Skip to Main Content
 

Global Search Box

 
 
 
 

ETD Abstract Container

Abstract Header

Border aesthetics: the photograph as fictionalized document in Norma Cantu's Canicula, Art Spiegelman's Maus, and Rea Tajiri's History and Memory

Elliott, Maren Nelson

Abstract Details

2003, Master of Arts, Ohio State University, Comparative Studies.
In this paper I will analyze how three American autobiographers negotiate the contradiction between photographic fact and autobiographical fiction. In Norma Elia Cantu’s Canicula, in Art Spiegelman’s MAUS, and in Rea Tajiri’s History and Memory photographs are used to document past lives. While they present the photographs as factual evidence of the past, each crafts an aesthetic to emphasize the fictional, constructed nature of their photographs: Cantu develops an aesthetic of the border, Spiegelman an aesthetic of postmemory, and Tajiri an aesthetic of absence to emphasize the subjective world of emotions and fantasies as an important part of memory, autobiography, and photography. All three of these works operate with a complex understanding that their family photos are fictionalized yet also retain their documentary force.
Julia Watson (Advisor)
Philip Armstrong (Committee Member)
Maurice Stevens (Committee Member)
102 p.

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Elliott, M. N. (2003). Border aesthetics: the photograph as fictionalized document in Norma Cantu's Canicula, Art Spiegelman's Maus, and Rea Tajiri's History and Memory [Master's thesis, Ohio State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1406719850

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Elliott, Maren. Border aesthetics: the photograph as fictionalized document in Norma Cantu's Canicula, Art Spiegelman's Maus, and Rea Tajiri's History and Memory. 2003. Ohio State University, Master's thesis. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1406719850.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Elliott, Maren. "Border aesthetics: the photograph as fictionalized document in Norma Cantu's Canicula, Art Spiegelman's Maus, and Rea Tajiri's History and Memory." Master's thesis, Ohio State University, 2003. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1406719850

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)