The Cupola 2017

The Cupola

Christopher Newport University

2016 – 2017

Research is the essential element of the scholar's craft. It is the means by which scholars pay forward into the fund of human knowledge the debt owed to their predecessors. At its best, research honors the past while enriching the future.

--Dr. Richard M. Summerville CNU Provost 1982-1995, 2001-2007

The title of our online undergraduate research journal references the architectural feature that tops Trible Library, thus honoring Cupola authors as the preeminent student researchers at CNU. In support of its mission, CNU's Undergraduate and Graduate Research Committee (UGRC) honors and promotes up to six outstanding student research papers by publishing them in The Cupola. Student researchers published in The Cupola receive a cash award supported by the Douglas K. Gordon Endowed Undergraduate and Graduate Research Fund.

Submissions are judged based on: • integration of research • originality / creativity • rhetorical qualities / style • advancement of liberal learning The Cupola Award is presented to students whose research papers were selected from the top papers submitted to the Undergraduate and Graduate Research Committee. Winners receive $500 and their paper published in The Cupola, CNU’s web based journal for undergraduate research.

The top papers received the Douglas K. Gordon Cupola Award.

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The Cupola 2016 – 2017

TABLE OF CONTENTS

“The Methods of Coercion: Propaganda and the Wehrmacht”

4 – 32

by Matthew R. Horn “Master of None and Charged Humor

33 - 63

by Kristen Pierce “Mechanism of a Fat-Based Diet as a Cancer Therapy

64 – 78

by Andrew Moyer “The Uncharted and Fragmented: Inside the Mind of the Master Sculptor”

79 – 108

by Sarah Field “The Presentation of Race and Racism as Viewed through Mozart's Operas” 109 – 133

by Samantha Massey

Douglas K. Gordon Award

“The Artist at War: The Marine Corps Combat Art Program in Vietnam”

by Mary Leonard Douglas K. Gordon Award

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134 – 170

The Methods of Coercion: Propaganda and the Wehrmacht Matthew R. Horn

History 490 Dr. Puaca 4/24/17

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Konrad Jarausch was a soldier in the German Army from 1939 until his death in January of 1942. During this time, Jarausch experienced a career that was fairly typical of a soldier in the Wehrmacht. He trained in Germany, was stationed in occupied Poland, and fought in the Soviet Union, where he died.1 Jarausch left a record of his time in the armed forces by sending numerous letters home to his family detailing his experiences, leading his son, eminent German historian Konrad H. Jarausch, to describe this record of correspondence as a “letter diary.”2 The experiences described in this letter diary shed a great deal of light on the sort of atrocities German soldiers witnessed or committed. Although none of Jarausch’s letters indicate that he personally murdered any civilians, a number of passages in the letters, especially after the invasion of the Soviet Union, showcase a mindset that is at the very least accepting of such actions. The soldier describes the landscape and culture of the Soviet Union as follows: “Here one sees the old Russian world: filthy, without any German sense of order, but yet filled with life, and right next to it these modern buildings.”3 He further relates the progress of the war in the following terms, in a letter dated November 6, 1941: “Bolshevism is being ruthlessly stamped out, wherever we encounter it. The same thing goes for the Jewish element.”4 Jarausch does not appear to have led anything other than an average life, which leads one to believe that the attitudes expressed in his writings were typical for a German soldier during this time period. How, then, did soldiers such as Jarausch become accomplices, even if reluctant, to the German campaign of annihilation in the east?

The rise of the National Socialist German Worker’s Party (Nazi Party or NSDAP) in Germany during the early 1930’s saw the ascension of a loosely-defined ideology that was based

1 Konrad Jarausch, Reluctant Accomplices, (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 2011), Preface.

2 Ibid.

3 Ibid, 249.

4 Ibid, 319.

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largely on the principle that the will of the party leader, Adolf Hitler, was the highest ideal. This idea was known as the Führerprinzip, or leader principle. Indeed, the rhetoric of the Nazi Party was very rarely, if ever, more than parroting of Hitler’s words and a series of odd theories and pseudoscience designed to give the Nazi Party some manner of intellectual weight. However, the methods by which the party persuaded the masses often had a religious undertone, with Hitler often being cast as a sort of deity.5 Indeed, Nazi slogans generally emphasized the duty of the German people to follow Hitler, and even cast Hitler as a sort of embodiment of the German state and the German people. An example of this came at the end of Leni Riefenstahl’s propaganda film Triumph of the Will, when deputy Führer Rudolf Hess proclaimed that “The Party is Hitler!

But Hitler is Germany, as Germany is Hitler!”6 Such proclamations were extremely effective in securing the support of a large portion of the German people. However, in the years following the catastrophic defeat of the Nazi regime in the Second World War, there was a concerted effort by various Germans to explain that the country and its institutions had only been hijacked by Hitler and the Nazis, and that the German people never really supported the atrocities which had been committed by the regime before and during the war. For example, Erich von Manstein, a general in the German Army (Wehrmacht), explained in his autobiography Verlorene Siege (Lost Victories) that “While Hitler could certainly not reproach the army with disloyalty towards the State, it was quite obviously not going to throw its military principles in favour of the National Socialist ‘ideology.’”7 This was a crucial point in the early years of the German people’s reckoning with the deeds committed by their countrymen in their name during the Nazi era. The public was naturally all too quick to seize on the idea that the German army had conducted itself professionally

5 Randall Bytwerk. Bending Spines: The propagandas of Nazi Germany and the German Democratic Republic. (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2004), 5-6 6 Triumph of the Will, directed by Leni Riefenstahl, (Universum Film AG, 1934).

7 Erich von Manstein, Lost Victories, trans. Anthony G. Powell, (Minneapolis, Zenith Press, 2004). 77

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and with honor, and that the atrocities of the Holocaust and massacres of prisoners of war had been the acts of rank-and-file Nazis, the likes of which never penetrated the ranks of the Wehrmacht.

However, this notion of a “clean Wehrmacht” is indefensible from a scholarly perspective.

Mountains of evidence exist which prove beyond any possible objection that the Wehrmacht was responsible for the massacre of hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of civilians and prisoners of war. With the complicity of the Wehrmacht with the Nazi war crimes having been established beyond a shadow of a doubt by countless historians over the previous two decades, it becomes vital to answer the question of how “ordinary men” could be turned into tools of murder.8 It is apparent that Nazi ideology permeated the Wehrmacht through the same methods of propaganda which were used to indoctrinate German civilians; however, the effects of such rhetoric were even more effective in corrupting soldiers. It is certainly more difficult to convince a person to commit mass murder and fight to the bitter end of a lost cause than it is to convince civilians to support a political regime; and the fact that Wehrmacht soldiers were willing to follow ghastly orders is indicative of a top-down regime of indoctrination combined with intense peer pressure in a closed military environment.

The reputation of the Wehrmacht both in Germany and internationally has gone through a number of dramatic changes. During the war, of course, the Army occupied a place of reverence among the German people, with ceremonies commemorating the fallen even being attended by Hitler himself.9 The Allies, naturally, saw the Wehrmacht as the enemy army, and contemporary reports of German war crimes ran rampant through Allied nations.10 The Nuremberg Trials

8 Christopher Browning, Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland. (London, Penguin Books, 1992).

9 Die Deutsche Wochenschau, (Universum Film AG, 1941) 10 Warning to German occupation forces against deporting Jews from Greece, broadcast 1943, British Broadcasting Corporation.

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presented the first chance to write the history of the Wehrmacht, as many of the major commanders were tried for their roles in numerous war crimes. Indeed, a report on the share of responsibility for the crimes among the army command proclaimed that “All the German commanding generals and officers in the occupied territories and in Germany itself, whether in the fighting forces or the military administration, share in the responsibility for the execution of the annihilation.”11 At a minimum, reports at Nuremberg condemned the Nazis for having waged a “war of aggression”12, and that the Wehrmacht was the means of waging this war. Moreover, the conviction and execution of leading Wehrmacht commanders such as Wilhelm Keitel and Alfred Jodl leave little doubt that the allies initially saw the defeated German army as part of the machine which propped up Hitler’s regime of murder.

By the middle of the 1950’s, however, the situation in the world began to change. The defeated Germans were at the center of a global power struggle between the United States and the Soviet Union, and both sides aimed to mold their portion of the divided Germany into a reliable ally.13 The Soviet-influenced German Democratic Republic was a dictatorship in its own right, and there was no safe way to look upon any part of the Hitler regime with anything other than contempt.14 However, there was considerably more freedom of thought in the Western-influenced Federal Republic of Germany; and consequently, there was more room for Wehrmacht-friendly myths in the west. It was in this climate that Erich von Manstein, one of Hitler’s most talented field commanders, penned an autobiography focusing on his war experiences in 1955. The book proved to be one of the first major published works to claim that the Wehrmacht had been separate

11 Records of the World Jewish Congress, "Criminal Conspiracy, Those Responsible, Army Level, Part III", 1945 12 Records of the World Jewish Congress, "Criminal Conspiracy, Charge Six: Deportation, Part II", 1945 13 David Clay Large, “Reckoning without the Past: The HIAG of the Waffen-SS and the Politics of Rehabilitation in the Bonn Republic, 1950- 1961”, The Journal of Modern History, Vol. 59, No. 1 (Mar, 1987), 80-81 14 Ibid.

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from the Nazi regime and largely innocent of the sort of crimes against humanity that had been publicized at Nuremberg. This is partially accomplished by the aforementioned scapegoating of Hitler’s military incompetence. However, Manstein takes special care to emphasize the proud tradition of the German army, which, he claims, made the Nazification of the army infeasible.15 This sort of sentiment is echoed in the introduction for the book’s 1981 edition, written by Max Blumenson, which reads as follows: “The tragedy for all thoughtful, knowledgeable, and sensitive German soldiers like Manstein was the dilemma of trying faithfully to serve their country while disapproving the Führer’s aims and methods.”16 While the biases of the general are clear and detract from the book’s value as a historical source, the pushing of this myth of an innocent German army has been particularly damaging. To whitewash the history of the complicity of millions of people is to prevent the perpetrators of terrible crimes from being held to account, whether in courts or to history. Such disinformation, therefore, is not only detrimental to the value of this primary source as a historical work, but renders the book tarnished by the rationalizations of a guilty man on behalf of his guilty comrades.

The myth of a clean Wehrmacht dominated the public discourse from the middle of the 1950s to the middle of the 1990s. The myth took hold in a variety of different forms. Other memoirs by Wehrmacht generals used largely the same explanation. Heinz Guderian’s memoir, Panzer Leader, follows in this vein. Guderian repeatedly blames Hitler and a small number of the High Command for the actions of the Nazi regime. He writes that the Blomberg-Fritsch affair, the Night of the Long Knives, and the absorption of Czechoslovakia as a protectorate were all beyond the control of the General Staff.17 Some writings subscribed to the myth by simply glossing over

15 Manstein, Lost Victories, 77.

16 Max Blumenson, introduction to Lost Victories, by Erich von Manstein, (Minneapolis, Zenith Press, 2004), 10 17 Heinz Guderian, Trans. Constantine Fitzgibbon. Panzer leader. (Cambridge: Da Capo Press, 1996), 49, 65.

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the ideological and racial aspects of the war. Historian Paul Carell’s book, Hitler moves East, 1941-1943, is an example of a book that is influenced by Manstein’s narrative due to its singleminded approach to the war. Most of the book is devoted to a description of military actions and maneuvers.18 This approach is not an invalid way to write history, and even is valuable for those hoping to better understand the tactics and strategic aims of the war. However, a book that focuses purely on the professionalism of the Wehrmacht does a disservice to the historical record, as it provides ammunition to those who wish to absolve the German army of wrongdoing. However, the most vivid articulation of the myth came from the historian Hans Mommsen in his book Kriegserfarhungen: The picture drawn by the regime’s propaganda of troops fanatically fighting for the National Socialist cause, was false even concerning the elite formations of the Waffen-SS… the mentality of the average Landser was characterized by soberness, rejection of the far-from reality propaganda tirades, and a firm will personally to survive… the partisan war led to an unprecedented brutalization of the conduct of the war by both sides. But the average soldier had little influence on this and could hardly find a way to avoid the escalation of violence.19 This argument, specifically the assertion that soldiers were fighting for their own survival, is absurd. If one’s primary concern is self-preservation, one will not continue fighting a hopeless war, as the soldiers of the Wehrmacht did.

The myth of a clean Wehrmacht can no longer be considered an acceptable form of historical thought in light of evidence that surfaced in the 1990’s regarding the role of the regular army in the various war crimes and atrocities committed during the war. The uncovering of numerous direct written orders to the various units in the East compelling soldiers to partake in massacres in order to subdue the civilian population, as well as countless photographs, letters from the front, and testimonies regarding soldiers partaking in massacres and related atrocities leave no

18 Paul Carell, Hitler moves East, 1941-1943. (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1963) 19 Hans Mommsen, Kriegserfahrungen, 13, as quoted in Bartov, Hitler’s Army, 146-147.

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room to deny the complicity of the Wehrmacht in those crimes. One of the most influential works on the subject was written by Omer Bartov, entitled Hitler’s Army. Published in 1991, Bartov’s book showcases a mountain of evidence that not only convicts the Wehrmacht of war crimes, but illuminates the thoughts of the soldiers committing the atrocities as well. Bartov extensively utilizes letters and diary entries from German soldiers in Russia, and these writings reveal a disturbing willingness on the part of the soldiers to commit, or at least justify, the massacres.

Bartov writes: “Once the fighting began, rather than attempt to temper their troops’ brutality, many commanders… strove to instill into them a greater understanding for, and a firmer will to participate in, the brutalities deemed essential for the victorious outcome of this ‘war of ideologies.’”20 The author makes his position on the idea of clean Wehrmacht perfectly plain, writing of the “Wehrmacht’s criminal conduct in the East.”21 Bartov has written extensively on this subject and remains a leading scholar in the field of Wehrmacht history. Concurrent with his book, Bartov wrote an article entitled Soldiers, Nazis, and War in the Third Reich for the Journal of Modern History wherein he presented a largely parallel argument to that presented in his book.

In the article, Bartov presents an even clearer thesis than in his book, stating that the army “increasingly came to reflect German civilian society”22 with its support of the Nazi regime. This school of thought (to be referred to from here on as the Bartov School) surrounding the Wehrmacht has become the most widely accepted scholarly view on the subject of army involvement in war crimes, largely due to the weight of evidence making it impossible to reasonably deny the involvement of the Wehrmacht in said crimes.

20 Bartov, Hitler’s Army, 129.

21 Ibid, 10.

22 Omer Bartov, “Soldiers, Nazis, and War in the Third Reich”, The Journal of Modern History, Vol. 63, No. 1 (Mar., 1991), 44.

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There has been no shortage of research on the subject of Wehrmacht atrocities in the nearly thirty years since Bartov published his first writings on the subject. Waitman W. Beorn, Jennifer L. Foray, Mark Mazower, Christopher Neumaier, and Konrad Jarausch, to name a few, have contributed books and articles on the subject of Nazi ideology in the Wehrmacht and the frequent war crimes committed by German soldiers in occupied territories. Waitman Beorn, for example, followed in the footsteps of Bartov by writing both a book and at least one article on the subject of Army crimes against humanity. In both, Beorn argues that the soldiers of the Wehrmacht were led to believe that the partisan actions they faced in the USSR were carried out by Jews. In his book, Marching into Darkness, Beorn refers to a number of incidents which showcase the extent to which Nazism had infiltrated the ranks of the Wehrmacht. For example, he writes that a number of officers were commissioned due largely to their ideological commitment.23 Moreover, the author argues that the presence of lower officers at the Mogilev conference (where it was decided that massacres of Jewish civilians would be justified as part of the anti-partisan campaign) validates the notion that massacres were supported by the lower officer corps.24 Further expanding on this theme, Beorn writes that the universal conscription implemented as part of Germany’s war footing brought a number of civilians into the ranks of the armed forces who had been educated in the Nazi school system, and were therefore already heavily indoctrinated into the National Socialist mindset.25 Beorn wrote more on the subject of National Socialism in the Wehrmacht in an article for Central European History in 2011. The article opens with the following quote from a soldier: “In October 1941, it was said that the Jews of this town were to be liquidated. Because

23 Waitman Wade Beorn. Marching into Darkness . (Cambridge: Massachusetts, Harvard University Press, 2014), 136-137 24 Ibid, 92-93 25 Ibid, 50-55.

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they did things with the partisans. Who said this first, I can't say. It spread by word of mouth”26 The fact that soldiers simply accepted that an entire town was to be murdered indicates a closed loop of information which precluded any mercy towards the potential victims. Further research into Wehrmacht crimes reveal that atrocities were not limited to the Eastern Front.

It is crucial to note that atrocities occurred in every Nazi-occupied territory, and not just the eastern sections. There has been a good deal of scholarship on actions in the west. Christopher Neumaier, for example, wrote an article on the behavior of the occupation forces in France during the initial years of the occupation there. Interestingly, Neumaier’s research finds an attitude among the Germans in France that mirrored that of the soldiers in the Soviet Union: that those who opposed the occupation were infiltrated by “Jewish Bolsheviks.”27 Jennifer Foray’s article, entitled The 'Clean Wehrmacht' in the German-occupied Netherlands, 1940–5, argues that the Wehrmacht’s attempts to remain an apolitical entity in the West were “ultimately for naught.”28 Mark Mazower’s article on the subject of the German occupation of Greece opens with a chilling account of a raid on a Greek village that killed 317 people in a village of 600.29 The raid appears to have been conducted as a military action, with heavily armed soldiers storming the area.30 Although Mazower notes that a number of soldiers voiced objections to these sorts of actions, he points out that these objections were ignored, and the atrocities were carried out in spite of them.31 Mazower further asserts that the power of the National Socialist ideology was sufficient to

26 Waitman W. Beorn, “A Calculus of Complicity: The ‘Wehrmacht’, the Anti-Partisan War, and the Final Solution in White Russia, 1941-42” Central European History, Vol. 44, No. 2, (June, 2011), 308.

27 Christopher Neumaier, “The Escalation of German Reprisal Policy in Occupied France, 1941-42” Journal of Contemporary History, Vol. 41, No. 1 (January, 2006), 115.

28 Jennifer L. Foray “The 'Clean Wehrmacht' in the German-occupied Netherlands, 1940–5” Journal of Contemporary History, Vol. 45, No. 4, (October, 2010), 769.

29 Mazower, Mark. “Military Violence and National Socialist Values: The Wehrmacht in Greece 1941-1944” Past & Present, No. 134 (February, 1992), 129-158.

30 Ibid.

31 Ibid, 134.

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overcome soldiers’ better impulses.32 It is important to understand that Wehrmacht atrocities were not limited to the Eastern Front, and these sources are crucial pieces of historical evidence regarding this fact.

A number of explanations for these actions and attitudes have been proffered by the various historians of the subject.

Bartov, for example, argues that a certain measure of cognitive

dissonance on the part of the soldiers, along with the pervasive influence of the propaganda ministry and the totalitarian nature of the Nazi system.33 This is a good explanation of the general causes of a murderous mindset. However, although Bartov grants due credit to the propaganda campaigns for the distorted worldview of Wehrmacht soldiers, he places a bit too much emphasis on the casualties and fortunes of the Wehrmacht in the war as the cause of the proliferation of Nazism in the ranks. Indeed, an entire chapter of Hitler’s Army is dedicated almost completely to the massive casualties suffered in the first months of the Russian campaign, with very little relation to the topic of Wehrmacht atrocities and their causes beyond a rather sloppy tie-in paragraph at the end of the chapter. It is important to scrupulously examine the methods utilized by the Nazi regime to inspire singular and deadly loyalty from their soldiers.

Propaganda in Hitler’s Germany was designed primarily to destroy the acceptability of opposition to Nazi ideology among German citizens. The political system of Weimar Germany had produced over two dozen political parties with representation in the Reichstag, and countless more small parties with extreme and contradictory ideologies. Although the National Socialists had become the largest of these various parties by the time Hitler was appointed as Chancellor in January of 1933, the success of a Hitler regime was dependent on the ability of the party to suppress dissent.

32 Ibid.

33 Bartov, Hitler’s Army, 106-108.

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The suppression of dissent invariably involves the use of intimidation through vandalism, economic boycotts, and violence, whether in the streets or through imprisonment. In order for citizens to accept the legitimacy of a government operating in this manner, they must be convinced of the righteousness of the regime’s cause and the evils of those who become targets of persecution.

As previously noted, Nazi propaganda was composed first of a deification of Hitler as being more than a mortal man.34 Poems about his leadership used unmistakably religious language, including references to a “savior”, who imparts “blessings” on the German people.35 In a society where a leader is glorified to a similar extent as a god, opposition becomes very difficult for a person to justify to themselves or to others. How can one oppose a savior? However, the more powerful impulses of such propaganda involve the treatment of the savior’s opponents.

The demonization of disfavored groups and political opponents in Nazi Germany was intense and unceasing. Bolsheviks and Jews, the two groups which received the greatest share of Nazi hatred, were the targets of many attacks from the propaganda machine and ministry.

Numerous posters portrayed communists as red-colored animals extending their control across the globe, with only members of the Sturmabteilung (SA), Schutzstaffel (SS), and the Wehrmacht standing as a countermeasure. Jews were often portrayed as rat-like creatures, which was a support of Hitler’s rhetoric of Jews as an “unclean” race. A prime example of Nazi demonization of the Jewish people is the 1940 film Der Ewige Jude (The Eternal Jew), which contains an infamous sequence wherein a voiceover describes the evils of the Jews while images of street rats are shown on the screen. Propaganda of this nature was proliferated in support of the legal persecutions of Communists and Jews, such as the Nuremburg laws of 1935, which stripped German Jews of their citizenship. The study of Nazi propaganda has been vigorous in the years since the collapse of the

34 Bytwerk, Bending Spines, 16.

35 Ibid, 15.

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Nazi regime in 1945.

However, a great deal of these studies examine the effects of the

misinformation on the civilian population, and ignore the use of misinformation and Nazi rhetoric on the armed forces. It is vital to understand the spread of Nazi ideology in the Wehrmacht, as the crimes of the Nazi regime during the Second World War would not have been possible without willing executors.

The Nazi regime, led by the Ministry for Propaganda and Enlightenment under Joseph Goebbels, employed a variety of sophisticated mass media strategies to indoctrinate the German people into following the deadly aspects of the ruling ideology. Randall L. Bytwerk asserts that one of the more unique, and in a sense religious, aspects of totalitarian ideologies such as Nazism or Communism is the extent to which the beliefs of the ideology permeate every aspect of one’s existence. He writes: One would not expect an American political party’s platform to determine daily activities. A Republican is not obliged to see a Democrat as someone so misguided as to merit imprisonment, torture, or death. Being a Democrat does not compel one to hold a particular opinion of art or to adopt a Democratic marriage ritual. Party members are not expected to share the same dogmatic view on the nature of language or agree on how the Girl Scouts should conduct their activities.

Standard political parties, in short, are groups of people with overlapping but not identical attitudes and interests who do not expect their parties to resolve all of life’s questions.36 Any sort personal autonomy, independent of the party, was not an option in Hitler’s Germany.

Not even the sort of music one preferred was free from party influence. In Germany, for example, the Propaganda ministry of Joseph Goebbels was in full control over the German airwaves, and determined what the citizens of Germany could listen to. The political content of the radio programming in Germany was determined by Goebbels in 1933, and subsequent efforts were made to ensure every German family had a radio.37 However, Goebbels’ efforts to these ends were not in any sense scientific, as Randall Bytwerk repeatedly asserts. According to Bytwerk, Hitler saw

36 Bytwerk, ”Bending Spines,” 13.

37 Horst Bergmeier and Rainer E. Lotz, Hitler’s airwaves, (New Haven and London, Yale University Press, 1997) 6-8.

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propaganda as a means of “public education,”38 and that the best methods yet discovered for such persuasion were “emotional appeal, simplicity, repetition, force, leadership, and faith.”39 The author argues further that “the closer a method of propaganda is to the masses, the more directly it reaches them, the more powerful it will be.”40 These doctrines of emotional appeals and simplicity came to define most pieces of Nazi propaganda. In a bit of irony, one of the main tenets of Nazi propaganda, the concept of a “big lie” was based on the underlying complexity of such a lie.

