Professor of History of Art
Eugenia Chase Guild Chair in the Humanities
Department of History of Art, Bryn Mawr College

“On maniera, Moral Choice and Truth”

Style, or what in the Renaissance could be called maniera, is at once the defining element in the visual arts, depending as it does on the choices artists make; yet it has its dangers, when style becomes mere repetition. These problems are considered in the writings of the critic and artist Giorgio Vasari and in the work of various earlier and later artists, from Cimabue and Giotto to Constable and Jackson Pollock.

“Means and Ends in Hitchcock’s Vertigo, or Kant You See?”

This paper offers an original reading of Hitchcock’s Vertigo. Using the Kantian categorical imperative, also known as the principle of dignity, the plot is interpreted from the viewpoint of means and ends.  This theme of dignity and dignity violations is juxtaposed with discoveries about the choices of the names “Madeleine” and “Judy” and the two ends of the film.  The significance of the names is explored in relation to the novel on which the film was based and to a recently uncovered interest of Hitchcock.   Through a psychoanalyst’s attention to language and images, this essay explores means and ends from philosophical, psychological, and artistic perspectives.

Associate Professor of Spanish
Bryn Mawr College

“Restaging the 23-F: Transitional Memories in Spain”

The dominant historical account of the transformation of Spain from a dictatorship into a democracy is one of change and political success. The key political event that helped to forge this view was the failed coup d’état by Colonel Antonio Tejero on February 23, 1981. This attempt at a military uprising, when King Juan Carlos firmly stood by the constitutionally elected government, has been hailed as the culminating moment of the Transición and a clear demonstration of the arrival of democracy in the country. In this talk I explore how this narrative has been recently depicted in television and film questioning and reframing this story behind the triumph of democracy in Spain.

Adjunct Faculty
Film and Media Arts Department
Temple University

For more information about Benjamin Tiven–

Fall Break

Professor, Department of Art History
Tyler School of Art, Temple University

“The Red Monastery Church: Beauty and Asceticism in Upper Egypt”

“Between Body and Environment: Carolee Schneemann’s Kinetic Theater”

Carolee Schneemann’s Kinetic Theater developed alongside happenings and Judson Dance Theater in the mid 1960s. This talk looks at how these performance works developed to engage the conditions and limits of becoming involved during the Vietnam era, as a participant in protest, but also as an embodied subject responsive to the demands media make on one’s attention and capacity to connect. 

Melissa Ragona is an Associate Professor of Critical Theory and Art History in the School of Art at Carnegie Mellon University. Her book, Readymade Sound: Andy Warhol’s Recording Aesthetics, is forthcoming from University of California Press, Berkeley and her essays and reviews have appeared in October, Frieze, Art Papers and in the edited collections Women’s Experimental Cinema (2007), Lowering the Boom: Critical Studies in Film Sound (2008), Andy Warhol Live (2008), and Oxford Handbook of Sound and Image (2013).