woman, still in its early stages. In Raphael and La Fornarina, Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres depicts the artist he seeks to emulate the most —Raphael —with his muse, the Fornarina, on his lap. The master and the model become reduced to actors with rigid roles to play: the irresistible seductress and the powerlessly, although distractedly, seduced.

Italian artists Alberto Burri and Umberto Boccioni were artists that created modernist art that reflected the overall sentiment of Italian society during their respective times. Although their art was made in two different time periods, as Boccioni created Futurist art under Mussolini’s Fascist regime and Burri created art as a response to the traumas left behind by it, their art represents changes made to Italian society as a result of a political ideology. It is through the complete study of the primary sources from this time that one can understand the integral nature of these works in the overall understanding of the way in which Italy both coped and lived as a result of Mussolini.

Film as a visual medium has been established as one of the most accessible displays of the human condition, nuanced philosophical discussion, and societal examination since its invention at the turn of the twentieth century. Despite its adolescence as a vehicle for narrative, film was, for a time, the most popular storytelling form, surpassing theatrical performances, stage plays, and technical innovations such as FM radio. However, due to the invention of television and its emergence as a separate genre, film has now emerged as one of many alternatives to experiencing moving, visual art. Artists began to utilize this art form to examine the human psyche and the environment from which it was constructed to more complex examinations such as the desire for self-discovery. Gender and sexuality when expressed in this fashion is often[i] used as a foil for this desire and can be utilized to grapple with one’s identity being either outside the norm or accepted at any capacity, the most contentious being identities under the trans hypernym (transsexuality, crossdressing, etc.)