Bytwerk argues that the concept of a “big lie” was based not on repetition, but on the lack of refutation available to such a lie. He writes “(Hitler’s) point was that a small lie (for example, ‘The mayor is a convicted embezzler’) is less plausible than a larger one (for example, ‘The Jews are engaged in a worldwide conspiracy.’).”41 A false claim of a person being criminal is easily disproven by the public record, while such a vast lie is virtually unassailable. Such principles of deceptive persuasion, or as Bartov would refer to it, the distortion of reality, were the core of Nazi propaganda techniques.

Another core of Nazi propaganda was the aforementioned “International Jewish Conspiracy.” Although the term was vague, the concept made an irreversible connection in Nazi doctrine between the Jews and Marxism, as Hitler saw Marxism as a plot by the Jews to undermine national identity.42 Hitler articulated what he saw as the main point of his ideology when he stated that “by substituting pacifism for conflict, internationalism for race, and democracy for the individual Marxism was effectively a declaration of war on ‘the three basic foundations on which

38 Bytwerk, “Bending Spines,” 42-43.

39 Ibid, 43.

40 Bytwerk, Bending Spines, 42.

41 Bytwerk, “Bending Spines,” 44.

42 Lorna Waddington, “Hitler’s Crusade: Bolshevism and the myth of the International Jewish Conspiracy.”

(London, Taurus Academic Studies, 2007,) 17.

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mankind rests.’”43 The foundations of Nazi propaganda were therefore well established by Hitler’s association of Marxism with an imagined “International Jewish Conspiracy.” The methods of dissemination of such propaganda were limited by the technologies of the time, but Joseph Goebbels and, in a few cases, Hitler himself, were able to make maximum use of radio and film to persuade the German people into following them into war. As effective as the various methods of propaganda were at indoctrinating the German people, the soldiers of the Wehrmacht were even more susceptible to propaganda given the close-knit environment and violent attitudes inherent in a military setting.

A major event concerning the fate of Jewish civilians in the Soviet Union was the occurrence of the Mogilev Conference in September, 1941. This conference standardized the view among the ranks of the Wehrmacht that Jews were an integral part of partisan units. While there can be no doubt that a portion of the partisan demography were made up of Jewish individuals, the result of the conference was a belief among soldiers that there was no substantive difference between Jews and partisans.44 The results of this new attitude were terrifying. To begin with, a soldier will harbor great hostility towards his enemies, no matter the reason for the war. In a combat scenario, a soldier’s primary goal is to survive and to be victorious, and any impediment towards those goals will naturally be met with antagonism and even hatred. These standard military attitudes, along with the racial hatred inherent in National Socialist ideology, combined to create an atmosphere wherein soldiers were willing to carry out all manner of heinous actions against civilian populations. It is important to note that although orders often came from the higher ranks, the participants in the Mogilev conference were predominantly lower ranking officers, such

43 Ibid.

44 Beorn. Marching into Darkness, 92-93

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as lieutenants.45 This was part of an ongoing effort by the Nazi regime to remake the ranks of the Wehrmacht in the image of the ruling party. Indeed, even prior to the war, promotions were often granted on the basis of political loyalty. This was especially the case with Gustav Freiherr von Mauchenheim, a rabid anti-Semite who rose to a position of prominence in the officer corps.46 A number of the massacres with which German soldiers were involved were carried out with enthusiasm by the perpetrators. For example, German troops carried out a massacre of civilians in Slonim with ruthless efficiency during the early stages of the Russian campaign.47 Just as disturbing as the occurrence of these massacres, however, was the erstwhile readiness with which German soldiers carried out these actions. Victims of the reprisal policies of the Wehrmacht were referred to by their killers as “plunderers”, “followers of Bolshevism”, and “looters.”48 Members of a particular regiment even volunteered to carry out a mass execution.49 Given the attitudes of the German soldiers, it is unlikely that this particular unit was the only one to offer their services in this manner. Indeed, one soldier wrote regarding the executions: “You see how these pigs want to rob us of everything at the last moment. We know that these crooks are all freemasons, which means that they are all devoted to, or rather enslaved by, International Jewry.

Pity I couldn’t join in the action against these rogues.”50 Further proof of the Wehrmacht mindset tying Jews and partisans together can be found in the following statistic: In the first nine months of the eastern Front, 63,257 people listed as partisans were killed, compared to just 638 Wehrmacht

45 Ibid, 139.

46 Beorn, Marching into Darkness, 136-137.

47 Ibid, 135-136 48 Ibid, 140.

49 Ibid, 143.

50 Hannes Heer, Walther Manoscheck, Alexander Pollak, Ruth Wadak, trans. Steven Filgestone. The Discursive Construction of History: Remembering the Wehrmacht’s War of Annihilation. (Chippenham: Palgrave MacMillan, 2008) 44-45.

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personnel dead in the area. These were either very ineffective partisans, or they were simply civilians being massacred under the pretext of anti-partisan actions.51 Support for the Nazi regime materialized quickly among the general population as a result of a return to stability and increased economic prosperity. However, the Nazis appeared to have a slightly easier time in preparing the army to carry out Hitler’s aims. Although there was some initial tension between the regime and the army, Hitler was able to secure the loyalty of the armed forces during the summer of 1934 with the purge of SA leadership as a part of the Night of the Long Knives on June 30. Although the execution of old political allies was a sign of commitment on the dictator’s part, the larger factor in gaining the allegiance of the rank and file officers appears to have been related to the rearmament programs of the mid-1930s.

In order to understand the mindset of the soldiers in Hitler’s army, it is necessary to examine the words of individual officers and soldiers. Given their visibility and positions of authority, it is prudent to begin such an examination by investigating the quotations of two highlyregarded generals: Erich von Manstein and Heinz Guderian. Despite their later roles in the dissemination of the clean Wehrmacht myth, it is evident that the two generals were highly supportive of Hitler’s aims. However, their motives appear to have differed, with Guderian exemplifying a sort of political allegiance based on an appreciation of Hitler’s attention to military expansion and Manstein exhibiting more acceptance of Nazi ideology. Regarding Guderian, Bartov writes that “he… featured prominently among Hitler’s enthusiastic supporters, not merely because the Führer made possible the realization of his technological dreams… but because he became convinced of the most fundamental tenets of National Socialism.”52 Thus, argues Bartov, Guderian refers not only to the younger officers when he writes about the soldiers becoming

51 Ibid, 18.

52 Bartov, Hitler’s Army, 138.

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“inflamed by the patriotic theories propounded by Hitler and his followers”53 Manstein appears to have been more openly accepting of National Socialism in his writings and statements. An order issued by Manstein to his troops in November of 1941 could just as easily have come from the Ministry for Propaganda and Enlightenment: “Since 22 June the German Volk in the midst of a battle for life and death against the Bolshevik system… Judaism constitutes the mediator between the enemy in the rear and the still fighting remnants of the Red Army.”54 Manstein continues with a more explicit call to action: “The Jewish-Bolshevik system must be eradicated once and for all…

The German soldier is charged… with the task of destroying the power instrument of this system.”55 Orders from the German high command made clear the task which was to be carried out against the civilian populations. An order issued on July 23, 1941, stipulated that soldiers were to “spread the kind of terror which is the only suitable means of suppressing any inclination towards resistance in the population.”56 Some orders were issued prior to Operation Barbarossa, regarding the procedures for dealing with captured Soviet political leaders. One such order, known as the Kommisarbefehl (Commissar Order), mandated that German soldiers were to “use their weapons to immediately dispose of” every captured Commissar attached to the Red Army.57 In some instances, actions by partisan forces were used by Wehrmacht commanders as a pretext for massive and deadly retaliations against the civilian populations. One such incident occurred on October 21, 1941, with the following order from the Wehrmacht’s post headquarters in Kragujevac: “The

53 Heinz Guderian, Trans. Constantine Fitzgibbon. Panzer leader. (Cambridge: Da Capo Press, 1996), 436, as quoted in Bartov, Hitler’s Army, 138. th 54 Erich von Manstein, Order to the 11 Army, November 20, 1941, as quoted in Bartov, Hitler’s Army, 130.

55 Ibid.

56 Wehrmacht order, July 23, 1941, as quoted in The German Army and Genocide: Crimes against War Prisoners, Jews, and Other Civilians in the East, 1939-1944. (New York: New Press, 1999.) 156 57 Commissar Order, issued June 6, 1941, as quoted in The German Army and Genocide, 144.

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cowardly and insidious attacks on German soldiers last week… must be atoned. For every German soldier killed, 100 local inhabitants will be shot. For every soldier wounded, 50 will be shot.”58 This order specified that most of the civilians selected for execution were to be “primarily Communists, bandits, and their accomplices.”59 This particular order, as well as an order issued by the Military Administration Headquarters in Kiev in September, 1941, regarding the fate of the Jewish population in Kiev, are two of many orders which were written not for any grand strategic military purpose, but to fulfill the aims of the National Socialist ideology which had captivated the commanders and the soldiers of the armed forces.

The attitudes of the generals were shared by the enlisted and conscripted men under their command.

A widow of a fallen tank commander recalled that her husband, Karl Fuchs,

“volunteered for the tank corps because this unit seemed to be the most important to him. His letters from the front speak of his deep love for the Fatherland and the strong belief in the Führer.”60 Other soldiers echoed the attitudes of Karl Fuchs. A private in the 296th infantry division wrote a letter from Kiev in September of 1941. This particular soldier wrote “The city (Kiev) has been burning for eight days, everything is done by the Jews. In response the Jews from the ages of 14 to 60 have been shot and the wives of the Jews will be shot too, otherwise there will be no end to this.”61 Some soldiers were eager to carry out the awful task of murdering hundreds, or even thousands, of civilians at once. A situation report regarding the activities of the Einsatzgruppen (execution squads) indicated that “there is constantly a growing interest in Wehrmacht circles in the tasks and concerns of police work… Furthermore, the Wehrmacht is itself engaged in the tasks

58 Announcement by Post Commander Kragujevac, October 21, 1941, as quoted in The German Army and Genocide, 70.

59 Ibid.

60 Helene Fuchs Richardson, Sieg Heil!, Archon publishers 104-105 as quoted in Bartov, Hitler’s Army, 115.

61 Letter from Private Ludwig B, September, 28,1941, as quoted in The German Army and Genocide, 92.

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and concerns of security police work.”62 Even when soldiers did not express outright enthusiasm or support for the massacres that were taking place, there was often a grim nonchalance when describing the horrors that were befalling the civilian population. Richard Heidenreich, a private in the 354th infantry regiment, exhibited these attitudes in his personal diary: “Our battalion was assigned the task of guarding 6,000 prisoners and shooting all the Jews in the city. At night, many of the prisoners tried to escape and we had to reach for our weapons. Our battalion alone finished off 500 Jews.”63 The head of the Security Police wrote rather callously about the mass executions which were taking place in the first months of the war: “After the corpses of a total of 10 German Wehrmacht soldiers had been discovered on 7/2, 1,160 Jews were shot with the help of a platoon of Order Police and an infantry platoon, in reprisal for the murder of German soldiers and Ukrainians.”64 A soldier writing a letter from the front in August, 1941, exhibited an astonishing ability to mention a massacre of civilians alongside relatively mundane topics, and even express pride in the events that were unfolding: “At the beginning of each news report the Belgrade station broadcasts a phrase from Beethoven’s 5th Symphony as a special ‘V’ signal… don’t be shocked if the number of executed Communists and Jews happens to be announced… Today a record was set! This morning 122 Communists and Jews were executed by us in Belgrade.”65 The soldiers, whether they were personally carrying out the massacres or not, seemed ambivalent at best and excited at worst towards the crimes being committed by the Wehrmacht. This mindset was indicative of a population of soldiers who believed the rhetoric which came from the Nazi Party which cast Jews and Bolsheviks as sub-humans who stood in the way of a pure German realm, and that the land occupied by these people existed only to be taken and populated by Germans. The

62 Operational Situation Report number 58, August 20, 1941, as quoted in The German Army and Genocide, 86.

63 Diary entry by Private Richard Heidenreich, July 1941, as quoted in The German Army and Genocide, 144.

64 Operational Situation Report Number 24, July 16, 1941, as quoted in The German Army and Genocide, 80.

65 Letter by Peter G, August, 1941, as quoted in The German Army and Genocide, 50.

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attitudes of conquest and extermination were reflective of an army that expected to conquer, to take the offensive, and to find victory. The message began to change as the battlefield situation did.

As the war continued and the military fortunes of Germany waned, the regime was required to change the tune of the propaganda in order to alter the realities of a defensive and increasingly hopeless campaign. Rather than emphasize the duty of the army to destroy partisans and secure Germany’s victory, orders from the high command and general propaganda began to emphasize the duty of the German soldiers to defend the pure, Germanic Europe against the Asiatic Bolsheviks. No longer was Bolshevism a force that was to be eradicated by the advancing German columns, but rather a menace which threatened to overrun Europe should the German Army fail to hold back the hordes at the door of Germanic Europe.

The military reversals of the winters of 1941-1942 and 1942-1943 on the Eastern Front, combined with the ill-advised declaration of war by Germany on the United States in December, 1941, presented a new set of challenges to Joseph Goebbels from a propaganda standpoint.66 Given the threat the Western Allies to Germany, and the relative antagonism of those countries to Bolshevism, the German propaganda regime required a connection between the mortal enemy in the East and the apparently unconnected powers in the West. The solution upon which Goebbels decided had a number of different elements. The first aspect of the new propaganda campaign began in earnest just after the disaster that befell the German Army at Stalingrad in February, 1943.

Goebbels delivered a speech at the Berlin Sportpalast on February 18, wherein the Propaganda Minister cast the war as an existential struggle for the fate of Europe. While the speech was directed at the civilian population in order to maintain public support for the war, the message of

66 Waddington, “Hitler’s Crusade,” 189.

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the speech, which cast the German war effort as a defense of European culture against the Bolsheviks. The speech called on the German people to increase their efforts on the home front in support of the war effort; however, the portrayal by Goebbels of the Wehrmacht as the only force on earth capable of defending “Not only Europe, but the entire world!”67 from Bolshevism and the “danger of International Jewry”68 had the effect of instilling within German soldiers a sense that their fight was to defend the world from an animalistic enemy. This attitude is evident in a number of letters and diary entries by German soldiers. One Luftwaffe pilot essentially repeated the rhetoric of the regime in his autobiography: the (sic) Red hordes are devastating our country… we must fight on. We shall only lay down our arms when our leaders give the order. That is our plain duty according to our military oath, it is our plain duty in view of the terrible fate which threatens us if we surrender unconditionally as the enemy insists. It is our plain duty also to destiny which has placed us geographically in the heart of Europe and which we have obeyed for centuries: to be the bulwark of Europe against the East.

Whether or not Europe understands or likes the role which fate has thrust upon us, or whether her attitude is one of fatal indifference or even of hostility, does not alter one iota our European duty.69 Amazingly, these sentiments were held by this particular pilot after the suicide of Adolf Hitler, an event which led to widespread disillusionment among many soldiers. Indeed, one member of the Hitler Youth, Dieter Borkowski, reacted with astonishing disillusionment when he learned of Hitler’s suicide. Borkowski wrote: “These words make me feel sick… I think that my life has no purpose anymore… Life has apparently become worthless, for if Hitler has shot himself, the Russians will have finally won.”70 To illustrate the strict adherence of the Nazi propaganda machine on the narrative of the war as a defense against Bolshevism, one needs to look no further than the first announcement of Hitler’s death on German radio. The broadcaster notes that

67 Joseph Goebbels, “Sportpalast Speech”,(Speech, Berlin, Germany, February 18, 1943,) (Author Translation) 68 Ibid.

69 D. Brader, “Foreword” to Stuka Pilot, Hans-Ulrich Rudel, as quoted in Bartov, Hitler’s Army, 139.

70 Dieter Borkowski, as quoted in R. Schörken, “Jugendalltag im Dritten Reich, in Geschichte im Alltag – Alltag in der Geschichte, ed. K. Bergmann and R. Schörken, (Düsseldorf, 1982), 238-239, as quoted in Bartov, Hitler’s Army, 110.

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“Reports have come from the Führer’s headquarters this afternoon that our Führer, Adolf Hitler, died for Germany as he fought to his last breath against Bolshevism.”71 It is apparent that the determination exhibited by the German soldiers in fighting the increasingly formidable Red Army in the later years of the war was a direct result of the propaganda which spread through the ranks which cast the Bolsheviks as monsters who would destroy Germany and Europe. However, antiBolshevik propaganda also explains the tenacity of the German soldiers fighting the AngloAmerican forces in Western Europe.

The second assertion of the Nazi propaganda machine during the later stages of the war was that the Western Allies were unable and unwilling to fight against Bolshevism, and their fighting alongside the Soviets made them little better than the Russian menace. German soldiers continued to fight on the Western Front for a number of reasons. The first of these factors was the widespread belief that by forming an alliance with the Soviets, the British and the Americans were antagonists to the Nazi pursuit of a racially pure world of Germanic hegemony. One soldier referred to the situation as follows: “The English and Americans are the biggest traitors to the white race and to the Germanic Culture.”72 The Anglo-American Allies were attacked by German propaganda in two distinct ways, with each line of attack reflecting a portion of National Socialist ideology.

The British, Goebbels claimed, were highly receptive to Bolshevik ideology.73

Furthermore, the British Government was said by the propaganda ministry to be determined to “surrender the European continent to Bolshevism.”74 The Americans received particular hatred from the propaganda regime, as American society was seen as a particularly egregious violation of National Socialist ideals concerning racial homogeneity. These attitudes concerning the United

71 German Radio Announcement, Hiter ist gefallen, recorded 1945. (Author Translation) 72 Hannes Heer, et al. Discursive Destruction, 44.

73 Waddington, Hitler’s Crusade, 189.

74 Ibid.

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States were held by Hitler and the leaders of the Nazi Government, as Hitler proclaimed the US to be a nation that was ruled by “Blacks and Jews”75. Hitler, as was often the case on matters of Nazi racial ideology, was joined in this sentiment by Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop, who stated: “I know them. I know their country. A country devoid of culture, devoid of music, above all, a country without soldiers… When has a Jewified nation like that ever become a race of fighters and flying aces?”76 German soldiers fighting the British and the Americans, therefore, were under the impression that being overrun by these western powers would ensure a Soviet triumph. Ergo, the intensity with which the Wehrmacht resisted in the West was due to the belief of the German soldiers that the battle was a proxy war against the advancing Bolsheviks.

The destruction wrought by the events of the Second World War was a catastrophe for every country involved in the conflict. Moreover, the scale of the carnage on the Eastern Front was unique even within the unprecedented destruction of the global conflict. The reasons for the destruction, especially on the Eastern Front, was a result of the explicitly ideological motivations of the combatants. The government of Germany under Adolf Hitler was beholden entirely to the worldview of the leader as a result of first guiding principle of the Nazi Party: That the will of the leader was the highest law. In keeping with this Leader Principle, the machinery of the German government was dedicated to fulfilling the various aims of National Socialist ideology, including the conquest and settlement of the various lands of Eastern Europe. In order to fulfill the aims of conquest, it was essential for the German Wehrmacht to be successfully molded into a tool of the National Socialist regime. The propaganda ministry’s task of corrupting the armed forces was successfully fulfilled due to the pervasive control exerted by the regime over virtually every aspect

75 Andrew Roberts “Why Hitler lost the War: German Strategic Mistakes in World War Two.” (Presentation, US th Army War College, June 29 , 2012) 76 Andrew Roberts, “Why Hitler lost the War”

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of German society. By the time the war began in 1939, the Nazi regime had been in power for six years, and soldiers who were entering the ranks had been targeted by the mass media campaigns of Joseph Goebbels’ propaganda machine for the entirety of that timeframe, along with the rest of the civilian population. The constant stream of films and radio broadcasts which glorified Hitler and demonized all those who did not conform to Hitler’s worldview had the immediate effect of persuading the German people to support Hitler’s leadership, but the task of transforming mere support for the National Socialist platform into action required a greater degree of coercion than was possible in a civilian setting. The military environment is geared, as a matter of its very nature, towards creating soldiers who are not only capable of, but willing to commit, violent acts. The combination of this necessary and legitimate function of a military with the attitudes of the Nazi Party concerning the duty of the German people to serve Hitler created an environment within the Wehrmacht in which violence against disfavored groups was not only encouraged, but directly ordered. The willingness of the German soldiers to carry out, or at least accept as necessary, the inhuman actions which occurred on a regular basis in German-occupied areas is indicative of not only the success of the National Socialists in infiltrating the Wehrmacht with their ideology, but also of the fact that soldiers seemed even more willing than the civilian population to accept the ideology of their ruler. Even as the war became a hopeless situation for Germany, the continued willingness of the soldiers of the Wehrmacht to fight was astounding. Only after Hitler had committed suicide did the soldiers finally accept the finality of Germany’s defeat, a dynamic which illustrates the strength of Hitler’s influence over the Army. While there were many attempts after the war to absolve the German Army of involvement in the various crimes of the Nazi regime, it is obvious that the weight of evidence renders such assertions absurd. The Wehrmacht was a highly ideological force which was heavily involved in war crimes, not as a result of rogue officers

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or soldiers, but due to a command structure of the Army which mandated that such terrible acts take place through direct orders. The power of peer pressure, the threat of discipline against those who did not follow the ghastly orders, and the extensive propaganda which presented the acts of genocide as not only necessary, but noble, each contributed to a culture of coercion within the ranks of the decidedly unclean Wehrmacht.

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Bartov, Omer. “Soldiers, Nazis, and War in the Third Reich,” The Journal of Modern History, Vol. 63, No. 1 (Mar 1991), 44-60 Beorn, Waitman W. “A Calculus of Complicity: The ‘Wehrmacht’, the Anti-Partisan War, and the Final Solution in White Russia, 1941-42” Central European History, Vol. 44, No. 2 (June 2011), 308-337 Beorn, Waitman Wade. Marching into Darkness . Cambridge: Massachusetts, Harvard University Press, 2014 Bergmeier, Horst and Rainer E. Lotz. Hitler’s airwaves, (New Haven and London, Yale University Press, 1997 Blumenson, Max, introduction to Lost Victories, by Erich von Manstein, Minneapolis, Zenith Press, 2004 Browning, Christopher. Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland. London, Penguin Books, 1992 Bytwerk, Randall. Bending Spines: The propagandas of Nazi Germany and the German Democratic Republic. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2004 Carell, Paul. Hitler moves East, 1941-1943. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1963 Commissar Order, issued June 6, 1941, as quoted in The German Army and Genocide: Crimes against War Prisoners, Jews, and Other Civilians in the East, 1939-1944. New York: New Press, 1999 Diary entry by Private Richard Heidenreich, July 1941, as quoted in The German Army and Genocide: Crimes against War Prisoners, Jews, and Other Civilians in the East, 1939-1944. New York: New Press, 1999.

Die Deutsche Wochenschau, Universum Film AG, 1941.

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Dieter Borkowski, as quoted in R. Schörken, “Jugendalltag im Dritten Reich, in Geschichte im Alltag – Alltag in der Geschichte, ed. K. Bergmann and R. Schörken, (Düsseldorf, 1982), 238239, as quoted in Bartov, Omer. Hitler’s Army. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991 D. Brader, “Foreword” to Stuka Pilot, Hans-Ulrich Rudel, as quoted in Bartov, Omer. Hitler’s Army. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991 Foray, Jennifer L. “The 'Clean Wehrmacht' in the German-occupied Netherlands, 1940–5” Journal of Contemporary History, Vol. 45, No. 4 (October 2010), 768-787 German Radio Announcement, Hiter ist gefallen, recorded 1945. (Author Translation) Guderian, Heinz. Trans. Constantine Fitzgibbon. Panzer leader. Cambridge: Da Capo Press, 1996 Goebbels, Joseph “Sportpalast Speech” Speech, Berlin, Germany, February 18, 1943. (Author Translation) Heinz Guderian. Trans. Constantine Fitzgibbon. Panzer leader. (Cambridge: Da Capo Press, 1996), as quoted in Bartov, Omer. Hitler’s Army, New York: Oxford University Press, 1991.

Heer, Hannes, Walther Manoscheck, Alexander Pollak, Ruth Wadak, trans. Steven Filgestone. The Discursive Construction of History: Remembering the Wehrmacht’s War of Annihilation.

