unit 1

History of Humanities, 2024

This collaborative essay considers how India's multiple, time-deep, and sophisticated literary cultures can contribute to a canon of global literary theory. Reconstructing premodern Indian literary theories of allusion and translation, we seek to bring new voices into the global discussion. The first part explores a theory of allusion in conversation with a work of Sanskrit literary theory, Ruyyaka's Treasure of Ornaments. In the second part, the focus is on retellings of stories in the premodern Persianate world. The device of the frame story, as found in collections of animal fables like the Sanskrit Pañcatantra and the Perso-Islamic Kalila wa Dimna and in the racy tales in the Śukasaptati (Sanskrit) and Tutinama (Persian), was accompanied by one or more translator's prefaces. These instances are viewed as examples of "metalepsis," highlighting the self-referential structure of narrative and demarcating the boundary between the worlds of the narrator and story.

2021

This thesis is based on how Isabella d\u27Este (1474-1539) cultivated her extensive collection of rare antiques and art, given the parallel evolution of her art commissions and political concerns as it pertains to iconography and feminism. Instead of discussing what previous scholars have researched concerning Isabella d’Este, this thesis will incorporate the iconography as it pertains to her commissions in a historiographical sense, as well as argue why this iconography would eventually become a beacon for feminist discussion. This will primarily examine Isabella’s commissions from 1494 to 1507, including her earliest portraits and the first four paintings of her studiolo. This will include background of iconographic theory alongside how Isabella wanted herself depicted as a powerful court lady of Mantua from a feminist standpoint

2007