Framing the Artist: Cultural Analysis and the Myths of Cindy Sherman

Michelle Meagher

Johnson Center, D
May 01, 2005, 08:00 PM to 07:00 PM

Abstract:

This dissertation examines the multiple and contradictory discourses that circulate around and through the body of work produced by the New York based photographer Cindy Sherman since 1977. The dissertation attends primarily to the processes by which Sherman's work has been framed by the rules of art, by the insistences of postmodernism, by narratives about feminism, and by prevailing assumptions about self-portraiture, subjectivity, and embodiment. It is broadly conceived as a set of interventions into these discourses that is enabled by the interdisciplinary approaches advocated by feminist theory and cultural studies.