Chippenham: Palgrave MacMillan, 2008 Jarausch, Konrad H. Reluctant Accomplice: A Wehrmacht Soldier’s Letters from the Eastern Front. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2011 Large, David Clay. “Reckoning without the Past: The HIAG of the Waffen-SS and the Politics of Rehabilitation in the Bonn Republic, 1950- 1961”, The Journal of Modern History, Vol. 59, No. 1 (March 1987), 80-81 Letter from Private Ludwig B, September, 28,1941, as quoted in The German Army and Genocide: Crimes against War Prisoners, Jews, and Other Civilians in the East, 1939-1944. New York: New Press, 1999 Letter by Peter G, August, 1941, as quoted in The German Army and Genocide: Crimes against War Prisoners, Jews, and Other Civilians in the East, 1939-1944. New York: New Press, 1999 Von Manstein, Erich. trans. Anthony G. Powell Lost Victories: The War Memoirs of Hitler’s Most Brilliant General. Minneapolis: Zenith Press, 2004 von Manstein, Erich. Order to the 11th Army, November 20, 1941, as quoted in Bartov, Omer.

Hitler’s Army, New York: Oxford University Press, 1991.

Mazower, Mark. “Military Violence and National Socialist Values: The Wehrmacht in Greece 1941-1944” Past & Present, No. 134 (February 1992), 129-158

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Mommsen, Hans, Kriegserfahrungen, as quoted in Bartov, Omer. Hitler’s Army. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991.

Neumaier, Christopher. “The Escalation of German Reprisal Policy in Occupied France, 1941-42” Journal of Contemporary History, Vol. 41, No. 1 (January 2006), 113-131 Operational Situation Report Number 24, July 16, 1941, as quoted in The German Army and Genocide: Crimes against War Prisoners, Jews, and Other Civilians in the East, 1939-1944. New York: New Press, 1999.

Operational Situation Report number 58, August 20, 1941, as quoted in The German Army and Genocide: Crimes against War Prisoners, Jews, and Other Civilians in the East, 1939-1944. New York: New Press, 1999.

Records of the World Jewish Congress, "Criminal Conspiracy, Charge Six: Deportation, Part II", 1945 Records of the World Jewish Congress, "Criminal Conspiracy, Those Responsible, Army Level, Part III", 1945 Rich, Norman. Hitler’s War Aims, Ideology, the Nazi State, and the course of Expansion. New York: WW Norton and Company, 1973.

Richardson, Helene Fuchs. Sieg Heil!, Archon Publishers, as quoted in Bartov, Omer, Hitler’s Army. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991 Roberts, Andrew. “Why Hitler lost the War: German Strategic Mistakes in World War Two.” Presentation, US Army War College, June 29th, 2012 The German Army and Genocide: Crimes against War Prisoners, Jews, and Other Civilians in the East, 1939-1944. New York: New Press, 1999.

Triumph of the Will, directed by Leni Riefenstahl, Universum Film AG, 1934 Warning to German occupation forces against deporting Jews from Greece, broadcast 1943, British Broadcasting Corporation.

Waddington, Lorna. “Hitler’s Crusade: Bolshevism and the myth of the International Jewish Conspiracy.” London, Taurus Academic Studies, 2007 Wehrmacht order, July 23, 1941, as quoted in The German Army and Genocide: Crimes against War Prisoners, Jews, and Other Civilians in the East, 1939-1944, New York: New Press, 1999.

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Master of None and Charged Humor Kristen Pierce kristen.pierce.14@cnu.edu - 757-274-9720 Evan Center Communication Studies Department – evan.center@cnu.edu

Abstract Aziz Ansari’s self-created, written and starred-in Netflix original series Master of None is garnering much attention. The show won three highly esteemed awards in its first season, including the Emmy for Outstanding Writing in a Comedy Series. Master of None is one of the first television shows written by and starring an American Indian second-generation immigrant. Because this creator and actor represents a group of people who are vastly underrepresented in mainstream American media, many critics and fans alike think that it is Ansari’s responsibility to use his platform to expose issues of social justice, especially regarding race and gender. Whether or not artists hold this responsibility upon their shoulders, comedy does have a history of being used to expose and commentate on social justice issues (All in the Family, Saturday Night Live, South Park). Rebecca Krefting has identified a type of comedy that always succeeds in doing this by asserting cultural citizenship: charged humor.

Master of None is culturally significant; it became an instant success after the entire first season was made available on Netflix on November 6th, 2015 and has a 100% positive critic rating on the website Rotten Tomatoes.

Many social issues are discussed within the series. The episode “Indians on TV,” addresses racism in Hollywood when Dev is told there can’t be “more than one” Indian in a show he is auditioning for. A later episode, “Ladies and Gentlemen,” deals with sexism as the characters explore how men and women experience the world differently.

Comedy must be three things to be considered charged humor: Subversive, oppositional and mobilizing. In this essay, I will explore how the politics of cultural citizenship are affected as Master of None employs charged humor. Krefting explains that when charged humor is used, politics of cultural citizenship and acceptance are affected. Politics of citizenship questions who does and does not belong in a country, while cultural citizenship asserts that not all legal (or illegal) citizens experience citizenship the same way. Cultural acceptance affects belongingness and access to rights, and media, specifically television, can be used to shape opinion of disenfranchised groups. Using specific episodes, I will analyze charged humor within the text, and explain how the use of this humor results in the mobilization of disenfranchised groups gaining cultural citizenship as Krefting has theorized.

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Introduction Master of None (MoN) is a Netflix original dramatic comedy series about a curious 30year-old actor named Dev living in New York City. The show was created by Aziz Ansari, best known for his role of Tom Haverford on Parks and Recreation (P&R), and Alan Yang, who worked alongside Ansari on P&R as a writer and producer.

Upon release of the first season in 2015, the show instantly garnered fans worldwide, with raving headlines circulating the Internet, such as: “Aziz Ansari’s Master of None Is Endlessly Likable and Remarkably Good” (Vanity Fair, 2015), “Aziz Ansari's Master of None is a terrific, groundbreaking, important TV show,” (Polygon, 2015), and “Aziz Ansari’s Netflix series is a canny social satire—and a truly great sitcom.” (Slate, 2015) The show’s level of success suggests that the intended demographic of viewers were ready for something differentMoN’s style is unlike any other dramedy currently on television. The episodes are conversational rather than situational, meaning the viewer listens to the characters have conversations, instead of watching them get into humorous situations. Arthur Chu, eleven time Jeopardy winner turned columnist and television reviewer, wrote, “Master of None is a show where things happen out of order, dangling plot threads stay unresolved, and no question is ever really definitively answered–and that’s what makes it such a breath of fresh air.” (2015) Throughout the first season of MoN, heavy topics are explored, as Dev experiences racism in Hollywood, notices he feels disconnected from his immigrant parents, learns about feminism, and becomes part of an interracial romantic relationship. Comedic platforms, whether through stand-up, television, podcasts or films, are often used as a space for social commentary.

From Saturday Night Live to The Late Show With Stephen Colbert, mainstream comedians frequently use their platforms for social justice. Discussing social issues within the context of a

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television show is nothing new, however, MoN uses a specific type of humor that sets it apart from common satire. Here, it is argued that Master of None enacts cultural citizenship within disenfranchised communities due to its purposeful use of charged humor.

Previous Literature on Culture and Television - Stuart Hall To understand how a television show can be used as a tool to invoke cultural change, past research on ideology, popular culture, and representation in the media will be discussed. The producers of mass media and media audiences work simultaneously to create popular culture.

This results in a system where ideology is constantly being both reinforced and questioned, and a space where televisions shows like Master of None can call attention to oppressive dominant ideologies. Stuart Hall offers a detailed theoretical explanation of the relationship between audience and media in, “Encoding/Decoding,” (1973) where he describes a circular model of media production, circulation, distribution and consumption, and reproduction. In “Rediscovery of “Ideology:” Return of the Repressed in Media Studies,” (1982), Hall continues his research in media and culture, and explains the ways media influences ideology.

In Hall’s media communication model, made clear in “Encoding/Decoding,” mass media outlets release narratives based on previously known frameworks, the audience decodes the messages, then the interpreted meanings are added to the frameworks that media producers continue to pull from. The process is cyclical, with each step being independent yet affected by the others. While producers encode a “preferred” meaning, consumers do not have to receive it.

Hall defines three types of televisual decodings: First, there is the hegemonic dominant code, where the audience understands and accepts the encoded message. Next, the negotiated code happens when the audience does not challenge the ideology embedded by does not fully accept it, either. Finally, an oppositional code occurs when the audience understands the ideology, but

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does not accept or agree with it. This process creates ideology, but also offers an opportunity to challenge it: when one has decoded the message, but before it is put back into the “cultural mind.” Hall explains, “Reality exists outside language, but it is constantly mediated by and through language: and what we can know and say has to be produced in and through discourse.” (p. 131) The relationship between media, culture and ideology is explored further in “The Rediscovery of “Ideology”: Return of the Repressed.” (1982) In this article, Hall explains the history that led to a paradigm shift in media studies, allowing ideology within culture and media to be critically analyzed. Next, he asks, how does the dominant ideological message gain credibility? And, how does it stay in its dominant position? (p. 122) The answer is often through mass media. He asserts that media producers hold ideological power- the power to signify events in a particular way and exclude information. Hall explains that the power to signify an event is not a neutral force in society. In this perspective, ideology can no longer be seen as a “mere reflection of a pre-given reality.” (p. 123) Significations affect the outcome of controversial social issues. For example, history has shown many times that (currently rejected) dominant ideologies have been destructive- the ideas that class determines slave status, that women are property, or that an entire religious group is responsible for all of the bad in a geographical area. Even though these are no longer dominant ideologies, they were at a certain place and time, demonstrating that ideology is a “prize to be won” by the media that Hall describes. (p. 123) A current example of the relationship between media, audience and the societal influence of dominant ideologies will be analyzed through Master of None’s use of charged humor to create cultural citizenship among minorities in America.

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Charged Humor As defined by Rebecca Krefting in “All Joking Aside,” (2014) charged humor is “humor that seeks to represent the unrepresented, to empower or affirm marginalized communities and identities, and to edify and mobilize their audiences.” (pg. 14) This type of humor, “locates the humorist in the national imagination and shows us where there is trouble,” (pg. 26) meaning that it aims to call out dominant ideologies that contribute to minority groups feeling like secondclass citizens. Krefting uses comedians such as Louis C.K. and Chris Rock as examples of famous performers who use charged humor. During one of Rock’s most well known stand-up jokes, he discusses white people being angry or confused about it not being socially acceptable for them to say derogatory terms about African Americans, even though it is socially acceptable for African Americans to say these terms and phrases to each other. Rock jokes: “Yeah, when I last checked that was the only advantage I had to being Black. You wanna switch places? You scream nigger and I’ll raise interest rates… Sometimes the people with the most shit have to shut up and let other people talk shit about them. That’s how life works.” (Kill The Messenger tour, 2008) This exchange is an example of charged humor. Krefting explains: “Control of public speech (a censoring not observed privately by many people) pales in comparison to control of a financial system whose history is wrought with myriad means of disenfranchising African Americans and other people of color. Chris Rock’s charged humor locates and situates himself as Black and a subordinated subject in the United States, invokes cultural heritage by hearkening a shared history of oppression, reveals the real locus of power as the almighty dollar, and calls for economic restructuring.” (p. 27)

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Krefting argues that charged humor differs from satire because it is used to enact cultural citizenship. To do this, the humor must be subversive, oppositional and mobilizing.

Subversive humor addresses social inequalities, national contradictions and negative representations. Chris Rock’s joke touches especially on social inequalities and national contradictions, asserting that there are many differences in equality between Caucasian and Black American citizens. He suggests that white people have the most control over the country’s economy. He also points out the contradiction in white people being upset over types of speech compared to the on-going history of more significant grievances black citizens hold in America.

Oppositional humor calls attention to hateful language, power relations and cultural grievances. Again, Rock’s joke touches on power relations regarding America’s economy and those who have the authority to influence it. His joke also asserts cultural grievances as he laughs at the difference in gravity between the different issues he and the subject of his joke are complaining about.

Mobilizing humor is the final component of charged humor, and the one which most differentiates it from satire. Mobilizing jokes provide an orientation towards solutions. Rock’s jokes become more mobilizing in the context of his entire stand-up routine, but even within the short example above, he suggests economic change as a solution to the inequalities he discusses.

Cultural citizenship, the result of charged humor, is separate from legal citizenship. It’s the idea that all citizens experience citizenship differently and that people’s feelings of belongingness within their communities are based on more than laws. On charged humor and it’s relation to cultural citizenship, Krefting explains: “It is humor deployed in the service of creating cultural citizenship, which is especially important for communities whose legal citizenship still feels like an economy class seat

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while everyone else flies first class. This kind of humor is intentional, meaning the humorist has designs on an outcome, specific or general— a change in attitudes or beliefs or action taken on behalf of social inequality.” (pg. 25) Charged humor is more than commentary, as a call for action with specific suggestions as to how that action should be taken.

The following sections of this paper describe the reception, creation and publicity surrounding MoN, and then analyze two episodes from the series. The information found while analyzing the show and the happenings surrounding it are used to argue that Master of None uses charged humor, through subversive, oppositional and mobilizing jokes, to enact cultural citizenship within viewers who feel misrepresented in the mainstream media.

Context Reception Master of None is culturally significant; it became an instant success after the entire first season was made available on Netflix on November 6th, 2015. The series was binge-watched around the globe and quickly earned a 100% positive critic rating on the film and television review website Rotten Tomatoes. (2017) The series then gained traction in the awards show circuit, being nominated for a total of fifteen awards after just its first season, and winning four.

In addition to being recognized by the American Film Institute and the Peabody Awards, the show’s creators took home the Critics’ Choice Television Award for Best Comedy Series and the Emmy for Outstanding Writing for a Comedy Series. (IMDB, 2017) The discussion surrounding Master of None matches the series’ significant critic reception. Notable New York Times television reviewer James Poniewozic called MoN, “the year’s best comedy straight out of the gate.” (2015) Ed Power of the British news website, The

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Telegraph, coined it, “a perfect mix of sarcasm and sincerity,” (2016) which encompasses the balance MoN has that many critics, reviewers and fans alike claim is the show’s key ingredient.

When the series is not simply being praised for its quality, people are excitedly discussing its ability to give an, “authentic portrayal of immigrant families, of racial representation in media, of casual sexism and the need for a feminist response to it, and of just being a confused millennial in an information-oversaturated world.” (Chu, salon.com, 2015) No matter a viewer’s walk of life, there is something in MoN they can relate to, and something to learn about. This “realness” is what has drawn so many to the series. The quality is derived from every detail in the show, from the conversational tone of the writing, to the purposeful aesthetic resemblance of a 70’s comedy film (Deadline, 2016), and its ability to shy away from the stereotypical Hollywood happy ending. (Chu, 2015) Each of these tonal and visual choices is deliberate, and the creators have been vocal about their reasoning and inspiration for the series.

Creation Both Master of None creators, Ansari and Yang, are second-generation American immigrants. Because Ansari is a stand-up comedian, actor and writer, as opposed to Yang’s more behind-the-scenes roles, his motivations for the themes in MoN can be traced back through his public actions. Ansari has always displayed an interest in relationships and social issues. He has multiple stand-up specials on Netflix, and many of his jokes are relevant to individual’s lives.

Throughout his specials, he often discusses the ups and downs of millennial dating, provides commentary on race, and ponders what it must be like to be a woman dealing with “creepy dudes.” (Netflix) Ansari also co-authored a book, “Modern Romance,” with NYU sociologist Eric Klinenberg. The two conducted a research project using interviews and focus groups. They aimed to study how modern technology and changes in communication have affected romantic

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relationships. These previous works show that MoN’s message is not random; much of Ansari’s work has meaningfully led to the creation of a series about millennials and their experiences with relationships, racism, sexism and citizenship.

In an interview with Deadline (2016), Ansari explains: “I had been wanting to do something, act in something, that was my own voice.

Something I had written… I was good friends with Alan Yang, who was a writer on Parks. I said, “What if we did a show that was a short order, like 8-10 episodes and shoot it in New York?” He’s like, “That sounds great.””

Ansari already had a relationship with Netflix from his stand-up specials, and said the creators chose that platform because, “they just wanted to go straight to series. They believed in us.”

Ansari said that he and Yang used his standup to craft ideas for the show and worked from there.

The show was originally pitched as a story about dating in New York City, but quickly transformed. Yang explained to Susy Evans of The Hollywood Reporter (2015) that he and Ansari realized they wanted to channel their personal experiences and backgrounds to provide commentary on social issues, saying, “We never want to be preachy; we want to be funny and entertaining and tell a good story, but the truth is when people talk in real life, they do talk about these issues.” The episode most personal to Ansari and Yang’s history is “Parents,” which deals with the strained relationships second-generation immigrants often have with their parents due to their vastly different upbringings. Ansari describes how they conceived this storyline idea, saying: “We were walking around and talking about our parents and their stories coming to this country. We were in New York and seeing all these people. There was a guy selling scarves and a guy running a halal cart. And I thought, “Wow, every single one of these

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people has an insane story about how they came here to be in America.” Every one of those stories are incredible and you rarely hear about it.” (Deadline, 2016) As Ansari and Yang pulled from personal experiences to create the series, fans have felt personal connections to it, causing interest not just in the fictional characters, but also in the creator’s and actor’s public actions.

Publicity Moments of Master of None’s publicity have gone viral, creating public conversation about race and immigration. Alan Yang made headlines with his acceptance speech after winning the Emmy for Outstanding Writing in a Television Series. TIME, Mic.com, Huffington Post, Refinery29, and many other outlets shared his memorable commentary on representation: “There’s 17 million Asian-Americans in this country, and there’s 17 million ItalianAmericans. They have ‘The Godfather,’ ‘Goodfellas,’ ‘Rocky,’ ‘The Sopranos.’ We got Long Duk Dong. So we got a long way to go, but I know we can get there. I believe in us.” (2016) Next, one of the most discussed aspects of the show is the casting of the main character’s parents- because they happen to be Aziz Ansari’s real life, had-never-before-acted, mother and father. Ansari’s father, Shoukath Ansari, has gained attention especially, with the LA Times declaring him, “a breakout star.” (2015) The elder Ansari appeared on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert, along with Aziz, and said having a role on the show was, “a long dream come true.” (2016) After the show, Aziz Ansari took to Instagram to share their father-son experience, writing: “Tonight after we did Colbert together, he (Shoukath) said: ‘This is all fun and I liked acting in the show, but I really just did it so I could spend more time with you.’ … I’ve

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been overwhelmed by the response to the “Parents” episode of our show. What’s strange is doing that episode and working with my parents has increased the quality of my relationship to my parents IN MY REAL LIFE.” (Instagram, 2016) After capturing the hearts of viewers ranging from television journalists to casual Twitter-using fans, Shoukath Ansari was even a serious contender for the Emmy for Outstanding Guest Actor.

(IndieWire, 2016) Although he did not receive the nomination, Shoukath was interviewed by numerous publications, appeared on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert, and was given his own Emmy advertisement billboard in Los Angeles by Netflix. As Aziz shared publically, these experiences affected he and his parents personally and positively. Here, real life mirrors the narrative about the relationship between first generation immigrants and their children that the Master of None episode “Parents” tells fictionally.

Cultural Citizenship In “All Joking Aside,” Krefting explains politics of citizenship. She asserts that legal citizenship has nothing to do with whether or not a person feels accepted as a citizen of a country- many legal citizens may not feel culturally connected to America, while some illegal citizens do. Ansari touches on this phenomenon often when publically discussing representation in the media in America. He guest wrote two pieces for the New York Times addressing these issues. The first, “Acting, Race, and Hollywood,” (2015) was written as a companion piece to the MoN episode “Indians on TV,” and discusses instances of the misrepresentation of Indian people on American television. He recalls his first time seeing an Indian character in an American film in Short Circuit 2, citing the experience: “Seeing an Indian character in a lead role had a powerful effect on me, but it was only as I got older that I realized what an anomaly it was. I rarely saw any Indians on TV or film,

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except for brief appearances as a cabdriver or a convenience store worker literally servicing white characters who were off to more interesting adventures. This made “Short Circuit 2” special. An Indian lead character? With a Caucasian love interest? In the 1980s? What’s going on here?”

As an adult, the awe and excitement of this experience turned to anger as Ansari realized the actor was a white man wearing brown face makeup. He writes, “As a child, I thought the villain of the film was Oscar Baldwin, the banker who tricks Johnny 5 into helping him commit a jewel heist. As an adult, I thought the bad guy was actually Mr. Stevens, who mocked my ethnicity.”

When an entire race of people rarely shown on American television or in Hollywood films living a regular life, falling in love, or going on adventures, and is most often used as a stereotypical plot device, the people being represented become discouraged. On this, Ansari says, “Even at a time when minorities account for almost 40 percent of the American population, when Hollywood wants an “everyman,” what it really wants is a straight white guy. But a straight white guy is not every man. The “everyman” is everybody.”

His next piece is titled, “Why Trump Makes Me Scared for My Family,” (2016) and was written as a response to the terror attack in an Orlando nightclub. The segment starts as Ansari recalls asking his mother not to go to her mosque for prayer after the attack, writing, “I realized how awful it was to tell an American citizen to be careful about how she worshiped.” In this piece, which was written during the 2016 presidential election campaign, he questions Trump’s rhetoric regarding American citizens of Muslim faith. Ansari writes: “Since 9/11, there have been 49 mass shootings in this country, and more than half of those were perpetrated by white males. I doubt we’ll hear Mr. Trump make a speech

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asking his fellow white males to tell authorities “who the bad ones are,” or call for restricting white males’ freedoms.”

He remembers going to NYU after 9/11, and being called “terrorist” while crossing the street.

Ansari finishes the segment with a parallel. He explains that Trump, often during his campaign, spoke about a (disproved) rumor that Muslims were cheering in the streets in New Jersey on 9/11. Ansari explains: “I don’t know what every Muslim American was doing that day, but I can tell you what my family was doing… When the second plane hit, I was on the phone with my mother, who called to tell me to leave my dorm building. The haunting sound of the second plane hitting the towers is forever ingrained in my head. My building was close enough that it shook upon impact… My family, unable to reach me on my cellphone, was terrified about my safety as they watched the towers collapse. There was absolutely no cheering.

Only sadness, horror and fear.”

Ansari concludes as he references Trump’s first tweet after the Orlando attack: “Mr. Trump, in response to the attack in Orlando, began a tweet with these words: “Appreciate the congrats.” It appears that day he was the one who was celebrating after an attack.” Since this piece was published, Trump won the 2016 presidential election, securing the fear that Ansari and other Muslim or Muslim-born Americans felt about American citizen’s thoughts about themselves and their intentions.

In both of these pieces, Ansari explains that although he is a legal citizen, there are forces in America that make him feel culturally disconnected from the norm, whether that is misrepresentation on television, or being berated on a commute because of his skin color. A textual analysis of two episodes of Master of None will demonstrate how Ansari and Yang use

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charged humor throughout the series to combat these injustices and reclaim their cultural citizenship.

Episode Analysis This analysis of Master of None focuses on episodes four and seven of the series, titled “Indians on TV,” and “Ladies and Gentleman.” Episode four is about racism in Hollywood, while episode seven deals with differences in the subtle ways men and women are treated. Here, textual analysis methodology is used to decipher the themes within the text by looking at “the social practices, representations, assumptions and stories about lives that are revealed in texts.”

(Brennan, 2015, p. 194) This is conducted by, “evaluating the many meanings found in texts and trying to understand how written, visual and spoken language helps us to create our social realities.” (p. 193) The themes in MoN are then used to explore the use of charged humor within the text.

Dev, the main character of MoN, is a curious 30-year-old actor living in New York City.

In episode four of the series, “Indians on TV,” after accidentally being forwarded a racist email from a casting director, Dev has to decide the best way to face the situation. In “Ladies and Gentlemen,” episode seven, Dev learns about ways his girlfriend, female friends and co-workers are treated differently than him, then grapples with making the situation more just, losing a job of his own in the process. Throughout these episodes, three common themes emerge: MoN calls out unfair power structures, focuses on the ability to see situations from other’s perspectives, and exhibits a belief in the importance of doing things for the betterment of everyone even if it does not benefit one’s self.

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Master of None and Commentary on Power Structures Master of None uses storylines to comment blatantly on power structures regarding race and gender, especially in the workplace and the entertainment industry. “Indians on TV,” opens with random clips of Indians on television, including Indian actors playing cab drivers, convenience store employees, snake charmers, and exotic dancers, and white actors in brown face makeup doing Indian accents. This opening portrays stereotypical Indian roles in Hollywood are and sets the tone for the rest of the episode. Srividya Ramasubramanian (2011) found that minorities of Asian, Indian or Pacific Island descent play only 3% of roles during primetime television, and that this creates stereotypical and racist views of these individuals in society. MoN provides commentary on real societal issues of misrepresentation, taking the viewer on a ride on uncertainty with Dev. In the following scene, Dev auditions for a role as a taxi driver and loses the opportunity to get the part when he refuses to do an Indian accent. After the audition, Dev is talking to his friend Ravi, and says, “Look, I get it. There probably is a Pradeep who runs a convenience store, and I have nothing against him, but why can't there be a Pradeep just once whose, like, an architect, or he designs mittens or does one of the jobs Bradley Cooper's characters do in movies?” They then discuss something that, again, Aziz Ansari went through in his actual life: Discovering that the actor who played Johnny Five in Short Circuit 2, one of the only Indian heroes in any Hollywood film or television show, was played by a white guy in brown face makeup. Dev says, “Yeah. They got a real robot and a fake Indian.”

Later in the episode, he receives an email chain by mistake from casting executives and reads it out loud to his friends, saying:

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“The show creator says, "Dev and Ravi are perfect." Then this executive Joan writes, "Totally agree. Think we just found our first two buddies!" Then this guy Jerry Danvers says, "Both really great, but there can't be two… This other person says, "Who do you like better, Ravi or Dev?" He writes, "I don't know. Let's meet them both and see who can curry our favor, hahaha.” Curry our favor? Are you fucking serious?”

Dev is faced with a tough choice: Should he publically expose the executives and potentially hurt his acting career? Individually confront the man who made the racist comment? Viewers of MoN who have most likely never experienced this may ponder what they would do in his situation.

The series uses true-to-life storylines to bring attention to unfair power structures in society. As an Indian actor, Dev must choose between staying true his morals or swallowing his pride to better his chances of getting a job.

The opening montage of “Ladies and Gentlemen” is at a bar, splitting the focus between Dev, and a woman, Diana. As they both leave the bar, the show flips back and forth, narrating their different experiences. As Dev and his friend Arnold walk, they discuss the weather while cheerful music plays in the background. Diana walks anxiously, peering over her shoulder, as a horror movie soundtrack is heard. Dev eventually steps in dog poop while wearing his favorite shoes. Diana is eventually followed home by a drunken guy from the bar, who ends up at her apartment door, yelling, “Come on, give a nice guy a shot. (Bangs on her door.) Let a nice guy win for once. (Keeps banging.) Oh, man, I’m starting to feel like this relationship’s not working out. (Still banging on her door.) Tell me where I went wrong. Just lay it out for me.” Diana calls the police. The next day, Diana and Dev work together on a commercial, where she asks him how his weekend was. He says, “Not great. So, it took forever to order a drink there. And, on my way home, I stepped in dog poo. Ruined my favorite sneakies… Yeah. So annoying.” He then

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asks Diana about her night, which leaves him flabbergasted and results in him having a conversation about Diana’s experience with his group of friends. His girlfriend, Rachel, tells him she deals with similar situations all of the time, recalling, “A couple months ago, I was in a grocery store, and this guy started following me around, so I left. I went into Smoothie Palace.

He followed me into there. Finally, I had to go to that pet store, Le Petit Puppy, and pretend I was shopping for a puppy for 30 minutes until he finally went away.” After learning about these experiences, Dev, seemingly for the first time, realizes that people close to him are treated differently than him solely because of their gender.

Later, at a wrap party for the commercial, Dev’s director approaches his table, and shakes hands with every person except for the two women. Rachel, Dev’s girlfriend, calls him out, saying to Dev, “You didn’t notice that? That guy only introduced himself to the men at the table.

He went right past us, like Denise and I were invisible.” Dev says, “I don’t know, I don’t think that was intentional. You guys were sitting in the corner. He was probably just in a rush…” This difference in perspective creates tension, and as they walk home that night, Dev apologizes, saying, “Look, I’m just saying I’m sorry I defended Brad Honeycutt. Can you at least give me that I’m not some sort of sexist monster for thinking that maybe he wasn’t motivated by a crazy sexist agenda when he didn’t introduce himself to you guys?” Rachel replies, “I’m not saying that you’re a sexist monster, I just think it’s weird that your first instinct is to act like I’m crazy and defend Brad Honeycutt instead of just believing me.” Dev then responds, “Well, I guess in my head I’d like to think someone isn’t so awful that they wouldn’t introduce themselves to someone just cause they’re a women,” to which Rachel says, “And what I’m saying is that there are a lot of subtle little things that happen to me, and all women, even in our little progressive world, and when somebody, especially my boyfriend, tells me that I’m wrong without having

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any way of knowing my personal experience, it’s insulting.” Dev and Rachel ultimately agree to disagree. This example suggests that even though Dev has grown to understand that sexism exists, he and his girlfriend still do not agree on what counts as it. This makes the power structure theme apparent on another level, showing Dev as the source of power instead of being oppressed by it or having it taken away from him.

Numerous examples in the text suggest that racism and sexism allow non-minorities of race and gender to hold more power in society. The next theme that became clear through analysis of the text, one that could be argued is the entire show’s overarching theme, is the willingness to try and see the world from other perspectives.

Master of None and Walking in Someone Else’s Shoes The show jokes about the theme of “walking in someone else’s shoes” as Rachel and Arnold are leisurely strolling through the streets of New York. Rachel asks Arnold, “So, what’s it like being a giant?” to which Arnold replies, “It’s pretty good. I always have a good view at a concert. Planes are tough, though. What’s it like being tiny?” Rachel responds, “Oh, its fine.

Planes are great. Concerts are tough.” Then Arnold says, “I wonder what experiences are similar for us.” This exchange jokingly encompasses a central message of the entire series - recognizing that people’s experiences in the world are different, and that it’s important for people to stop and consider that someone might be dealing with negativity based on a trait they have that they cannot control.

More seriously, an example of this theme occurs when Dev decides to talk to the executive who made the racist comment. The man, Jerry Danvers, invites him to a basketball game with courtside seats and access to the VIP areas. Dev takes the opportunity, and after the game, he says to the executive:

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“Hey, can we be real for a second? Your email had a bad joke in it, right? I get it. You take anyone's emails or whatever and you put them under a microscope, you'll find something offensive. But, to me, the bigger issue is, why can't there be two Indian people in the show? You know, why is it me or Ravi? Why can't there be two?”

Dev is putting his emotions aside and trying to understand where this man is coming from. The executive responds: “Okay, look, I'll be frank with you. If I do a show with two Indian guys on the poster, everyone's gonna think it's an Indian show. It wouldn't be as, you know, relatable to a large mainstream audience… But just to be clear, that’s not me, okay? That’s the public.”

Dev does not necessarily gain anything from having this conversation. He does not get the part, but he did do something. He could have been resentful, angry and mean and tried to end a man’s career, but instead he decided to stand up for himself in a much more brave way. This tactic did not create headlines, but could spark internal change. Dev made the man get to know him, see him as a human, and challenged him to a conversation about the racism in casting. He forced the man to admit, to his face, that there is racism in the industry. Even if nothing drastic changed in that moment, the goal is simply to get people who are not affected by the unfairness to start thinking about these systematic injustices, seeing things from the other side. Then, when change does come, it will not be emotionally driven and fragile; it will be based on reason and deep thought, which will be much longer lasting. In this moment, both characters are humanized and forced to see each other’s perspectives.

Next, in a scene in episode seven, the viewer can see both themes mentioned thus far being tied together as Dev talks to his director about sexism in the entertainment industry. He says, “It’s all around us, man. I mean, look at this Garden Depot spot. When they hire the

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background actresses, they got to get the hottest women ever. They don’t have to do that with the guys. It’s never like, “Oh, are these men handsome enough? Uh, do they all have six packs?” In this moment, Dev is both standing up for his friends who are being treated unfairly due to their sex and trying to see the world from their perspective. This comment ends up costing him his job, because the director decides to give women the leads in the commercial he’s discussing.

This is an example of the show being rooted in reality and not relying on happy endings. The characters wrestle with the themes of standing up for what is right and seeing the world from other’s perspectives. It’s reassuring for the viewer to see these choices being represented as difficult, because in real life, the “right” thing to do often is not obvious.

Throughout the two episodes of MoN, characters try to see situations from another character’s perspective. They also use another form of problem solving, acting on utilitarianism, or the idea that it is most morally sound to do the thing that benefits the most people. This concept is the third and final theme discovered in these episodes of the show.

Master of None and Utilitarianism as the Solution Dev often makes sacrifices in his personal life to better the lives of those around him. In “Indians on TV,” Dev tells Ravi he’s not comfortable doing an Indian accent in his auditions, explaining,“No, I know how to do it. I just feel weird doing that voice. Do you always just do the accent?” Ravi responds, “No, I don't always do it, but it's a cab driver. I mean, I don't think it's a big deal.” Dev says, “Yeah, but isn't it frustrating, so much of the stuff we go out for is just stereotypes? Cab driver, scientist, IT guy…” Ravi then reads him the description of a stereotypical role he was called in to audition for, and Dev responds, “Well, at least they're actually getting Indian actors to do those roles now and not going the Short Circuit 2 route.” This is when Ravi learns for the first time that the actor in Short Circuit 2 wore brown face. He says,

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“I'm sorry, man. I'm just… Wow, I'm experiencing a lot of emotions right now. Man, that's, like, one of my favorite Indian actors.” Ravi is disappointed, but Dev consoles him by talking about their upcoming auditions for Three Buddies, where the roles they’re auditioning for are main characters instead of stereotypical, one-dimensional ones. This storyline comes full circle at the end of the episode when, after dealing with the racist comment from Danvers, both Dev and Ravi are offered roles in a new television series. However, the casting executive tells Dev, “Well, we cast Ravi as the American guy, Darren. He refused to do an accent to play Srikumar. He seemed pretty adamant about it.” Dev is annoyed with Ravi, so he finds him and they have this exchange: Dev: Why won't you do an accent?

Ravi: I don't want to play a stereotype. It's offensive.

Dev: But you've done it so many times. Your IMDb page is a list of Indian stereotypes: Gas station clerk, IT guy, guy in crowd with Indian accent. I get a shot at the Schwimmer money, and now you get a conscience?

Ravi: That was the old Ravi, okay? That was before the Short Circuit 2 revelation!

Although, by the end of the episode, Dev has not made progress attaining a non-stereotypical role, because of his actions, he taught another minority actor to stand up for himself and say no to playing a stereotype. Throughout “Indians on TV,” Dev makes many small choices that may hurt his acting career, but could help Indian actors as a whole long-term.

In episode seven, Dev and his friend Denise come across a man masturbating on the subway. Denise is disgusted, remarking, “Damn, it. Third masturbator I’ve seen this year.

Creepy dudes, man.” Dev suggests moving, saying, “We’ll just go over to the other side.”

Denise, however, suggests an alternative solution, replying, “No, no, no, no, wait. We can’t just

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keep letting this shit slide. We got to do something.” The two decide to perform a citizen’s arrest so that the people on the Subway do not have to be subject to the man’s actions. This scene is short and not part of the main plot of the episode, but provides an example of two characters putting themselves in a potentially dangerous, or just extremely awkward, situation to help the majority of the people surrounding them.

Another example of the theme of utilitarianism occurring in “Ladies and Gentlemen,” happens after Dev talks to his director about the unfair treatment of women in the entertainment industry. They discuss sexism in casting and Dev remarks that is doesn’t matter what male actors look like yet female actors are held to impossible standards. Dev says to his director, “The whole spot, you know, it’s these three guys are having a barbeque, and one of their wives comes up with lemonade. Isn’t that whole thing just antiquated?” The following day, Dev arrives to work and discovers his trailer is gone. He asks a passing crew member, “Uh, hey man. What’s going on? Is my trailer moving? I’m playing Ted.” Dev then finds the director and approaches him about the situation. The director responds, “Oh, yeah. I’m so sorry, man. I thought about what you were saying last night, and I talked about it with the ad agency, and… We just decided to go in this new direction.” They try to find Dev another job, but it doesn’t work out. However, later at the wrap party, Dianna approaches him: “Um, we just all felt really bad about what happened to you. I mean, we loved having more to do in the commercial, but it sucks that you couldn’t be in it at all… So, we got you this!” Diana and other friends made Dev a cake to commemorate both the vigilante moment he had earlier in the episode and him helping convince the director to give the women better roles in the commercial. So, again, although the ending isn’t ideal for Dev, his actions helped a group of people and made a small stride towards gender equality at

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work. This recurring theme of utilitarianism in Master of None also seems to suggest that for social progress to happen for large groups of people, some individual sacrifices have to be made.

Through a textual analysis of episodes four and seven of Master of None, three themes emerged: calling attention to unfair power structures in society, being willing to see situations from other’s perspectives, and doing thing to make positive change for the greater good rather than one’s self. These themes became apparent through the words and actions of numerous characters and will be used to determine how the concept of charged humor is used in the series.

Making Connections The use of charged humor becomes apparent through the breakdown of the recurring themes in Master of None. Charged humor consists of subversive, oppositional and mobilizing jokes. Each of the three types of jokes is used throughout the two analyzed episodes, but each type particularly connects with a specific theme.

Jokes addressing social inequalities, national contradictions and negative representations are subversive. The storylines and context within “Indians on TV” and “Ladies and Gentlemen” that revolve around the theme of commentating on power structures are full of subversive content. When Rachel tells Dev the story about being followed and having to hide in a pet store until the stalker finally gave up, the show is addressing social inequalities between the ways men and women go through their everyday lives. Dev deals with a national contradiction as he experiences racism in casting in America. The casting executives make racial slurs, suggesting they see which Indian actor can, “curry their favor.” This is a national contradiction, as America is known as a “melting pot,” where people from all backgrounds can come to and fit in.

Additionally, the aforementioned opening montage in “Indians on TV” is a blatant statement on the negative, stereotypical representations that most Indian roles in Hollywood consist of.

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Oppositional jokes call attention to hateful language, power relations and cultural grievances. These jokes are most abundant when MoN is displaying the theme of walking in someone else’s shoes. In episode 4, Dev calls out Jerry Danvers in the backseat of his limo after the professional basketball game. While trying to understand where the executive was coming from in his racist statements, he calls attention to hateful language by saying, “Hey, can we be real for a second? Your email had a bad joke in it, right? I get it. You take anyone's emails or whatever and you put them under a microscope, you'll find something offensive.” He then calls attention to power relations with the line, “But, to me, the bigger issue is, why can't there be two Indian people in the show? You know, why is it me or Ravi? Why can't there be two?” Ansari’s character feels powerless as he learns that something as uncontrollable as his ethnicity could cost him jobs in an industry where the people in charge follow racist standards while casting actors.

As the conversation wraps up, attention is focused on calling out cultural grievances with the following exchange: Jerry: Okay, look, I'll be frank with you. If I do a show with two Indian guys on the poster, everyone's gonna think it's an Indian show. It wouldn't be as, you know, relatable to a large mainstream audience.

Dev: Yeah, but you would never say that about a show with two white people.

Every show has two white people. People don't say that. People don't watch True Detective and go, "Oh, there's that white detective show." You know?

Jerry: But just to be clear, that's not me, okay? That's the public. Jerry Danvers, you know, would love to see two Indian people on a show. Who cares? Right?

But, you… We're just not at that point.

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Here, Danvers makes excuses, directing the blame for racist casting choices from himself to a general “society” and America’s culture, commentating on a cultural grievance between minority actors and Hollywood executives.

With mobilizing jokes, MoN’s orientation towards solution is presented as being able to do something “for the greater good,” through the theme of utilitarianism. Though there are many, the strongest example of this occurs when Dev loses his job on a commercial after bringing sexism in casting up to his director. The solution to the problem of sexism present in the commercial was to upgrade the women’s roles and place them in traditionally masculine parts, such as grilling at a barbeque. Here, MoN reminds the viewer that along with social progress and mobilization comes personal sacrifice. The combination of subversive, oppositional and mobilizing jokes and storylines in Master of None create a show that utilizes charged humor.

Charged Humor and Cultural Citizenship Wrapped Up Krefting explains that charged humor is “intended to be self-situating and a call for viewers to refigure dominant beliefs and stereotypes about minorities and their respective communities” (p. 26) As displayed in numerous examples, MoN continuously assists it’s viewers in questioning dominant beliefs. Whether the show is humanizing immigrants, exposing racism in Hollywood, or discussing everyday examples of sexism, it is constantly and consistently working to refigure stereotypes. However, as charged humor asserts cultural citizenship, “it is not just about illumining social justice issues and prompting action or attacking individuals and institutions that stand in the way of social justice; it functions to create community and validate identities among the culturally and legally disenfranchised.” (Krefting, pg. 25) The creators, Ansari and Yang, have been

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vocal about their feelings of second-class citizenship. This occurred as Ansari shared his story about Johnny 5 and brownface makeup, and his fears about his mother practicing her religion in the country she is a legal citizen of, and as Yang made a public announcement at the 2016 Emmy’s about the stereotypical representation of Asians in American popular media.

In All Joking Aside, Krefting asserts, “This book echoes the clarion call made decades ago by Stuart Hall, a call for a politics recognizing every person’s need to connect, identify, and belong. Charged humor is predicated on those needs. Indeed, the impetus for theorizing cultural citizenship grew out of a desire to build community and secure rights among those experiencing exclusion from the larger national body.” (pg. 34) As charged humor is typically used by standup comedians, it will be interesting to observe whether future popular television shows follow the trend Master of None has created by incorporating charged humor. Through the themes of commentating on power structures, walking in someone else’s shoes and utilitarianism, and the three components of charged humor, Master of None has asserted cultural citizenship in specific disenfranchised groups in America, such as children of immigrants and minority actors. As evidenced, when this charged humor is explicitly laid within a television show, viewers notice, conversations happen, and the opportunity for social change occurs.

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References Ansari, A. (2015, November 10). Aziz Ansari on acting, race, and Hollywood. The New York Times. Retrieved from: https://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/15/arts/television/aziz-ansarion-acting-race-and-hollywood.html Ansari, A. (2015, November 11). Instagram. Retrieved from: https://www.instagram.com/p/986EKAyRA8/?taken-by=azizansari&hl=en Ansari, A. (2016, June 24). Why Trump makes me scared for my family. The New York Times.

Retrieved from: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/26/opinion/sunday/aziz-ansari-whytrump-makes-me-scared-for-my-family.html?_r=0 Ansari, A., & Klinenberg, E. (2016). Modern romance. London: Penguin Books.

Ansari, A., & Yang, A. (2015). Master of None. Retrieved October 06, 2016, from https://www.rottentomatoes.com/tv/master_of_none/ Brennan, B. (2015). Textual analysis. Qualatative research methods for media studies (pp. 192231). New York and London: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group.

Chu, A. (2015, November 20). You don’t get a cookie for doing the right thing: How “Master of None” evades the Very Special Episode trap. Salon. Retrieved from: http://www.salon.com/2015/11/20/you_dont_get_a_cookie_for_doing_the_right_thing_h ow_master_of_none_evades_the_very_special_episode_trap/ D’Alessandro, A. (2016, June 13). Aziz Ansari on ‘Master of None’ and the detail of 70s comedies. Deadline. Retrieved from: http://deadline.com/2016/06/master-of-none-azizansari-alan-yang-netflix-interview-1201768657/

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Dockterman, E. (2016, September 18). Master of None’s Alan Yang makes appeal for more Asians on tv at Emmy’s. TIME. Retrieved from: http://time.com/4498750/emmys-2016aziz-ansari-alan-yang/.

Evans, S. (2015, November 7). Aziz Ansari and Alan Yang’s ‘Master of None’ gets personal.

The Hollywood Reporter. Retrieved from: http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/azizansari-alan-yangs-master-837758 Hall, S. (1973). Encoding/decoding. In Hall, S., Hobson, D., Lowe, A., & Willis, P. (Eds.), Culture, media, language: Working papers in cultural studies, 1972-79 (pp. 128-138).

London, England: Hutchinson.

Hall, S. (1982). Rediscovery of “ideology”: Return of the repressed in media studies. In Storey, J., (2009). Cultural theory and popular culture: A reader (4th Ed.) (pp. 111-141). Essex, England: Pearson.

Hill, L. (2015, November 11). Aziz Ansari’s father crashes son’s ‘Late Show’ interview. Los Angeles Times. Retrieved from: http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/tv/showtracker/laet-st-aziz-ansari-father-late-show-interview-20151111-story.html Hunter, H. (2016, September 18). Master of None writer Alan Yang had the best Emmy’s acceptance speech on diversity in tv. Refinery 29. Retrieved from: http://www.refinery29.com/2016/09/123590/alan-yang-emmys-2016-acceptance-speechfunny Jacobs, M. (2016, September 18). Alan Yang gave the sweetest speech about Asians on tv at the Emmy’s. Retrieved from: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/alan-yang-aziz-ansariemmys_us_57df306ae4b08cb140965ed6

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Lawson, R. (2015, November 4). Aziz Ansari’s Master of None is endlessly likeable and remarkably good. Vanity Fair. Retrieved from: http://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2015/11/aziz-ansari-master-of-none-review Lopez, L. K. (2016). Asian American media activism: fighting for cultural citizenship. New York: New York University Press.

Magnotta, E. & Strohl, M. (2011). A linguistic analysis of humor: A look at Seinfeld. WPLC Digital Edition, 21(1), 126-135.

Master Of None. (2015). Retrieved October 06, 2016, from http://www.emmys.com/shows/master-none Master of None. (2017). Retreived from: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt4635276/ Paskin, W. (2015, November 4). Aziz Ansari’s Netflix series is a canny social satire—and a truly great sitcom. Slate. Retrieved from: http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/television/2015/11/aziz_ansari_s_master_of_none_on_ netflix_reviewed_a_truly_great_sitcom.html Poniewozik, J. (2015, November 5). Review: Aziz Ansari, in 'Master of None,' negotiates technology and social mores. The New York Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/06/arts/television/review-aziz-ansari-in-master-ofnone-negotiates-technology-and-social-mores.html Power, Ed. (2016, May 16). Master of None, Netflix, review: ‘a perfect mix of sarcasm and sincerity.’ Telegraph. Retrieved from: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/ondemand/2016/05/09/master-of-none-netflix-review-a-perfect-mix-of-sarcasm-and-since/

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Ramasubramanian, S. (2011). Television exposure, model minority portrayals, and AsianAmerican stereotypes: An exploratory study. Journal of Intercultural Communication, 26, 4.

Rock, C., & Callner, M. (2008). Chris Rock: Kill the messenger [Documentary]. USA: Apollo Theatre.

Rodriguez, M. (2016, September 18). Alan Yang, ‘Master of None’ creator, just nailed the need for Asians on screen. Mic. Retrieved from: https://mic.com/articles/154489/alan-yangmaster-of-none-creator-just-nailed-the-need-for-asians-on-screen#.EgtHe2vJJ Sarkar, S. (2015, November 11). Master of None is a terrific, groundbreaking, important tv show. Polygon. Retrieved from: http://www.polygon.com/2015/11/11/9696656/masterof-none-review-aziz-ansari Travers, B. (2016, June 30). Why Aziz Ansari’s dad could be the surprise Emmy nominee of 2016 (really). Indie Wire. Retrieved from: http://www.indiewire.com/2016/06/azizansari-dad-master-of-none-emmys-netflix-father-1201701009/

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Personal Biography I am a soon-to-be graduating senior at Christopher Newport University who studied Communication, the Digital Humanities and Psychology. I am a member of Phi Mu Fraternity, and served as our Internal Social Chairman this school year, planning formals and date functions for the chapter. I am also a member of Lambda Pi Eta, the academic honor’s society for communication students. This school year I served on LPH’s executive board as the historian, running all social media pages. When I’m not in class or serving either of these fraternities, you can find me working at the DSU Welcome Desk, teaching Zumba classes, substitute teaching at local schools, interning for a local non-profit organization, or taping film, commercial and television auditions as I work on building an acting career. Post graduation, I am moving to Atlanta to further pursue acting. While I’m there, I also aim to find social media marketing internships so I can learn more about the field before beginning that career pursuit. I love the ocean, people, and dancing. My time at CNU has allowed me to be surrounded by peers and staff who are leading lives of significance, and I hope I can carry that unique trait we Captain’s share into the world.

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Mechanism of a Fat-Based Diet as a Cancer Therapy Cancer, Biochemistry, Ketosis, Metabolism, Reactive Oxygen Species, Diet Andrew Moyer* (andrew.moyer@cnu.edu, 703-408-7757) Dr. David Wolfgang (david.wolfgang@wku.edu) Christopher Newport University – Molecular Biology and Chemistry Department *primary author

Abstract The inability of current medicine to eradicate cancer necessitates more effective treatments. How can the efficaciousness of cancer therapies be increased? Recently, research has shown that the ketogenic diet may potentiate classic cancer treatments by selectively weakening tumors. The diet is almost exclusively fats with little to no carbohydrates. In vitro experiments done with viability assays, enzyme assays, colorimetric tests, quantification of biomarkers and enzyme overexpression have revealed key metabolic differences that may leave cancer cells more vulnerable to oxidative stress-induced cytotoxicity. Ketosis in human endothelial cells reduced viability due to increased lipid peroxidation. Reactive oxygen species (ROS) production was determined to be the source of lipid peroxidation. Various cancer cells had higher basal levels of ROS production and could be forced to produce more upon electron-transport-chain-blocker administration, while their normal counterparts were unaffected. Viability assays revealed that cancer cells were more susceptible to glucose deprivation induced-cytotoxicity relative to their normal counterparts. Also, overexpression of mitochondrial antioxidant enzymes rescued cancer cells from cell death. This revealed the mitochondria as the source of ROS. The above data supports the idea that forcing cancer cells to use fats, and not carbohydrates, as their primary source of energy would selectively decrease their viability.

This could enhance prognoses when used in conjunction with other major cancer therapies.

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Mechanism of the Ketogenic Diet as an Adjuvant Cancer Therapy Introduction According to the National Cancer Institute, expenditures on cancer care in the U.S. approached $125 billion in 2010 and are projected to be $156 billion in 2020 [1]. Cancer is a disease of aberrant genetics that leads to the transformation of normally functioning cells to ones that proliferate uncontrollably. Cancer may be the most aggressive disease faced by the modern world, due to its complexity. Although our mechanistic knowledge of the disease has increased tremendously in the past decades, development of effective clinical treatments are lagging behind. This is illustrated by the high mortality rates and our inability to completely eradicate cancer from the body.

There is a tremendous need for effective treatments.

Traditionally, targets for drug development have been intermediates of oncogenic metabolism. Because cancer arises from genetic mutations, it subsequently affects metabolic and signaling pathways that are conducive to the cell’s proliferation [2]. Despite some success in clinical trials, a one-drug-one-target approach is limited because metabolism is so expansive. It is too difficult to alter activity of multiple pathways with a single drug. To add to the problem, there may be varying genetic differences within a single tumor. A more effective treatment would be able to influence all aspects of metabolism. Surprisingly, this can be done with the ketogenic diet and no pharmaceuticals.

The ketogenic diet is extremely high in fat and contains little to no carbohydrates [3,4]. An initial fast decreases the body’s carbohydrate stores and forces liver cells to begin breaking down fats through beta-oxidation.

The products of beta-oxidation are converted into ketone bodies, which are water-soluble and travel all over the body. These molecules can be utilized for cellular energy creation [5]. The diet physiologically mimics starvation, but it is sustainable because the fat supply is constantly replenished. Cancer cells thrive on carbohydrate metabolism [6] and are put at a disadvantage when they have to use fats for their energy production [3,4].

The power of the ketogenic diet lies in the metabolic shift that it creates. Normal cells are metabolically flexible, but cancer cells have a strong bias for glucose metabolism [2]. This metabolic shift forces cancer cells to stop using glycolysis for energy creation and causes them to utilize the available ketone bodies instead. The cells first take in the ketone bodies and run them through the Krebs cycle. Then they use the products of the Krebs Cycle as substrates in the electron transport chain (ETC), the only way to create sufficient energy. Genetic mutations that encode components of the ETC are ubiquitous in cancer [7,8,9]. They usually lead to a loss of function and retard electron movement through the protein complexes. This leads to accumulation of free electrons and leaves them available to be transferred to O2, which yields superoxide. Forcing the use of the electron transport chain in cancer cells inadvertently increases the production of reactive oxygen species (ROS) [10,11]. These chemical byproducts can destroy integral cellular macromolecules, like lipids and DNA, through radical reactions. Cells have enzymes that can manage ROS production, but a drastic increase overwhelms the defense systems. The ketogenic diet selectively weakens cancer cells by causing an increase in their ROS production.

Besides increasing production of toxic byproducts in cancer cells, the ketogenic diet also lowers the ability of cancer cells to defend against these toxins [12,13]. The ratio of antioxidants to ROS production is known as the redox status [6]. It can be unbalanced if cells do not have the resources to maintain appropriate concentrations of antioxidant defenses. Glycolysis is the carbon source of the Pentose Phosphate Pathway (PPP.) The PPP is the cell’s source of reduced nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide phosphate (NADPH), which functions as a cofactor for various antioxidant enzymes, such as glutathione (GSH.) Superoxide dismutase (SOD), another antioxidant enzyme, catalyzes superoxide into hydrogen peroxide inside the mitochondria. This does not completely eliminate oxidative stress. H2O2 can diffuse to the cytoplasm where it can react with transition metals and create hydroxyl radicals. The ketogenic diet selectively weakens cancer cells by decreasing their antioxidant capacities [14].

A brief overview of metabolism will illustrate how the ketogenic diet fights cancer. Adenosine Triphosphate (ATP) is the cellular unit of energy. The main goal of metabolism is to provide enough ATP to meet

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the needs of the cell, whether it’s proliferating rapidly or just performing housekeeping. Energy production is usually initiated by glucose breakdown in the cytoplasm. Glycolysis is also the carbon source for NADPH, as mentioned earlier. One molecule of glucose yields two net ATP, which really isn’t a lot. Cancer cells run glycolysis at excessively high rates to meet their energetic needs and create abundant antioxidant resources [2]. The ketogenic diet significantly reduces these processes, which causes complications for cancer cells [3,4]. This puts all cells in a position where they have to use other means to create energy. The whole body starts utilizing the circulating ketone bodies and converting them into Acetyl-CoA for the Krebs Cycle. This substrate is used to create NADH and FADH2. These two molecules can be processed by the electron transport chain to create 34 molecules of ATP. This is fine for normal cells, but the mutations of the ETC complexes in cancer cells lead to uncontrollable increases in ROS [7,8,9]. The cancer cells are unable to manage the increase and undergo lysis due to lipid peroxidation. An overview of this mechanism is illustrated in figure 1.

Figure 1

B.G. Allen et al. / Redox Biology 2 (2014) 963–970

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Methods There are various scientific methods that will aid in exploring how a ketogenic diet unbalances oxidative stress in cancer cells. This includes exploring the production of ROS, as well as the production and activity of antioxidant enzymes. The nature of the research has to do with metabolism, steady state build up of products, cell viability and enzyme activity so the appropriate methods were used. The main reactive oxygen species are the superoxide radical and the hydroxyl radical. It is very difficult to directly measure ROS production because of their instability, but there are many biomarkers that indicate their presence. Cells process oxygen radicals through the metabolism shown in figure 2.

Figure 2 Figure 3

Superoxide is inadvertently created in the electron transport chain [7,8,9]. Available superoxide dismutase enzymes catalyze the radical into hydrogen peroxide [14]. H2O2 is converted back into water and O2 by the catalase enzyme.

H2O2 could potentially diffuse back into the cytoplasm and collide with a reduced metal. This Fenton chemistry would create a hydroxyl radical. Glutathione peroxidases and peroxiredoxins are enzymes that can manage hydrogen peroxide and it’s subsequent radical. Increased activity of all the aforementioned enzymes would indicate more oxidative stress. Also, glutathione and NADPH are substrates necessary for certain antioxidant reactions [10]. An increase in certain enzymatic byproducts, like glutathione disulfide or NADP+, would indirectly suggest increased oxidative stress. Changes in the processes mentioned above after varying experimental conditions will illustrate how the ketogenic diet selectively unbalances oxidative stress in cancer cells.

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Colorimetric/fluorometric tests are simple indicators of the condition of a cell. They can indicate viability of a cell or the presence of a chemical. Alamar blue, or resazurin, is an indicator of cell viability. NADPH and NADH reduce resazurin (blue) to resofurin (pink.) Resazurin and resofurin absorb and emit different wavelengths of light, so a spectrophotometer can measure the ratio of these two compounds in a sample [15]. The color change from pink to blue indirectly quantifies the cell’s overall health by measuring NADPH and NADH levels. In the example below, the compound ITZ was lethal at lower concentrations than AMB. Figure 5

In these experiments, higher absorptions of the reduced compound, resofurin, will indicate decreased viability under a Figure 4

Figure 7

CDCFH2

certain experimental condition. Resazurin is also non-toxic, so cells can be tested in other ways after this viability test. Two other relevant colorimetric compounds are dihydroethidium (DHE) and 5-(and-6) -carboxy-2', 7'-dichlorodihydrofluorescein diacetate (CDCFH2.)

Figure 6

DHE

These compounds react with the superoxide radical and hydrogen peroxide, respectively [10].

The spectrophotometer can quantify how much of these compounds have reacted to measure the ROS production. Increased absorption of the dihydroethidum oxidation product indicates that there is an increased amount of superoxide radicals being created in the cancer cells. Increased absorption of the CDCFH2 oxidation product indicates an increased amount of hydrogen peroxide molecules being created in the cancer cells. The controls are non-transformed cells from the same tissue.

The danger of free radical creation lies in their ability to destroy lipid membranes. Oxygen radicals are very small and can enter into the hydrophobic region of the phospholipid bilayer. It is here that they react with the unsaturated hydrocarbons to produce malondialdehyde (MDA), another biomarker of oxidative stress [16]. A thiobarbituric acid (TBA) assay can test for the presence of MDA. The MDA-TBA adduct could potentially be quantified with a spectrophotometer, but the scientists chose to measure amounts with high performance liquid chromatography.

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Figure 9 Figure 8 Figure 10

The TBA complex has a specific affinity for the stationary phase in the column and moves at different rate than the rest of the lysate. The HPLC computer quantifies how much adduct appeared across experimental conditions.

Increased TBA complex concentrations indicate that membranes are being destroyed.

Because cancer cells have an increased glycolytic phenotype, the pentose phosphate pathway (PPP) (offshoot of glycolysis) provides for them significant antioxidant defenses through NADPH creation. Gertrude Glock and Patricia McLean of the Middlesex Hospital Medical School devised a method for assaying activity of this pathway [17]. The two key enzymes in this pathway are glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase (G6PDH) and 6phosphogluconate dehydrogenase (6PGDH.) A reaction mixture was created with a set amount of NADP+ and the PPP enzymes. The reduction of this substrate Figure 11

was measured with a spectrophotometer. This activity (Âľmol/min) was divided by milligrams of protein in the sample to determine the amount of active enzymes in cancerous cells vs. non-transformed cells. This was done with normal and cancerous colon cells to indirectly compare their production of antioxidant defenses. If the assay measures higher activity of these enzymes, this indicates increased PPP activity of a certain group of cells. Because cancer cells have increased glycolysis, they may also have increased PPP activity. Direct spectrophotometer measurements of the NADPH/NADP+ ratio also yielded valuable data, indicating PPP activity of cells undergoing glucose deprivation. If NADPH is not being regenerated, then glucose deprivation is decreasing the cells antioxidant

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defenses. Viability tests were also done under glucose deprivation conditions. Normal, cancerous colon or breast endothelial cells were cultured in different media. At time zero, the media was replaced with (+) or (-) glucose media. Survival assays were done at 24, 48, and 72 hour marks by fixing, staining and counting the cells under a dissecting microscope. This data illustrates the differential susceptibility of cancer cells to glucose deprivation.

Mitochondrial function is a target of the ketogenic diet. There were a few methods that the scientists used to explore mitochondrial function. As mentioned earlier, superoxide dismutase and catalase are integral mitochondrial antioxidant enzymes that manage the reactive oxygen species. After unbalancing the oxidative stress through glucose deprivation in various cancer cell types, the scientists tested if overexpression of one or both enzymes could rescue the cells from death [10,11]. To induce overexpression, a molecular biology technique called transduction was used. This method exploits a virus’s ability to transfer it’s own genetic material to other microorganisms. Catalase and superoxide DNA were excised with restriction enzymes and transferred into DNA plasmids (circular pieces of genetic material.) These plasmids have a promoter segment built in and are delivered to the cells in high concentrations. A virus injects the DNA plasmids into the cells through its phospholipid membrane.

The scientists targeted the expression of the enzymes to mitochondria by including a location sequence on the plasmids. After translation at the endoplasmic reticulum, they are shipped to the mitochondria. Subsequent activation of the promoter region selectively increases expression of the transgene(s) [18]. An increase in cell viability after overexpression of one or both of the enzymes would suggest that glucose deprivation induces ROS creation.

This is because these enzymes specifically reduce ROS and are saving the cell from death. It would also suggest that the mitochondria are the source of the ROS creation, because both of these enzymes function in the mitochondria.

Figure 12

Another test was also done to confirm that the ETC was the source of ROS production. Having already established that glucose deprivation unbalances the oxidative stress defenses, the scientists employed a special line of osteosarcoma cells. Half of the cells had functional ETCs (rho (+)) and half of them did not (rho (0.) Half of both of these groups were deprived of glucose [10]. The scientists used a spectrophotometer and diethylenetriaminepentaacetic acid dye, a color indicator, to measure the steady state build up of glutathione disulfide (GSSG) across trials. No increase of GSSG buildup after glucose deprivation among the rho (0) cells would indicate that the ETCs are the source of ROS production. This is because the glutathione antioxidants reduce H2O2 while simultaneously oxidizing glutathione in the following reaction: 2Glutathione(reduced) + X (oxidized) è Glutathione Disulfide (GSSG) (oxidized) + X (reduced) where X is usually hydrogen peroxide [19].

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Results and Discussion Studies done in mice have shown that the ketogenic diet can increase effectiveness of classic cancer treatments [4]. The proposed mechanism is a complete alteration of metabolism that forces cancer cells to use ketone bodies as an energy source. This inadvertently increases levels of cytotoxic ROS and lowers antioxidant resources [10] . The mechanism is selective to cancer cells due to their abundant mitochondrial mutations [7,8,9]. The data below supports the proposed mechanism.

Acetoacetate is one of Figure 13 the main ketone bodies produced from beta-oxidation.

Malondialdehyde (MDA) concentrations increased as acetoacetate concentrations were increased. There is an inverse relationship between cell growth and acetoacetate concentrations as well. These data are shown in figure 13. These experiments were not done in cancer cells, but in human endothelial cells.

They still have validity because endothelial cells have a rapidly dividing phenotype and are the most common type of cell that transforms into cancer.

Decreased viability was indicated by the alamar blue assay, which quantifies the reductive environment of the S.K. Jain et al. / Free Radical Biology and Medicine (1998) 1083-1088 cells (indirect indicator of cell viability.) This data also suggests an inverse relationship between ketosis and viability of the endothelial cells [20].

MDA concentration is important because it is a key biomarker of oxidative stress. An increase in the MDA concentration suggests that acetoacetate is increasing lipid peroxidation. Increasing ROS production in cancer cells would kill them through lipid peroxidation. Although the data shown do not reveal a specific mechanism, it does suggest that higher levels of ketosis harm cells by increasing lipid peroxidation. This study was originally performed to better understand why diabetics have higher rates of cardiovascular disease. Ketosis is usually uncontrollable in severe diabetics, but is more controlled when used as an adjuvant therapy for cancer. Extremely high levels of ketosis can kill all types of cells. More valid data could have been obtained by performing the same experiments in different cancer cell lines. The scientists also could have added beta-hydroxybutyric acid into the cell media. This would be more reflective of the ketogenic diet, because multiple ketone bodies are produced from fatty acid breakdown. Acetoacetate can also decarboxylate to yield an acetone product, which is known to be toxic. Cell viability could have been decreased from lipid peroxidation and acetone toxicity as well. The ketogenic diet increases ketosis and can potentially induce lipid peroxidation in cancer cells if they do not have the appropriate antioxidant defenses.

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Figure 14

S.K. Jain et al. / Free Radical Biology and Medicine (1998) 1083-1088

Superoxide levels increase as acetoacetate concentrations increase. This is shown in figure 14. These data support the previous figure, confirming that superoxide generation is indeed the source of MDA. This test was also done in human endothelial cells, so more valid results could have been obtained from cancerous cells. The scientists also measured superoxide generation by measuring the reduction of cytochrome c. This is a strange way to measure superoxide generation, because cytochrome c is reduced when it is functioning normally. Also, other complexes can potentially reduce oxygen to create the superoxide radical.

Despite their confusing methods, the data make sense because MDA concentrations were increased in the previous figure. The ketogenic diet could potentially kill cancer cells by selectively increasing ROS creation within them.

Basal levels of superoxide radicals were significantly higher in colon cancer cell lines (HT29, SW480, HCT116) compared to normal colon endothelial cells (FHC.) Dihydroethidium, a dye, is selectively oxidized by superoxide; the product was measured with a spectrophotometer. This is direct evidence of increased ROS production in cancer cells. Antimyicin A (AntA) is a known electron-transport-chain blocker (ECTB.) Figure 15 shows that the presence of AntA caused Figure 15 all the cancer cell lines to exhibit 2 to 3 fold increases of oxidized DHE. There was almost no increase in DHE oxidation

N. Aykin-Burns et al. / Biochemical Journal (2009) 29-37

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in the control. The data suggest that cancer cells can be selectively forced to create more ROS. Selectivity is important because effective cancer treatments only target tumors.

Figure 16

An identical test was done with CDCFH2, which is shown in figure 16. The absorbance of the oxidation product indicates the presence of hydrogen peroxide. The spectrophotometer measured increased absorbance among 2 of the cancer cell lines. Oddly, the HT29 tumor cells did not exhibit significant increases in H2O2 concentrations. Increased H2O2 production is another source of oxidative stress, which can damage cancer cells.

Figure 17 N. Aykin-Burns et al. / Biochemical Journal (2009) 29-37

N. Aykin-Burns et al. / Biochemical Journal (2009) 29-37

DHE and CDCFH2 were also used to quantify ROS production in human mammary endothelial cells. Basal production levels of both ROS species were higher in the cancerous human mammary endothelial cell (MB231) compared to the non-transformed counterpart (HMEC) (figure 17.) The oxidation insensitive analog CDCF was used as a control to confirm that differences were due to varying hydrogen peroxide levels. CDCF does not interact with H2O2, which confirms that the changes were not due to other reactions. No such chemical control exists for superoxide. These data show that various types of cancer cells already produce increased steady state levels of ROS. The ketogenic diet can push cancer cells to produce excessive amounts of ROS and harm themselves through lipid peroxidation.

Glucose deprivation selectively reduced viability of cancer cells. 33Co and HMEC are normal colon and normal mammary endothelial cells, respectively.

HCT116 and MB231 are their transformed counterparts. Although the figures do not indicate it, the white and black circles were both –glucose trials. The data were normalized and the +glucose controls are not shown. Survival

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Figure 18

N. Aykin-Burns et al. / Biochemical Journal (2009) 29-37

assays performed at 24, 48 and 72 hours revealed drastic decreases in the viability of cancer cell. The non-transformed cells were unaffected by glucose deprivation. The ketogenic diet does not eliminate glucose availability from the body, but potentially lowers it. Although it does not establish a mechanism, this data suggests that lower glucose availability will selectively harm cancer cells. The glucose deprivation probably decreased the cancer cell’s antioxidant defenses by reducing the pentose phosphate pathway (PPP) activity, which is an offshoot of glycolysis. The data in table 1 shows that cancer cells have significantly increased PPP activity, which provides coenzymes for antioxidants.

Taking away glucose would take away the ability of cancer cells to create these coenzymes.

This survival study was very black and white.

To get more valid results, the scientists could have done more trials with different media.

Each media could have had a different ratio of ketone bodies to glucose. Plotting this data together would have better illustrated the necessary concentrations for the weakening of cancer cells. This would also give some idea of whether the necessary concentrations are achievable in a person. These results were also done in cell cultures and may not be reflective of the entire body. These data does support the idea that the ketogenic diet selectively harms cancer cells though.

Overexpression of superoxide dismutase and catalase increase cell survival of colon and breast cancer cells.

Table 1

N. Aykin-Burns et al. / Biochemical Journal (2009) 29-37

The AdMnSOD/AdMitCAt bars in figure 19 illustrate this fact. Previous figures have already suggested that cancer

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cells are susceptible to glucose deprivationinduced cytotoxicity. AdBgl II is an empty vector control. MnSOD reduces superoxide to hydrogen peroxide in the mitochondria. mitCAT reduces hydrogen peroxide to water and oxygen in the mitochondria. This data supports the idea that the cytotoxicity is due to mitochondrial-produced ROS. This is because overexpression of the mitochondrial antioxidant enzymes rescues the cell from death. Not surprisingly, overexpression of both enzymes as opposed to just one caused the most significant increase in cell viability.

Figure 19

To further establish the role of mitochondria in ROS production, the scientists employed a special osteosarcoma cell line called rho(0), which lack functional electron transport chains. These cells are Ahmad, I.M. et al. / Journal of Biological Chemistry (2005) 4254-4263 made in a lab by knocking out mitochondrial DNA that encodes for catalytic subunits involved in cellular respiration. These cells do contain mitochondria, but cannot perform normal oxidative phosphorylation. The table below shows the data they gathered:

Table 2

Ahmad, I.M. et al. / Journal of Biological Chemistry (2005) 4254-4263

Rho(+) had functional electron transport chains and Rho(0) did not. Both cell lines were exposed to the normal and glucose deprivation conditions. The % GSSG in table 2 is the most important number, because an increase indicates higher antioxidant activity of glutathione peroxidases and peroxiredoxins. When these enzymes are active, they reduce H2O2 and 2 molecules of glutathione (GSH) to 1 molecule of glutathione disulfide (GSSG.) There was a large increase of % GSSG in rho(+) cells when comparing + and – glucose trials. This indicates that glucose deprivation is increasing oxidative stress because there are higher levels of antioxidant activity. There was a negligible difference in the rho(0) cells after glucose deprivation. This implies that the ETC is the source of the ROS. The ketogenic diet forces the ETC’s of cancer cells to produce excessive amounts of oxygen radicals.

Conclusion The ketogenic diet has the power to function as an adjuvant therapy for cancer, but the mechanism is not well understood. The mechanism is most likely multifaceted, so the experiments focused on different aspects of

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cellular function. It was hypothesized that the ketogenic diet therapy works by selectively unbalancing the redox status in cancer cells. In other words, reactive oxygen species (ROS) production is increased while antioxidant defenses are simultaneously decreased.

Various data was collected that supported this hypothesis. An experiment done with human endothelial cells showed that acetoacetate exposure (representing ketosis) increased malondialdehyde (MDA) concentrations and decreased cell viability at the same time. MDA is a biomarker of oxidative stress, which suggests that the cell death was ROS-mediated. Using colorimetric assays, it was observed that basal ROS production is higher in various cancer cells compared to their non-transformed counterparts. Administration of AntA (electron transport chain blocker) selectively increased the ROS production. This shows that cancer cells can be pushed to create more ROS. The data also suggests that ROS may be the cause of cell death during ketosis.

Over expression of mitochondrial antioxidant enzymes rescued cancer cells from oxidative stress-induced cell death. Also, cancer cells with dysfunctional electron transport chains could not be forced to create more ROS. These two experiments clearly suggest that mitochondria are the major source of ROS in cancer cells. One can conclude that the diet forces cancer cells to utilize their mitochondria in order to obtain an adequate energy supply, while inadvertently increasing oxygen radical production.

Also, glucose deprivation selectively reduced viability of cancer cells. Other data suggested that this was from lowered pentose phosphate pathway (PPP) activity, which led to a reduction in antioxidant defenses.

Cancerous tissues have abnormally high levels of glycolysis and subsequently higher PPP activity, which increases protection from their own oxygen radical creation. This suggests that the ketogenic diet’s affects may be selective towards cancer cells.

Collectively, this data suggests the diet lowers the antioxidant defenses and increases oxidative stressinduced cell death. Each experiment had their own minor drawbacks, but none of the studies were done in vivo. The in vitro nature of all the studies was a major drawback. Studies done in cell cultures do not contain the intricate feedback mechanisms that an entire living organism would contain. People have mechanisms that meticulously regulate blood glucose levels. Data from the glucose deprivation study would have been much more valid if it was done in a living organism. It is still not clear if the diet can lower antioxidant capabilities by lowering the glucose consumption of cancer cells.

Future research should include in vivo studies of the ketogenic diet’s affects on all aspects of metabolism.

These tests should compare cancerous and non-cancerous cells too. Maybe the diet lowers glucose availability, or maybe it does not. Increased presence of ketone bodies in the blood could alter the metabolism of various cell types.

Metabolomics studies should be used to analyze metabolite concentrations of different tissue types under ketosis.

RNAseq could also be used to see if the ketogenic diet causes changes in expression of transporters and other key metabolic proteins. These studies would further the understanding of the ketogenic diet’s mechanism as an adjuvant therapy for cancer. The mitochondria of cancer cells can potentially be forced to produce excessive amounts of ROS, but it is not fully understood how the diet affects the redox balance of cancer cells in vivo.

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Sources [1] National Institute of Health. National Cancer Institute: Cancer Statistics. http://www.cancer.gov/aboutcancer/what-is-cancer/statistics (Accessed Dec 2, 2015).

[2] Amoedo, N.D.; Valencia, J.P.; Rodrigues, M.F.; Galina, A.; Rumjanek, F.D. How Does the Metabolism of Tumour Cells Differ from that of Normal Cells. Biosci. Rep. 2013. 33, 865-873.

[3] Allen, B.G.; Bhatia, S.K.; Anderson, C.M.; Eichenberger-Gilmore, J.M.; Sibenaller, Z.A.; Mapuskar, K.A.; Schoenfeld, J.D.; Buatti, J.M.; Spitz, D.R.; Fath, M.A. Ketogenic Diets as an Adjuvant Cancer Therapy: History and Potential Mechanism. Redox Biology. 2014. 2, 963-970.

[4] Vidali, S.; Aminzadeh, S.; Lambert, B.; Rutherford, T.; Sperl, W.; Kofler, B.; Feichtinger, R.G. Mitochondria: the Ketogenic Diet – A Metabolism-based Therapy. The International Journal of Biochemistry and Cell Biology.

2015. 63, 55-59.

[5] Bartlett, K.; Eaton, S.; Mitochondrial β-oxidation. Eur. J. Biochem. 2004. 271, 462-469.

[6] Cairns, R.A.; Harris, I.S.; Mak, T.W. Regulation of Cancer Cell Metabolism. Nature Reviews. 2011. 11, 85-95 [7] Slane, B.G.; Aykin-Burns, N.; Smith, B.J.; Kalen, A.L.; Goswami, P.C.; Domann, F.E.; Spitz, D.R. Mutation of Succinate Dehydrogenase Subunit C Results in Increased Superoxide, Oxidative Stress, and Genomic Instability.

Cancer Res. 2006. 66, 7615-7620.

[8] Brandon M.; Baldi. P; Wallace, D.C. Mitochondrial Mutations in Cancer. Oncogene. 2006. 25, 4647-4662.

[9] Kroemer, G. Mitochondria in Cancer. Oncogene. 2006. 25, 4630-4632.

[10] Ahmad, I.M.; Aykin-Burns, N.; Sim, J.E.; Walsh, S.A.; Higashikubo, R.; Buettner, G.R.; Venkatamaran S.; Mackey, M.A.; Flanagan, S.W.; Oberley, L.W.; Spitz, D.R. Mitochondrial Superoxide and H2O2 Mediate Glucose Deprivation-Induced Cytotoxicity and Oxidative Stress in Human Cancer Cells. Journal of Biological Chemistry.

2005. 280, 4254-4263.

[11] Aykin-Burns, N.; Ahmad, I.M.; Zhu, Y.; Oberley, L.W.; Spitz, D.R. Increased Levels of Superoxide and Hydrogen Peroxide Mediate the Differential Susceptibility of Cancer Cells vs. Normal Cells to Glucose Deprivation.

Biochem J. 2009. 418, 29-37.

[12] Spitz, D.R.; Sim, J.E.; Ridnour, L.A.; Galoforo, S.S.; Lee, Y.J. Glucose Deprivation-Induced Oxidative Stress in Human Tumor Cells; A Fundamental Defect in Metabolism? Section of Cancer Biology, Radiation Oncology Center, Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, Missouri 63108, USA [13] Simons, A.L.; Mattson, D.M.; Dornfeld K.; Spitz, D.R. Glucose Deprivation-Induced Metabolic Oxidative Stress and Cancer Therapy. J Cancer Res Ther. 2009. 5, 1-7.

[14] Buettner, G.R. Superoxide Dismutase in Redox Biology: the Roles of Superoxide and Hydrogen Peroxide.

Anticancer Agents Med Chem. 2011. 11, 341-346 [15] ThermoFisher Scientific. alamarBlue Cell Viability Assay Protocol. https://www.thermofisher.com/us/en/home/references/protocols/cell-and-tissue-analysis/cell-profilteration-assayprotocols/cell-viability-with-alamarblue.html (Accessed Dec 2, 2015).

[16] Mylonas, C.; Kouretas, D. Lipid Peroxidation and Tissue Damage. In Vivo. 1999. 3, 295-309 [17] Glock, G.E.; McLean, P. Further Studies on the Properties and Assay of Glucose 6-Phosphate Dehydrogenase and 6-Phosphogluconate Dehydrogenase of Rat Liver. Courtald Institute of Biochemistry, Middlesex Hospital

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Medical School, London. 1953. 400-408 [18] Nature Protocols. Production and Purification of Lentiviral Vectors. http://www.nature.com/nprot/journal/v1/n1/full/nprot.2006.37.html (Accessed Dec 2, 2015) [19] Rahman, K. Studies on Free Radicals, Antioxidants, and Co-factors. Clin Interv Aging. 2007. 2, 219-236 [20] Jain, S.K.; Kannan, K.; Lim G. Ketosis (Acetoacetate) can Generate Oxygen Radicals and can Cause Increased Lipid Peroxidation and Growth Inhibition in Human Endothelial Cells. Free Radical Biology and Medicine. 1998.

25, 1083-1088.

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The Uncharted and Fragmented: Inside the Mind of the Master Sculptor Sarah Field sarah.field.13@cnu.edu 650-468-1448 Dr. Moran Department of Fine Arts, Art History elizabeth.moran@cnu.edu 757-594-7883

Workshop of Jacopino del Conte, Portrait of Michelangelo, 1535, Casa Buonarroti, Florence, Italy. Art Stor.

Abstract: This paper will examine two of Michelangelo’s last work of sculpture, the Florentine Pieta and Rondanini Pieta. Placing these sculptures in the context of the artist’s sequence of his career will aid in understanding Michelangelo’s development of ideas of beauty and art. Through studying different aspects of Michelangelo’s late life, career, artistic techniques, and development of spirituality, this paper will conclude that the artist’s last two sculptures present insight into the person and artist of Michelangelo. This paper will use the studying and research of many art historian scholars to come to this conclusion. The last two sculptures were personal projects, which Michelangelo made in his own studio during sleepless nights. These sculptures also present an unfinished surface which point to Michelangelo’s artistic process, deep personal connection to the pieces, and the artist’s change in artistic ideals of beauty. A study of Michelangelo’s religious life and spirituality will show correlation to the Pietas of Michelangelo’s last years. An artist who is widely known often is seen through only a few of his well-known works of art. However, Michelangelo lived for many decades, during which the artist completed many works. This paper attempts to begin to uncover the lesser-known works of art, arguing that these lesser-known and less perfect works shed new light on the emotional, spiritual, and skilled artist who had a deep connection to his works of his later life.

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The High Renaissance sculptor, painter and architect, Michelangelo, 1475-1564, created many works of art throughout his long career. Many of those works are well known, however there are lesser-known works that Michelangelo created in his own studio without a commission.

These pieces leave a documentation of the enigmatic and spiritual life of Michelangelo. Towards the end of his life, Michelangelo created sculptures that embody the style of “non-finito,” or of an unfinished state. This paper will look closely at two of these sculptures, the Florentine Pieta and the Rondanini Pieta, and examine why they were created, the execution of the unfinished style, and how they compare to previous sculptures, to ultimately come to an understanding of how Michelangelo’s late life, religion and development of his artistic career can be reflected in the two sculptures.

Michelangelo is marked by a long life spanning many decades, and included changes in art, philosophy, and religion. Michelangelo’s life was recorded heavily, and contemporary artists and writers, Giorgio Vasari and Ascanio Condivi, both recorded the life of Michelangelo. In Lives of the Artists, Vasari explains his personal friendship with Michelangelo and claims to be one of the closest people to Michelangelo, hence how he wrote so much about the artist’s life.1 Michelangelo was born to a moderate family near Arezzo, Italy, however shortly after his birth, Michelangelo’s family moved to a family owned farm in Settignano, on the outskirts of Florence.2 Michelangelo’s talent for drawing was apparent as a young boy in grammar school, although his skill was not appreciated at first and was punished by his father for drawing, because “they probably thought that applying oneself to a craft they did not recognize was a base and unworthy undertaking for their ancient house.”3 At this time, Michelangelo gained access to drawings of the Master Domenico Ghirlandaio, “known...throughout all of Italy as one of the

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best masters alive,” by a friend learning from Ghirlandaio.4 Eventually Michelangelo's talent was unmistakable, and he was given an apprenticeship with Ghirlandaio at fourteen. Michelangelo’s artistic genius was rapidly becoming more recognized everyday to those around him, “because all the knowledge and ability of true grace was, in his nature, enhanced by study and practice, for in Michelangelo it produced more sublime works every day.”5 However, the most notable point in the beginning of Michelangelo's career was his work with the Medicis. Michelangelo caught the attention of Lorenzo de’ Medici the Magnificent, and at the age of fifteen left the apprenticeship of Ghirlandaio and moved into the house of the Medici’s.6 The Medicis were one of the most important and influential families in Renaissance Italy both as the main patrons of art, as well as political leaders of Florence. The developing artist was treated as a son of Lorenzo, and so had access to elite noblemen, education, and art, It was of inestimable importance for [Michelangelo’s] early artistic Development that he was given access to the antiquities garden of the Medici at such a young age and there came into contact not only with works of classical sculpture but also with distinguished artists and intellectuals.7 Michelangelo, gifted with skill, was also born at the right time and place. Florence, a small city compared to Rome, was flourishing, Libraries and schools were founded and it became shameful for a free Florentine to be illiterate. Great strides were made in printing and duplication of manuscripts. The frontiers of the world were expanded and new worlds discovered. The heavens were explored and challenging theories expounded. Man felt hopeful and reached for the stars.8 Michelangelo had a far-reaching pool of early Renaissance masters to study, and “all Florence was his school and he was given freedom to roam through the art treasures of the city.”9 This is how Michelangelo got his start to what would be a long lasting and successful career.

Michelangelo’s early influence from the works of the early masters of Florence, and the Medicis

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would play a role as a foundation in light of his growing development of his ideas of art throughout his life.

The twentieth century art history scholar, Anthony Blunt, divided Michelangelo’s career into three general sections, each section playing an important role to the next. According to Blunt’s outline of his life this paper will briefly explain the first two sections, however will closely examine the last section in greater detail. The first significant part of Michelangelo's career is the first thirty years of the fourteenth century. The first period of Michelangelo’s career is known as High Renaissance humanism.10 Michelangelo was focused on his early training and the ideals of the scientific tradition and Neo-Platonism that characterized this time.11 This section of Michelangelo’s career is evident in the works of the Sistine ceiling, and the Pieta of St. Peters.

Michelangelo did appreciate science but with a focus on the visible beauty of nature, more specifically focused on the beauty of the human body.12 Blunt contrasts Michelangelo with his predecessor, Leon Battista Alberti (1404- 1472). Blunt discusses that Alberti created out of rational choice and painted the typical. Alberti was largely an architect, and applying Blunt’s theories, I believe Alberti’s Palazzo Ruccelai, exemplifies Alberti’s focus on order and renaissance classical ideas (Fig.1). Michelangelo in contrast rejected the typical and relied on the imagination to create.

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Alberti, Palazzo Ruccelai: Façade (detail), 1446-51, Florence, Italy. Google Images. (Fig. 1) The second section of Michelangelo’s career begins in 1530 with turmoil in the church over the Protestant Reformation.13 Blunt explains that this instability in the church leads to a downfall of the Renaissance humanism, and creates a change of heart for the artist regarding ideals of art. Michelangelo’s Last Judgment of the Sistine Chapel is a key piece in the second section of his life. Compared to the Sistine ceiling completed thirty years prior, the figures of the Last Judgment “lack grace” and idealized beauty. The Last Judgment also lacks the classical ideals of space, perspective, proportions, and direct imitations of nature.14 Michelangelo is “no longer interested in physical beauty for its own sake,” but instead focused on the painting of spiritual ideals.15 Michelangelo does not completely dismiss physical beauty or Neo-Platonism, but he is using physical beauty to enhance spiritual meaning.

At this time Michelangelo is stepping away from the rules of the early Renaissance leaders. Michelangelo rejects the “fixed standard of beauty,” and dives into a deeper understanding of art, beauty and the mind.16 Blunt contrasts Michelangelo to one of his contemporaries, Raphael. Raphael was the ideal painter of the time, using all the rules and 83

displaying the ideals of the time. Michelangelo saw Raphael as talent “acquired by long study,” whereas Michelangelo saw the height of art as the artist using divinely inspired skill and imagination.17 The third period of Michelangelo’s life is the last fifteen years leading to up until his death.18 This period is marked by intensified ideas of the last period. At this point in Michelangelo’s late career, the artist denounces his early views on art, and there is a complete shift in his approach to art and beauty. Michelangelo did not waste anytime at the end of his life, instead he kept himself busy with commissioned and personal projects. The last thirty years of Michelangelo’s life were spent in Rome, and in this last section of his artistic career he was commissioned to create multiple architectural projects for Rome.19 The main commissioned project that Michelangelo undertook at this time was the dome of St. Peter’s Basilica starting in 1546 and continuing until the year of his death. However, Michelangelo was hesitant to take on St. Peter’s at first, understandably since Michelangelo was already seventy-one years old and “architecture was not his true profession.”20 The renowned artist accepted the job “against his will,” but eventually expressed, “he was serving on the building project for the love of God and not for any other reward,” and so he continued to work on the massive architectural project for seventeen years.21 Michelangelo though “regarded,” St. Peter’s, “as the greatest work of his life.” 22 Although many architects had a hand in the renovation of St. Peter’s, Michelangelo is often remembered as the prominent architect.23 More than just St. Peter’s, Michelangelo also took on architectural projects in redesigning the Capitoline Hill in Rome, the Porta Pia, and Sforza Chapel in the basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore. All of these were major architectural undertakings, especially the Capitoline Hill in Rome being of highly important political importance, since at this time of the, “Roman Republic and Empire it was often referred to as the

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centre of the world.”24 A few of these projects were not completed by Michelangelo’s death, however the artist's designs were implemented to finish the projects.25 While Michelangelo worked on the large projects that transformed Rome through architecture, Michelangelo did not abandon his ideals of expression of beauty, creativity and emotion through his favored medium of sculpture.

Although also a successful painter, architect, and poet, Michelangelo is most notably a sculptor. Not only is Michelangelo very skilled in the medium of sculpture, but also from his many successful sculptural pieces throughout his life one could conclude that Michelangelo preferred sculpture above his other mediums. Michelangelo seemed to be going beyond the foundations of the Renaissance, setting “new standards for contemporary art and artistic theory.”26 Sculpture existed in the Renaissance prior to Michelangelo, however Michelangelo seems to have viewed sculpture with greater importance than some of his contemporaries, and previous masters of his time. Like much of what is being revitalized from classicism, sculpture is also emphasized as it was in the classical era, The fact that the figural art of antiquity was encountered almost exclusively in three-dimensional works was of particular influence on Renaissance sculpture.27 Poeschke points out that Michelangelo would have also been drawn to sculpture because of the nature of his desire for creativity and expression. Sculptors were held “to ever higher artistic standards” but also “granted increasing creative freedom in matters of form and content.”28 Today Michelangelo is best known for his sculptures of the David and Pieta of St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome. However, Michelangelo created many sculptures during his long life, even until the days leading up until his death, of which his last sculptures increasingly begin to imitate the artist’s thoughts.

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The Florentine Pieta sculpture was created in the year 1550, (Fig. 2). This sculpture is also referred to as The Deposition; a title that reflects an unfortunate confusion of the subject matter which will be discussed below. Besides Michelangelo’s David, the Florentine Pieta is the next largest sculptural piece, measuring close to eight feet tall.29 Michelangelo created the Florentine Pieta in the years leading up to his death. Michelangelo begins the Florentine Pieta in 1547, around the age of seventy, and in the same years as he began the renovations of St. Peter’s.

This sculpture was not commissioned, but solely a personal project of Michelangelo’s with every intention to be associated with his burial. It is known that Michelangelo worked on this sculpture in his personal studio, and most often at night while he was not working on his larger architectural projects. Michelangelo’s plan was to donate the Florentine Pieta to Santa Maria Maggiore Church in Rome as an altarpiece.30 Michelangelo's motivation for this altarpiece was that the sculptor desired to be buried “at the foot of the altar where it was placed.”31 Research has suggested that the altar plan was most likely meant for the Crucifix Chapel of Santa Maria Maggiore, because of this chapel’s association with Christ’s death and the Pieta.32 However, today it currently resides in Florence in the Museo dell’Opera del Duomo, the reasoning behind its commonly known name as the Florentine Pieta.

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Michelangelo, Pieta (Florentine Pieta, The Deposition), 1550. Marble. Height 226 cm. Museo Dell’Opera del Duomo, Florence. Art Stor. (Fig. 2).

The Florentine Pieta is also one of Michelangelo's most ambitious sculptures, composed of many figures and carved out of one block of marble. The center figure, Christ, takes up a large portion of the composition. His body is lifeless and his limbs are being supported by the figures surrounding him. His head rests heavy with weight resting to the left, on his mother’s head. The second figure is that of Christ’s mother, the Virgin Mary. The Virgin Mary is most likely seated, implied by the angle of her knees as they push out the pleats in the fabric of her gown. Christ appears close to the figure of his mother, as he is somewhat collapsing onto her lap. Mary’s left arm is supporting Christ’s upper body, while Christ’s legs almost fall into his mother’s lap.

To the left of Christ is a smaller figure; this woman most likely is Mary Magdalene, although the figure is not clearly identified. She too is supporting the figure of Christ, her right arm is stretched out to support his right thigh, and Christ’s right arm is gently wrapped around

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Mary Magdalene's head with his hand resting on her body. Her proportions are significantly smaller compared to the three other figures. It is possible that the artist meant to portray Mary Magdalene kneeling on a lower ground, or placed at a farther distance. It is also possible that Michelangelo was displaying hierarchy of scale by making the lesser important figure, Mary Magdalene, smaller. Mary Magdalene is a lesser important figure when compared to the frontal and central figures of the Virgin Mary and Christ. Behind the figures of Christ and the Virgin Mary stands a tall, male hooded figure. This fourth figure is leaning in towards Christ and his right hand is visible under Christ’s right arm implying that this man is carrying the weight of Christ’s body. This hooded figure is most often identified, and will be identified in this paper, as Nicodemus, however there is a possibility that this figure could be a representation of Joseph of Arimathea who was also present at the burial of Christ.

While this Pieta sculpture is often referred to as a Pieta, it appears that this sculpture is both a Pieta and a Deposition. The deposition refers to Christ’s descent from the cross after his crucifixion. The figure of Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea are often placed in a deposition scene.33 The composition of a Deposition is often portrayed in art as “the nails being removed from the body, or the moment that it is lowered from the cross,” and the presence of the cross and the latter used to carry Christ down is often present.34 Even though not often referred to by name, the “deposition proper” is sometimes distinguished from the deposition as the “act of laying, or depositing, the body on the ground.”35 Mary Magdalene is also often present at a deposition scene. Michelangelo’s Florentine Pieta undeniably possesses aspects of a Deposition.

First, the figure of Christ is dead, and therefore has to be in the process of being taken down from the cross before being placed in the grave. As well, the presence of multiple figures

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surrounding Christ, Mary Magdalene and Nicodemus, who are two figures who commonly are associated with the Deposition.

Aspects of the Pieta are undeniably present. The theme of grief over Christ is apparent, and Michelangelo successfully blurs the lines between the Deposition and Pieta by adding to the narrative of the grief and deposition of Christ, one of intimacy and tenderness of a Mary’s grief.

The Florentine Pieta captures the moment after Christ is carried down from the cross, and “as Christ being lowered to be received in Mary’s arms, the action also anticipates a Pieta.”36 Pieta translates to pity in the Italian language, and is often referenced as the Lamentation of Christ, which refers to the moment just after Christ’s descent from Cross. The Lamentation is often portrayed with a larger group of mourners surrounding Christ, while the Pieta, although linked with the Lamentation, is a more devotional aspect focused on the grief of Mary.37 The Pieta scene is often solely of the Virgin Mary and Christ. The Pieta scenes of the earlier Renaissance, following medieval practice, portrayed the body of Christ lying across the knees of the seated Virgin.38 Christ is not lying on the knees of Mary in the Florentine Pieta, however as noted earlier, Christ is falling into the lap, and Michelangelo’s creation of intimacy between Mary and Christ alludes to the Pieta scene. However, whether the Deposition or the Pieta had more prominence in Michelangelo artistic mindset, it is evident that Michelangelo is focusing on the grief over Christ after his crucifixion.

The organization of the composition is unique. First, the entirety of the sculpture is created out of one block of marble, which was not an easy undertaking at the time.39 In this behind the scenes work of Michelangelo’s, this artist’s desire to be innovative and push limits is obvious. Another aspect of the composition is the use of multiple perspectives and how the

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figures are in fact narrowly packed into the piece. This sculpture was most likely meant by Michelangelo to be viewed from the front, because the frontal view “rich in depth and motion the result of Michelangelo’s subtle mastery of perspective.”40 Whereas, a side view of the sculpture displays “how narrow and tightly packed” the figures are into the stone. This contrast between the frontal and side views of the composition displays how Michelangelo artistically was able to bring to life figures from stone.

Michelangelo’s last work of art was the sculpture of the Rondanini Pieta (Fig. 3).

Although this was that last piece Michelangelo worked on, it was not considered in Michelangelo’s canon until recently.41 This sculpture became somewhat of a lost treasure, overshadowed by Michelangelo’s more grand and well-known works of sculpture, painting and architecture. Study of the Rondanini Pieta began with Charles de Tolnay, an art historian scholar of Michelangelo, when Tolnay was the first to publish photographs of the Rondanini Pieta.42 Tolney photographed the Pieta in its original location while in the private collection at the Rondanini home of the Count Sanseverino-Vimercati in Rome.43 The publications of Tolnay started to educate the public on Michelangelo’s final work, and this Pieta sculpture entered the public domain in 1952, and was then moved to its current residing place at the Castello Sforzesco in Milan.44

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Michelangelo, Rondanini Pieta, 1552-64, marble. Height 195 cm. Castello Sforzesco, Milan.

Google Images. (Fig. 3).

The slender Rondanini Pieta stands a little over six feet tall. The sculpture is composed of two figures. The first figure is a nude man who is hunched over with his head facing the ground.

The second figure is behind this man, possibly a support for the nude man, however the second figure does not actually carry the weight of the first, “[d]efying logic and gravity, Michelangelo’s figures are suspended in a timeless moment”.45 This figure behind is hooded, and appears to be clothed. The nude figure is Christ, and because he is “withered” and nude, Michelangelo is most likely capturing Christ between his death and burial.46 The figure behind Christ is often disputed.

Most often this figure is recognized as the Virgin Mary, because the title suggests a Pieta scene.47 Another possibility is that the sculpture in fact represents a real Biblical account of Christ in between being taken down from his cross before his burial. Two male figures present at Christ’s burial were Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea. As is the case for the hooded figure in the Florentine Pieta, there are possible connections of the figure to one of these figures.48

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The figure behind Christ is looking downward and “follows the slightly right tilt of the head of Christ.”49 Close examination reveals that in fact there may be a possible mysterious figure hidden in the figure standing behind Christ. Scholar John Paoletti points out that the face of the figure contains another face, and when viewed from below there is “another head which turns radically to the viewer’s right and which originally looked very slightly upward.”50 The other evidence for the mysterious hidden figure is the bare left leg of the figure behind Christ.51 This bare leg is shocking, because if Michelangelo intended from the beginning for the figure to be the Virgin Mary, he would not have given her a barren leg, for “Mary’s leg is never bared.”52 This evidence leads viewers to believe that Michelangelo had a previous figure carved into the stone, before completing the image of the figure that is the Rondanini Pieta today, which resembles more the figures of the Virgin Mary.

The figure behind Christ has long been a mystery. In the year of the artist’s death, 1564, the Rondanini Pieta was noted that the sculpture contained Christ and just “another figure above.”53 For many years the figure remained a mystery, and years after Michelangelo’s death it was given the title Pieta, even though the gender and identification of the figure remained unknown. In the one sense the figure can be read as a Pieta, of Mary “cradling her frail son.”54 However, the bold exposed leg of the figure points in fact to a male figure Who was part of an original conception for the statue and who is still undeniably present despite all the changes in the block.55 Michelangelo was most likely not thinking about viewers of his sculpture, but entirely wrapped up in his own process of thinking and creating. The double identification of this figure is disputable, however with this ambiguity Michelangelo is in fact pointing to something deeper going on in his mind.

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The somewhat simple two figured sculpture at first glance, is in fact a more dynamic piece. The finished product in fact is a reflection of a process Michelangelo went through to get to his final product, or at least what is seen today. This process, embedded in the stone itself, points to and reminds the viewer of the greater mind of the master Michelangelo and what was at work in him while he was conceiving his latest works. The first development of Michelangelo’s process was sculpting the Florentine Pieta. The two Pietas can largely be linked, because of their striking resemblance in subject matter and proximity to each other in Michelangelo’s life. The taking on of the Rondanini sculpture appears to be a second phase of a similar idea with the Florentine Pieta, a continuation of the same conception.

Michelangelo’s drawings reveal the process that the artist went through to create the Rondanini Pieta. There is one drawing that reveals a work similar to the Rondanini Pieta about a different idea of the sculpture than the one it is today (Fig. 4).56 The main difference is in displaying the background figure on the opposite side of Christ.57 The other main difference between Michelangelo’s drawing and sculpture is the depiction of Christ. The drawing provides an “intense concentration of the accurate depiction of Christ.”58 The detailed figure of Christ appears similar to Michelangelo’s figure of Christ in the Florentine Pieta. The figure in the background remains a simple sketch and has no real definition or detail. For how long Michelangelo envisioned his second Pieta sculpture to be similar to this drawing is unknown, however it is clear that “he obviously felt compelled to change its form rather drastically, with the last phase of carving on the Pieta,” and ended with abstract, simplified forms of the Rondanini Pieta.59

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Attibuted to Michelangelo, Pieta, Vienna, Albertina. Google Images. (Fig. 4).

The Oxford drawings, a series of five drawings attributed to the Rondanini Pieta provide even more insight into the mind of Michelangelo, and his process (Fig. 5). These drawings reveal that Michelangelo first began with a three-figured group.60 The central drawing and the one to its rights give a picture of what Michelangelo imagined the three-figured group to look like.61 This three-figured group points to the subject of the Deposition and Entombment, and even though different in composition and style, the drawing reveals a similar idea to that of the Florentine Pieta.62 The three remaining drawings of this sketch display Michelangelo's struggle with the arrangement of the two figures. This process that is clear from Michelangelo’s sketches, reveals that the mysterious figure hidden within that of the figure behind Christ points to Michelangelo’s process of creating the Rondanini Pieta.

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Michelangelo, drawings showing five verions of a Pieta group, Oxford, Ashmolean Museum, Parker, Google Images. (Fig. 5).

Another undeniable aspect of Michelangelo’s last two sculptures beyond being in a different context than the rest of his works is the rough and incomplete appearance of both sculptures. Michelangelo is well known for another Pieta, one that he completed almost fifty years earlier. Alongside Michelangelo’s most well-known and revered sculptures, the David (Fig. 6), 1501 and the Pieta (Fig. 7), 1499, which sits in St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome, the Florentine and Rondanini Pietas differ in style and approach. The Pieta of St. Peter’s is detailed, and undeniably complete. The stone is smooth, and the details of both Christ and Mary are realistic. There is no question in the subject matter of this piece. Half a century later Michelangelo revisits this same subject, however this time the sculptures are not commissioned by the largest and most important Catholic Church in the world, but are merely projects solely devoted to Michelangelo’s own time and interest. What differs the most from Michelangelo’s first sculptures of idealized human form is that the Florentine Pieta and Rondanini Pieta are unfinished. The question to be asked is why Michelangelo left his last Pietas fragmented, and what effect does this state of the sculptures have on viewers?

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Michelangelo, David, 1501-04, 13ft x 5 in, Galleria dell’ Academia, Florence, Italy. Art Stor. (Fig. 6).

Michelangelo, Pieta, 1499, St. Peter’s Basilica, Rome. Google Images. (Fig. 7).

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The Italian derived term, “non-finito” describes an unfinished quality attributed to art works. Michelangelo never would have desired an unfinished or imperfect works, and “[i]t would be a mistake to assume that Michelangelo intentionally left so many of his works unfinished.”63 Although, throughout time, even the most unintentional incomplete and unfinished works have not only been “preserved but treasured.”64 In the Renaissance specifically non-finito would have been used on individual works, instead of a general stylistic category.65 The quality of being left unfinished began to grow in art being produced in the Renaissance, and artists started to break away from the Commitment to finish and that through surface variation and roughness, as well as a lack of complete resolution, their compositions could reach other praiseworthy objectives, such as vivacity.66 Renaissance artists were in fact questioning the definition of perfection in art. The incomplete can also be seen as imperfection. The Pieta of St. Peter’s Basilica would have been seen as complete and perfect, but in strike contrast Michelangelo's last two Pietas lack completion and therefore also perfection. In looking at the incompleteness of Michelangelo’s Florentine and Rondanini Pieta, the imperfectness points to a “pronounced expressivity.”67 Michelangelo explored the complete and incomplete, but at this time in the Renaissance Michelangelo and his colleagues would not have desired or glorified the imperfect.68 Even though one could speculate about the reasoning behind Michelangelo’s execution of Rondanini Pieta, the obvious contrast and far from unfinished state between this sculpture and the Florentine Pieta can most easily be attributed to Michelangelo’s death which halted the sculpture’s completion, “six days before his death, the eighty-nine year old master was seen using his chisel for the last time. He worked the whole day on the Rondanini Pieta.”69 On the other hand, the Florentine Pieta is more completed compared to the Rondanini Pieta. However,

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when viewed closely the Florentine Pieta does contain both an unfinished and finished surface.

The Florentine Pieta, “show finished and unfinished areas adjacent to each other, disproportion is the effect, but the contrast heightens the effectiveness of the finished parts.”70 The torso of Christ is refined and the muscles are outlined a detailed fashion. The figure of Mary Magdalene has a more complete look. However, when closely examining the face of Christ and the Virgin Mary, as well as Nicodemus the texture is rough and the chisel marks are apparent. “The rough chisel marks are admired because they set up light and shade, a pictorial effect,” as well the chisel marks show the hand of the sculptor. Michelangelo would have desired perfection, however in Michelangelo process from the Florentine Pieta to the Rondanini Pieta, the sculptor may have become aware that perfection cannot be copied through sculpture.

Michelangelo did not leave the Florentine Pieta unfinished because he wanted it to appear that way, but because he saw great imperfection in it, so much so that he in fact destroyed a part of his own work. “Michelangelo was able to note a very slight error, and instead of trying to patch it preferred to discard the labor done and begin on another block,” and so it appears Michelangelo noticed imperfections with the Florentine Pieta.71 It was recorded that Michelangelo was so frustrated with the Florentine Pieta that he “attacked it, clearly with savage blows.”72 A friend of Michelangelo’s, Tiberio Calcagni, gave an account of the incident to Vasari, as well, Calcagni aiding in the “partial completion and the restoration of the statue to the form in which we now see it.”73 Michelangelo destroyed Christ’s leg, because he saw flaw and had apparently “taken a dislike to it,” and, “for these reasons he had lost patience and broken it.”

Thankfully his servant Antonio stopped Michelangelo from doing further damage to his sculpture.

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Beyond the short tempered and perfectionistic Michelangelo, the fragmented qualities of the Florentine and Rondanini Pietas point to a deeper process of expression and creativity that Michelangelo was executing, an expressivity that is not found in his early works. The qualities of the Florentine and Rondanini Pietas contain strong emotion. Michelangelo also must have been motivated by personal religious significance and connection to the piece. The artist is known to have been a follower of Christ, therefore it would have made sense that Michelangelo sculpted works of art that had a religious or devotional importance. These sculptures made at the end of his days, must of had great personal significance to the sculptor because he made them in the secret of his own home in the still hours of night.

Several scholars have linked the hooded figure of Nicodemus to Michelangelo, claiming that Michelangelo's face is reflected in that of Nicodemus’.74 Philipp Fehl, author of “Michelangelo’s Tomb in Rome,” discusses how Michelangelo choice to insert himself in this scene of grief as, The face of Nicodemus we can see the echo at once and the fullest realization of Michelangelo's own tearful face, alive in the contrition which is also the glory - a glory that is all compassion - of the repentant Christian.75 Scholar Matthew Besdine notes that Michelangelo’s connection with Nicodemus is that of service to Christ, and “how gently and compassionately he hold the crucified Christ… he identifies with the crucified Jesus in the descent and with St. Nicodemus in saintly service.”76 In one light this sculpture can be seen as a monumental piece Michelangelo created for selfish reasons with his own tomb in mind, however Fehl suggests that the purpose is of a bigger and deeper significance.

The Florentine Pieta is a sculpture undeniably created for worship toward Christ and Mary in reverence of Christ’s death and passion, and also “as a sculptured prayer for the peace of

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Michelangelo's soul.”77 Michelangelo is working on this Pieta sculpture late in his life, and on his own time, which gives reason why Michelangelo would have used the Pieta sculptures as somewhat of a “confession of faith,” at the end his days.78 Michelangelo’s choice in the Pieta subject displays his expression “of deep pity and devotion” to Christ.79 The Florentine Pieta is not confined to that of the guidelines of the church or a specific patron, instead Michelangelo is creating a piece out of his own creativity. These sculptures that Michelangelo is producing at the end of his life are distinctly different subjects than earlier in his career. The artist is breaking away from his early ideals of beauty in the perfected human form, and instead after seventy years of creating art, Michelangelo’s approach to art becomes a simplified reverence of his faith.

Michelangelo focuses on the passion of Christ in these last sculptures, whereas before his religious subjects were from a range of Old and New Testament scenes, with more a “human appeal.”80 At the culmination of Michelangelo’s career, the artist turns to not only a strong religious faith in his life but sees beauty in art in a more spiritual way than before.

The difference between the second and last period of his career, is Michelangelo’s change in spiritual matters. Michelangelo’s spiritual changes seem to be characterized by the ideals of the Protestant Reformation, such as justification of faith and addressing a personal not abstract God. Michelangelo turns to piety, both in personal faith and art. Blunt explains Michelangelo’s influence for a turn to piety in art from a very early Renaissance painter, Fra Angelico. Angelico is often characterized by piety, and some of Michelangelo’s late works seem to mimic the simple, emotional works that Angelico produced.81 The Pieta sculptures are significant in that it is not just serving a purpose of beauty for the viewer, but the sculpture in fact holds a deep spiritual and prayerful connection for Michelangelo.

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Beyond just the stylistic and subject matter contained in the Rondanini Pieta, an understanding of the real meaning of this Pieta or at least the importance to Michelangelo is necessary. Both the Florentine and Rondanini Pietas are religious subjects, and the obvious blending of figures and Biblical text, point to a greater spiritual meaning hidden in the figures, “especially as it might pertain to the artist’s thinking about redemption and salvation.”82 This spiritual meaning of the two Pietas can be seen as both a reflection of Michelangelo’s spiritual life, as well as his desire for spiritual closeness with God. Besdine remarks that, In this last Pieta (Rondanini Pieta), he felt closest to God...The posture of the sustaining Nicodemus is maintained and he is alone with God. It is a descent from the cross without women. The artist himself replaces them… Earthly fame no longer mattered. Death and salvation were his deepest concerns as he labored in the close intimacy of this, his final Pieta. His artistic activity became a prayer in his union with God.83 In both Pietas, Michelangelo is pointing to a devotional image of Christ. These two sculptures, one created right after the other, are depicting Christ in the same state. Christ in fact is the primary constant in the two sculptures. The artist explores two types of scenes in the Florentine Pieta and Rondanini Pieta, and there can be much speculation over whether he was in fact creating a Deposition or Pieta moment. However, Michelangelo appears to be digging deeper than an obvious nameable scene. He creates sculptures full of emotion, and specifically emotion over the death of Christ. He sculpts Christ in both sculptures with the heavy dead weight of a dead man, void of life. The artist is creating sculptures that are pointing to the devotional image of Christ after his death, and this Mode of presentation which suggests both the atemporal and temporal aspects of the image, both Christ’s enduring presence as Savior and his temporal history as a dead man being freed from the cross, mourned, or lowered into his tomb.84

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Michelangelo most likely did not want to focus on the mere recreation of a certain Biblical narrative and characters, but to through sculpture invoke the viewer to be spiritually and emotionally transformed or at least to dwell in the adoration need to face the dead Christ, the one who sacrificially took on the sins of the world. Michelangelo’s entire life had been fixed on art, and so it makes sense that creating sculpture was much more than a hobby or passing time, it was his life and his form of communication, and it can be that too “that carving was a form of prayer, a way of bringing himself close to God: finding salvation through creation.”85 The sculptors last two works, his last two Pietas, are a “confession of faith… in sculpture, his most cherished medium, expressed his deepest yearning for service and sainthood.”86 Michelangelo was drawn to worship Christ, and in many of his poems he writes about Christ and the need to give proper reverence to him. One of his poems exemplifies his emotions of the sacrifice and death of Christ’s, Out of heaven in his mortal dress / He came, and having witnessed for us hell/ and Mercy, he returned with God to dwell,/ Leaving his vision like a light to us./ Resplendent star which with its rays would bless/ that nest of infamy I know so well,/ The place where I was born! None can compel/ Due recognition there of his distress./87 Michelangelo’s career spanned over many years, succeeding in painting, architecture and sculpture, many of his works are well known all over the world. Michelangelo’s works would be used as inspiration for countless artists who followed him, as an example of portraying the human body with perfection and idealized beauty in art. However, Michelangelo is a complex man, and beyond creating art in the ideals of the Renaissance era in which he lived, Michelangelo was interested in something much deeper, in spirituality and emotion, interested in creating art that did much more than visually appeal to the viewer through beauty, but to instead create art that expressed the artist, and that

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transformed, convicted or enlightened viewers. Often gone unnoticed, Michelangelo’s Florentine and Rondanini Pietas do just that.

Michelangelo’s Pieta of 1499 gets thousands of visitors every day who come to St. Peter’s, just like the Mona Lisa in the Louvre, visitors must push through crowds to get a short glimpse of the polished, stoic, and peaceful Pieta. Whereas the few who venture into the Museo dell'Opera del Duomo in Florence may not even notice the Florentine Pieta. Viewers miss out on the opportunity to experience Michelangelo's thoughts expressed in sculpture, the up close and personal scene that Michelangelo displays, and the pity and emotion on the faces of the raw and unfinished Pieta, that the sculptor worked on through many sleepless nights.

Michelangelo’s entire life had been fixed on art, and so it makes sense that creating sculpture was much more than a hobby or passing time, it was his life and his form of communication, and “carving was a form of prayer, a way of bringing himself close to God: finding salvation through creation.”

Michelangelo most likely did not want to focus on the mere recreation of a certain Biblical narrative and characters, but to, through sculpture, invoke the viewer to be spiritually and emotionally transformed or at least to dwell in the adoration needed to face the dead Christ, the one who sacrificially took on the sins of the world. Philipp Fehl writes, It is exactly because Michelangelo has the courage to be awed in the pursuit of art’s highest goals that we may be blessed as we stand before his works and for a moment discern, most clearly perhaps through the gift of the longing and solitude that so distinguished Michelangelo’s unfinished Pietas, the fine sound of the sweet perfection that resides in God alone.88

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Works Cited Arkin, Moshe. 1997. "One of the Marys...": An interdisciplinary analysis of Michelangelo's Florentine Pieta." The Art Bulletin 79, no. 3: 493-517, https://0-search-proquest com.read.cnu.edu/docview/222958453?accountid=10100.

Baum, Kelly, and Andrea Bayer, and Sheena Wagstaff. Unfinished: Thoughts Left Visible. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2016.

Besdine, Dr. Matthew. The Unknown Michelangelo. New York: Adelphi University Press, 1985.

Blunt, Anthony. “Michelangelo’s Views on Art,” Artistic Theory in Italy, 1450-1660. Oxford University, 1956.

Fehl, Philipp. “Michelangelo’s Tomb in Rome: Observations on the ‘Pieta’ in Florence and the ‘Rondanini Pieta,’” Artibus et Historiae, vol. 23, no. 45 (2002): 9-27. Accessed January 2, 2017. JSTOR. Gilbert, Creighton E. “What is Expressed in Michelangelo’s ‘Non-Finito,’” Artibus et Historiae, vol. 24 no. 48 (2003): 57-64. Accessed January 2, 2017. JSTOR. Gilead, Amihud. 2016. "A philosophical approach to the riddle of Michelangelo's Florentine Pietà." Cogent Arts & Humanities 3, no. 1, https://0-search-proquest com.read.cnu.edu/docview/1860813629?accountid=10100.

Hall, James. Dictionary of Subjects and Symbols in Art. London: John Murray, 1974.

Murray, Peter. The Architecture of the Italian Renaissance. London: Thames and Hudson, 1963.

Paoletti, John T., “The Rondanini ‘Pieta’: Ambiguity Maintained through the Palimpsest,” Artibus et Historiae, vol. 21, no. 42 (2000): 53-80. Accessed January 2, 2017. JSTOR.

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Poeschke, Joachim. Michelangelo and His Works: Sculpture of the Italian Renaissance. New York: Harry N. Adams, 1996.

Porter, Peter, and Ascanio Condivi and Michelangelo, Michelangelo, Life, Letters, and Poetry, Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.

Vasari, Giogio. Lives of the Artists. Oxford: Oxford University, 1991.

Wallace, William E. The Treasures of Michelangelo. London: Andre Deutsch, 2010.

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Personal Biography: Sarah Field recently completed four years at Christopher Newport University, and plans to graduate May 13, 2017. Sarah will be receiving her Bachelors of Arts in Fine Arts, with a concentration in Art History and a minor in Childhood Studies. Sarah’s passion for art began as a young child, inspired by her parent’s love for art. Through moving all over the country and traveling locally and abroad Sarah was exposed to many art museums along the way. In elementary school Sarah’s favorite piece of art was Michelangelo’s Pieta of St. Peter’s Basilica.

Sarah was enamored with the grace and perfection that Michelangelo carved the fabric, and the figures’ faces. As Sarah’s education continued she explored different areas of learning, enjoying learning about the world and different cultures. When Sarah began her career at Christopher Newport University she took an art history class and remembered how much she loved learning about art as a child. Sarah started to pursue a degree in art history. Her passion for art pushed her to study abroad in Florence, Italy during her junior year. Studying in Florence was an eye opening experience, exposing her to countless works of beautiful art. Sarah got to finally visit her favorite childhood work of art in St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome. However Sarah was struck that when she saw Michelangelo’s Florentine Pieta she favored that Pieta much more, because she was drawn in by the emotion and feeling that Michelangelo was able to express through sculpture. Returning to Christopher Newport University, Sarah decided to explore Michelangelo’s Pietas in more depth for her senior research. After enjoying her time exploring and learning about art at CNU, Sarah will be starting a nine-month fellowship in Charlottesville, Virginia this coming fall.

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The Presentation of Race and Racism as Viewed through Mozart's Operas Author: Samantha Massey Email: samantha.massey.13@cnu.edu; Phone: 757-576-5227 Faculty Sponsor: Dr. Laura Deiulio, Department of Modern Languages and Literature Email: ldeiulio@cnu.edu; Phone: 757-594-7062 Abstract: This paper will explore how two of Mozart's operas, The Abduction from the Seraglio and The Magic Flute, present people of races other than white Europeans and the subject of race as a whole. This presentation will also address how these operas and ideas were influenced and shaped by the ideas about race produced during the Enlightenment and the European colonial era, both of which were at the height of their influence during Mozart's time. The Enlightenment and the European colonial era both helped shape current ideas about race and Mozart's operas are a prime example of how these ideas coincided with Enlightenment and colonial ideals to create the racial hierarchy that is still in place today.

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The Presentation of Race and Racism as Viewed through Mozart's Operas The Era of Enlightenment was characterized by a belief in rational thinking and the individual's ability to problem solve. The thinkers of the Enlightenment believed in breaking from tradition and seeing through the dogma of one's society. Many great things came out of the Enlightenment. For example, the emphasis on rationality lead to the creation of the scientific method, which has in turn allowed for the discovery of many other important scientific facts.

However, the people of any era, no matter how well meaning or thoughtful, are still influenced by the dominant ideas of their time, as is the nature of society. Unfortunately, another dominant idea during this time was the idea surrounding race and race relations, specifically the existence of slavery and the proliferation of racism. Vilna Bashi Treitler's theory of ethnic projects explains how, beginning in this era, modern day racial stratification was born with AngloEuropean whites at the top of the hierarchy, black Africans at the bottom, and everyone else somewhere in-between. Since the Enlightenment happened at the same time as the height of colonialism, Enlightenment thinkers and ideas were influenced by the ideas that were formed during colonialism, including the aforementioned negative ones concerning race, and, in turn, influence the creation of these ideas. Therefore, these ideas and their influence become apparent in many of the creative works that were produced during the Enlightenment. Two of these works in which we can see the overarching negative ideas concerning race as well as Enlightenment ideals are in Mozart's operas, The Abduction from the Seraglio and The Magic Flute.

The Creation of a Race-Based Hierarchy First off, there are some who might have a hard time grasping the relationship between the Enlightenment and racism. After all, how can a social movement that valued personal

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accomplishment and knowledge manage to view entire groups of people so poorly? Even though these two things may at first seem paradoxical, they are, in fact linked. In order to understand the link between racism and the Enlightenment, one first has to understand how racism was characterized during this era. There are two fronts on which we can see major ideas about race beginning to take shape. These fronts are the creation of the West/East dichotomy in Europe and the spread and influence of European colonialism.

The dichotomy separating Western Europe from Eastern Europe is something will still see played out in modern political struggles. Notably, this dichotomy came into play following World War II with the rise of the Soviet Union and the creation of the "Iron Curtain" that split the European people down a political border. However, the Cold War did not signal the emergence of the West/East dichotomy, as this system was something that was created centuries before. Specifically, the West/East dichotomy really began to emerge not only during the Enlightenment, but also because of the Enlightenment. Prior to the 18th Century, Europe was largely thought of in terms of North and South, since most major political, religious, and philosophical centers were located in the South, specifically Italy. For the Italians, northern Europe was home to barbarians, the natural opposite of the progress and civilization of Italy.

However, during the Renaissance, cultural centers in Europe began shifting, and cities such as Paris, London, and Amsterdam emerged as new political and social powers. During the period know as the Enlightenment, which directly followed the Renaissance, the philosophers who were born and lived in these cities felt that the system and thinking and designated the North/South dichotomy should be changed. Since this cluster of cities were located in the West, they looked to the East for their new cultural and political foil. Their attention was also drawn to the East by the memory of the then-declining Ottoman Empire, which had reigned in Constantinople for

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almost two centuries and had presented a significant threat to Western Europe. And so, from these factors, Western Europe "invented Eastern Europe as its complimentary other half" (Wolff 4). Since the West represented civilization, reason, and progress, the East came to represent backwardness and barbarism. The people of Eastern Europe came to be thought of under this umbrella, but they also came to be placed in another system that was emerging in tandem with this dichotomy. At this time, European colonialism was at the height of its power, and out of this power emerged the racial stratification system that we are still influenced by today.

Racism as a system of thinking and a societal model was not only perpetuated during colonialism, it started during colonialism. Firstly, no matter whatever personal reasons, such as religious freedom, that specific groups might have used for colonizing an area, colonialism was foremost a bid for resources and wealth by European nations. This bid for resources was "from the beginning contextualized in a language that demarked the deserving from the undeserving, arranging the humans involved into unequal ethnic groups" (Treitler 2). This stratification justified, in the eyes of the European colonizers, the seizing of resources and land from the native peoples, since the natives fell under the "undeserving" category while the Europeans were "deserving" of this wealth. This language of "deserving" and "undeserving" quickly translated into a system of "superior" and "inferior". European colonizer saw natives in the New World, Africa, and Asia, as inferior, imperfect humans in comparison to themselves, which justified the seizing of lands and peoples for European gain. In addition to the colonization and brutalization of the native people, Europeans soon after started transporting African slaves to the New World.

They needed a moral justification for their actions and treatment of these people and this need for a moral justification also contributed to the creation of the racial hierarchy, specifically the component of the racial stratification system that places black people at the bottom, below

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natives and other non-Anglo European whites. By believing that black people and other nonEuropean races were inferior, European colonizers were able to look past their own ill-treatment of other people (Omi and Winant 21).

The Enlightenment may have developed centuries after the European discovery of the New World, yet colonialism was still in full swing at the beginning of and throughout the Enlightenment. This overlap aided in the creation of the West/East dichotomy outlined above, to the point that the Turkish and other Eastern Europeans were delegated a lower status in the hierarchy. This delegation is outlined in the use of the term "Anglo-European whites", to explicitly exclude Eastern European Muslims from the top tier of the racial system. The delegation of Eastern Europeans into an inferior racial category helped strength the division between West and East.

Additionally, the rise of empirical study and science during the Enlightenment were able to take the ideas of racism and racial stratification a step farther by creating a supposed scientific basis for racism. Biologists studied anything and everything that could point to a difference between Europeans and peoples, as this difference would then lead to a scientific basis for racism. One such scientist was Johann Friedrich Blumenbach (1752-1840), who founded the study of craniology. He studied the shape of different human skulls from above in an attempt to differentiate among races based on skull shape. Another scientist who studied racial differences was Peter Camper, who spearheaded the study of "prognathism", or the amount that the jaw juts out. "He found Negroes to be most prognathic, [which] was later used by others...to describe blacks as 'ape-like'" (Jahoda, 38). Through these examples, of which there are many more, it is easy to see how not only did colonialism, racism, and the Enlightenment exist at the same time,

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but, in some ways, the principles of the Enlightenment were able to proliferate and validate the racist ideas of the time period.

Because of the ties between the creation of racial stratification and the Enlightenment, it is important to study the racial hierarchy during the time of the Enlightenment. One important lens into the ideas of this time is through popular literature. The popular phrase "art imitates life" is particularly poignant to this course of study, because art and literature are never just art and literature. They reflect the thoughts and ideas of their creators and the societies in which they are created, and they, in turn, have the powerful ability to influence their audiences and spread ideas. Given the importance of literature, the following analysis of the operas The Abduction from the Seraglio and The Magic Flute by Mozart can help us to better understand the changes that took place and the ideas that spread during the Enlightenment.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was born on January 27, 1756 in Salzburg, Austria. He was immediately recognized as a musical prodigy and began composing musical pieces at just five years old. Just before the age of six, his father took him to play at the Bavarian court in Munich and the imperial court in Vienna. Leopold Mozart saw it as his God-given duty to show his son's talent to the world and soon took a leave of absence from his job to take his son on tour to all the main musical centers of Europe. The Mozarts found themselves in Vienna in September of 1767, where Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart began composing his first operas at the young age of 13.

Mozart was living in Vienna when he wrote The Abduction from the Seraglio in 1782.

Mozart remained in Vienna for much of the rest of his life, and produced most of his works

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while there, with the most successful and fruitful period of his life falling between 1783 and 1785. Following this period of success, Mozart's financial gains began waning. He was well off when compared to other musicians of the time, but his associations with the aristocracy meant that his waning financial success caused him much stress. Additionally, the lifestyle that he and his wife were accustomed to leading was not supported by his new financial situation.

Mozart's opera, The Marriage of Figaro, premiered in 1786. It was warmly received in Vienna, but became outstandingly popular in Prague, which led to Mozart's first visit to Prague.

Even though Prague is farther West than Vienna, it was nevertheless considered to be one of the capitals of the geo-political area that had been designated as "Eastern Europe" at the time, which meant that this was also Mozart's first foray into Eastern Europe. This trip and later trips partially set Mozart apart from his contemporaries, in that Mozart depicted Eastern Europe in a number of his works, and had also been there, even if not very far or very extensively.

In the years following his first visit to Prague, Mozart steadily found work and travelled around Europe, but his prospects really started looking up in 1791. Mozart was steadily composing, and in September one of his most popular works, The Magic Flute, premiered in Vienna. Based on his letters to his wife during this time, he seemed to be in good spirits and was, overall, more optimistic about the future than he had been previously. Unfortunately, he fell ill in November and was unable to recover, leading to his death on December 5th, 1791, at the age of only 35 (Sadie).

The Presentation of Turkish People in The Abduction from the Seraglio The first of Mozart's pieces that will be examined based on its presentation of race, Enlightenment ideals, and popularity at the time of its premier is The Abduction from the

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Seraglio. The Abduction from the Seraglio was first performed on July 16, 1782 in Vienna. The opera follows the adventures of our hero, Belmonte, as he attempts to rescue his beloved Constanza, her handmaiden Blonda, and Belmonte's servant Pedrillo from a Turkish Pasha who has bought them as slaves. In addition, they are constantly opposed by the Pasha's servant, named Osmin. Belmonte arrives at the Pasha's seraglio, or palace, with an escape plan in place, infiltrates the grounds, and manages to leave with the three he came for. The opera was immediately successful, despite a few mishaps and flubs by the actors during the first few performances. The Abduction from the Seraglio was "by far the most popular of Mozart's stage works during his lifetime" (Broder 14) and was performed in Vienna 42 times between 1782 and 1788. The opera quickly moved to other European cities and had been produced by at least 28 other German theaters before Mozart's death in 1791. It also saw production in Prague, Warsaw, and Amsterdam. The opera was also praised by other writers and reviewers of the time, including Goethe, Bretzner, and Carl Maria von Weber (Broder 9-15).

Turkey's place in 18th Century Europe The establishment of Turkey and the Turkish people on Western Europe's cultural radar came largely out of the period of time during the Ottoman Empire's reign. The rise to power of the Islamic Ottoman Empire began with the capture of Constantinople in 1453. During its reign, the Empire was largely defined by its clashes with Christian nations and forces in Western Europe, and the Empire reigned for more than two centuries before a defeat by a Christian coalition at the gates of Vienna in 1683 signaled its decline and rapid loss of power (Al-Taee xi).

Despite the fact that the Ottoman Empire had been in decline for almost a century before the premier of The Abduction from the Seraglio, the stereotypes based on the events of that time still

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persisted in the minds of Western European people, especially the people of Vienna, where The Abduction from the Seraglio was written and first performed, who perceived the Ottomans to be their greatest threat, even after the fall of the Empire. The most prominent stereotype aimed at the Ottomans was the stereotype of the "violent Turk" (Al-Taee xi). Even beyond physical conflict, the Ottoman Empire represented a cultural and religious threat to the people of Western Europe, which contributed to the persistence of stereotypes. Additionally, historical accounts of the time during the reign of the Ottoman Empire were biased for the purpose of "social, political, and national propaganda" (Al-Taee xi) and stereotypes and artistic representations of Turkey and the East in general were influenced by these biased accounts, and artistic representations, such as The Abduction from the Seraglio, further influence stereotypes.

Another stereotype about the people of Eastern Europe was one that Mozart had personal experience with. Through Mozart's first trip to Prague and subsequent trips a disturbing trend in how Western Europeans viewed and treated the East is displayed, in particular through language.

Mozart found the acquisition of language prior to this point relatively painless, as his craft and his travels allowed him to learn a number of Western European languages, including Italian and French, in addition to his native German. Yet, to Mozart and many of his contemporaries, Czech was regarded as completely incomprehensible. This perceived unintelligibility allowed for a creative license toward Eastern Europe on the part of Western Europeans. For example, Mozart crafted invented names for himself and those he was traveling with in Prague. These names, such as Mozart's name "Punkitititi", were loosely based on the language he heard around him, yet were ultimately exaggerated and nonsensical (Wolff 106-107). This mangling of names and language, both very important markers of identity and culture, display the general dismissive and even mocking attitude that the people of Western Europe had toward the people of Eastern

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Europe during this era. This dismissive and mocking attitude toward Eastern Europe was more than likely born out of the same shift in thinking that lead to the dichotomy of Western Europe and Eastern Europe and portrayed Eastern Europeans as uncivilized and backwards. These examples and first-hand accounts from Mozart show that he was definitely influenced by and susceptible to the stereotypes of the time, stereotypes which are then portrayed in his works.

Another factor that contributed to stereotypes about Turkish people during this time period was the prevalence of Turkish piracy. Piracy in the Mediterranean presented a "constant threat to coastal dwellers, merchants and pilgrims" (Cardini 163). There are many stories and first-hand accounts of Christians being kidnapped by Turkish pirates in the Mediterranean and sold into slavery in the East, a practice that also happened in reverse, as a number of Muslims were kidnapped by Christians and sold into slavery in Western Europe. In addition to firsthand, historical account, the threat of piracy and slavery is also represented in many fictional stories of the time. The influence of this practice on The Abduction from the Seraglio is abundantly clear, since Pedrillo specifically mentions that he, Constanza, and Blonda were kidnapped by pirates, and that is how they came to be sold into slavery.

These stereotypes about Turkish Muslims were ingrained in the cultural consciousness of the 18th century, and as such can be seen in many of the characters, dialogue, and literary structures present in The Abduction from the Seraglio.

Osmin The first and most obvious expression of race comes through the character Osmin.

Osmin is a servant of Pasha Selim and is the first character we meet after the hero, Belmonte.

Osmin is immediately contentious and, at first, ignores Belmonte's inquiries. When Belmonte

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asks about his servant Pedrillo, Osmin immediately reacts with anger and threats toward Pedrillo.

Osmin calls Pedrillo a "scoundrel, whose neck I'd like to break" and says that "his head belongs upon a pike" (Mozart 21). Eventually, Pedrillo shows up and Osmin leaves. We next see Osmin at the end of Act One when he attempts to stop Belmonte and Pedrillo from entering the palace, even though Belmonte, under the guise of a skilled architect, has been given permission to enter by the Pasha. Osmin is again aggressive and threatens violence.

Osmin then plays a role in the opening scene of Act Two, where he quarrels with Blonda, Constanza's handmaiden who has been given to Osmin as his wife. Blonda requests "tenderness..., devoted love, and rapture" (Mozart 31) if Osmin wishes to win her heart. Osmin retaliates by saying that Blonda has it all wrong, and should obey him because he is the master and she his slave. Blonda refuses and they quarrel more before Osmin leaves. Osmin reappears as Belmonte and Pedrillo are implementing their escape, part of which requires them to put Osmin to sleep by slipping him a sleeping potion in wine, so that Osmin will not impede their escape. However, Osmin wakes up and reappears in Act Three as our heroes are making their escape.

Osmin calls the guards and fetches the Pasha to pass judgment on our heroes. As Pasha Selim is deliberating on the fate of Belmonte, Constanza, Blonda, and Pedrillo, Osmin requests that they be violently punished and killed, but his pleas don't sway Pasha Selim, who chooses to release the heroes and allow them to go home.

There are a number of things about Osmin that catch one's attention. The most obvious are his religion and his ethnicity, since he mentions his Muslim faith a number of times in addition to praying to Allah and mentioning the fact that he's Turkish. Underlying these overt characteristics are Osmin's penchant for violence and sexism. Notably, his quarrel with Blonda

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in Act Two displays all of these characteristics quite clearly. When Blonda asks Osmin for kindness and tenderness, Osmin responds by saying "Here in Turkey we sing another tune" and then identifies Blonda as his slave, and he her master (Mozart 33). Osmin also identifies himself as a Muslim a number of times during this argument. He does this both indirectly, such as when he invokes Muhammad when proclaiming "Poison and daggers for the girl! By Mohammed , she drives me wild" (Mozart 33) and later, when he promises "By Allah, I swear I won't go now, not until you swear to obey" (Mozart 33) and directly, such as when he says "She's a devil. I must give in, as I'm a Moslem" (Mozart 33). Throughout the play, Osmin invokes these traits, being Turkish and being Muslim, at the same time that he displays his tendency toward violence.

As such, being Muslim and being Turkish are inextricably tied to violence itself in the eyes of the audience, which supports and strengthens the negative stereotypes that people at the time held toward Muslims and Turkish people.

Another incident that negatively stereotypes Turkish people through Osmin happens when Belmonte, Pedrillo, Constanza and Blonda are beginning their escape plan. This plan requires them to put Osmin to sleep with a sleeping potion, and they do this through the use of wine. Pedrillo offers the poisoned wine to Osmin, while drinking out of another bottle of his own. Osmin initially objects, quoting his Muslim faith which forbids him from drinking alcohol, but Pedrillo persists and eventually succeeds. Osmin begins drinking, and soon begins commenting on the wine's delicious flavor and on how much he is enjoying it. He mentions the Prophet a number of times, such as when he says "may the Great Prophet not take it amiss, wine is a great thing" (Mozart 43), yet shows little to no remorse for his actions once he has begun.

This scene is then paralleled by the next, in which Belmonte is reunited with Constanza and Pedrillo with Blonda. During this scene, Belmonte and Pedrillo ask Constanza and Blonda if

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they have been unfaithful during their time apart, and Constanza and Blonda, passionately assure them that they have not, which leads into a quartet about Constanza and Blonda's faithfulness.

This parallel and Osmin's actions serve to portray Muslims as uncommitted or weakly committed to their religion, and in general, in comparison to the Western European heroes, who remained faithful, even in hard times. This further alienates and demonizes Turkish people in the eyes of the audience.

Even more than these examples, Osmin's role itself supports and strengthens stereotypes.

Osmin is the Turkish character that is shown on stage most often, and is the main antagonist of the story. Osmin's visibility and memorability places him in the role of the embodiment of the stereotypes. The audience is led to believe, not only through Osmin's words and actions, but also through his role in the opera, that most Turkish people are like Osmin, since he is the loudest and proudest. The only other major character in the play who is perceived as Turkish is the Pasha, yet, even though he is the operator of the Seraglio where this opera takes place, his onstage presence is sometimes overtaken by his servant. In order to further compare these two, we must first examine the role that the Pasha plays in this opera.

Pasha Selim The other major Turkish character in the opera is Pasha Selim. Pasha Selim appears less frequently than Osmin, yet his station in the seraglio means that he seems to be an ever present force. Pasha Selim first appears in Act I, and he is preceded by a chorus of Janissaries, a common trope in Western European operas and literature featuring Turkish characters, who sing his praises. Constanza is with him, and Pasha Selim professes his love for her and asks that she love him back. When she refuses, he dismisses her in anger, at which point Belmonte enters

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under the guise of a visiting architect and is given entrance to the seraglio. The Pasha reappears briefly in Act II, again to ask for Constanza's love, and again faces rejection. Pasha Selim makes his final appearance in Act III after our heroes are caught in their escape attempt and chooses to allow Belmonte, Constanza, Blonda, and Pedrillo return to their homeland.

Pasha Selim and Osmin are obviously very different characters, yet their differences run deeper than is immediately apparent, in addition to the similarities between them. Even though Pasha Selim does not have the overt and obvious penchant for violence that Osmin has, there is still an undercurrent of power that surrounds his character. For example, when he first argues with Constanza about her refusal to love him, he states "Don't make me more angry. Remember, you are in my power" (Mozart 27). Pasha Selim's threats are not as gory or explicit as Osmin's, yet they seem to hold more power based on Selim's station and subsequent ability to carry out his threats. Another interesting thing to note about Pasha Selim is that he never sings during the course of the opera, and he is the only character with a speaking role who doesn't sing. Mary Hunter argues in her article "The Alla Turca Style in the Late Eighteenth Century: Race and Gender in the Symphony and the Seraglio" that this songlessness is a pattern displayed by Pasha characters in other operas produced around the same time as The Abduction from the Seraglio, and that this pattern serves a definite purpose. By excluding the Pashas from "an operatic character's normal means of expression" (Hunter 64), the Pashas are perceived by the audience as more irrational and unrelatable. This exclusion from the songs also strengths the perception of power surrounding the Pasha.

The last and perhaps most interesting thing about Pasha Selim comes at the end of the play. The Pasha chooses mercy and lets our heroes return home in the wake of an interesting revelation. The Pasha reveals that he knew Belmonte's father, and that Belmonte's father "forced

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[the Pasha] to leave [his] native land" (Mozart 57). Since it is established that Belmonte is from Spain, we can then infer that Pasha Selim is Spanish by birth. Meaning, even though Selim has set himself up as a powerful force in the section of Turkish society that we are exposed to, he's not "really" Turkish. The other, perhaps more important function of this revelation is to negate any sort of redemption that might have been gained by the Turkish people in the play following Selim's mercy. The only potentially rational and merciful Turkish character in the play, all of a sudden, isn't Turkish. Additionally, the Pasha's mercy is juxtaposed to Osmin's repeated calls for corporal punishment and violence, which functions to further strengthen the audience's stereotypes and assumptions about Turkish people and Muslims.

This incident is also the part of the opera that best displays the influence of Enlightenment ideals. Pasha Selim looks past his negative emotions toward Belmonte's father and rationalizes the situation. He decides that letting Belmonte, Constanza, Blonda, and Pedrillo go is the best revenge, because it shows that he is a better person that Belmonte's father. Through Pasha Selim's rationality and decision, he is praised by the other characters in the closing song of the opera. While this is going on, Osmin continues to display rage and irrationality. This parallel further connects goodness and rationality to Western Europeans and backwardness and emotions to Eastern Europeans.

Turkish Women The last presentation of race that will be examined is the presentation of Turkish women.

Even though there are no female Turkish characters seen onstage in the play, sex stereotypes are still very rampant throughout the story. Turkish women are portrayed as submissive and weak.

These stereotypes are juxtaposed by Constanza and Blonda, who represent the strong and

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resilient European woman. This parallel is further strengthened by the lack of Turkish women in the play. By excluding Turkish women, yet making repeated references to them, their autonomy is taken away and their portrayal as submissive and at the mercy of others is strengthened. When Blonda is arguing with Osmin, she says "Do you think, old Grouch, that you have a Turkish slave here who trembles at your command. You're very wrong. With European girls you don't act that way. One treats them quite differently." (Mozart 31). This example specifically divides women based on race, lending itself to the division of race as a whole throughout the course of the opera.

Additionally, this division is connected to the Enlightenment later on in the argument when Blonda says "In Europe we understand this thing better" (Mozart 33). This sentence serves a number of functions. Firstly, it explicitly excludes Turkey and the Turkish people from Europe. Secondly, the use of the word "understand" draws on the Enlightenment ideals of understanding and rationality. Lastly, the use of the word "better" shows that European have moved beyond the Turkish in terms of progress, showing that they have attained a higher status and way of living than the Turkish have. This sentence, combined with all the references to Turkish women in the opera, further the divide between Western Europeans and the Turkish and portray them as lesser.

Through Osmin, Pasha Selim, and the presentation of Turkish women in The Abduction from the Seraglio, the audience is exposed to stereotypes and negative ideas about Turkish people. Additionally, these stereotypes are often paired with a presentations of Western Europeans as more rational and faithful, which correlate with Enlightenment ideals and show how these ideals tied into the creation and perpetuation of the racial hierarchy. Another opera by Mozart in which we see these themes is The Magic Flute.

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The Presentation of Black Moors and Enlightenment Ideals in The Magic Flute The Magic Flute first premiered on September 30, 1791 in Vienna. This opera was just as or even more successful than The Abduction from the Seraglio. First-hand accounts by the residents of Vienna detail long waiting times to get tickets, even years after the premiere.

Unfortunately, Mozart died two months of the premiere. The Magic Flute was his last major work. The Magic Flute follows the adventures of Tamino, the hero, and a bird catcher named Papageno as they go to rescue Pamina from Sarastro at the behest of Pamina’s mother, the Queen of the Night. However, Tamino, Papageno, and Pamina learn that the Queen of the Night secretly only wanted the death of Sarastro, and all three end up joining Sarastro’s secret order instead. There are a number of ways that The Magic Flute presents race and Enlightenment ideals. Firstly, this presentation come through the character of Monostatos.

Monostatos Monostatos is a slave in the service of Sarastro and is immediately identified as a Moor.

The Moors were the Muslim descendents of the Berber and Arab peoples of North Africa during the Middle Ages, and characters that were identified as Moors were identified as such to emphasize their blackness. Because of North Africa's proximity to Europe, the Moors are the black Africans that Europeans would have been most likely to interact with, if at all, and therefore Moorish characters would have been easily identified by audiences at the time.

Monostatos first appears in Scene II of Act I, when he and other slaves are looking for Pamina, who appears to have escaped. Monostatos finds Pamina, before running off at the sight of Papageno. Monostatos next appears as Pamina and Papageno are trying to escape, and brings

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them before Sarastro. Monostatos is then dismissed as Sarastro decides on the fate of Pamina, Papageno, and Tamino.

Monostatos is next seen in Act II, where he finds Pamina sleeping in her bedchamber, where he professes that he is in love with her. Monostatos then witnesses an exchange between Pamina and her mother, in which the Queen of the Night asks Pamina to kill Sarastro.

Monostatos then threaten to kill Pamina if she will not love him, but this threat is intercepted by Sarastro, who casts Monostatos into exile. Monostatos then decides to join the Queen of the Night.

Monostatos is not seen again until the end of the opera, when he, the Queen of the Night, and her attending Ladies are killed by Sarastro's followers.

Race and racial systems are portrayed through Monostatos in a number of ways. For one, Monostatos is the only black character and a slave, surrounded by free white characters. Not only is he a slave, but he is a slave that is treated poorly and even brutalized by the other characters. The other (unnamed) slaves call him a tyrant upon his entrance at the beginning of the opera and hope for his death in the morning. He is portrayed as brutish and base, and is unable to control his impulses when he becomes enamored with Pamina. His master, Sarastro, who is portrayed in all other aspects as benevolent and wise, orders that Monostatos receive "a whipping of seventy-seven lashes" (Mozart 71), even though Monostatos has committed no readily apparent transgression as far as Sarastro could know. This scene lends itself to a negative portrayal of Monostatos, since viewers at the time may have overlooked the brutality involved in this decision due to Sarastro's and Monostatos' contrasting portrayals.

In addition to the other character's treatment of Monostatos within the play, there are literary frameworks in place that lend themselves to a racist portrayal of this character. One

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dominant literary framework in the play surrounds the idea of wisdom. When Tamino encounters the three temples, they are identified as the temple of reason, the temple of nature, and the temple of wisdom, with the temple of wisdom standing in the middle. "The arrangement of the Three Temples seems to imply that a synthesis of Nature and Reason in human culture would lead to Wisdom" (Prandi 275). The word "wisdom" appears at many other points in the play and is often used to describe Sarastro. In this case, wisdom is the ideal to be attained, but it can only be attained through the inclusion of Nature and Reason combined. Using this framework, Julie D. Prandi asserts that Monostatos represents pure nature, which justifies his inclusion and importance in Sarastro's realm. Another example in the opera where Monostatos is connected to nature is “his enchantment by Papageno’s music, which equates him with the animals enchanted by Tamino’s flute playing” (Hunter 109). Through this scene, Monostatos is brought down to the level of an animal with little self-control. This literary framework that puts Monostatos, as a specifically black character, in the "nature" category is reminiscent of the dominant racist idea during Mozart's time that black people were more primitive, regardless of how well he fits as a foil character within the opera. As referenced earlier, many at the time even came to describe black people as "ape-like". Another framework that appears in this opera, and many of Mozart's others, is one where servants are "absolved of moral responsibility" (Hunter 203) in much the same way that children would be, which "corresponds directly to the position of servants as pseudo-children in their households" (Hunter 207). This framework is problematic for much the same reason that the Wisdom framework is. Children are in need of care and guidance, and are not fully fledged members of society. Placing a black character in this role portrays him as someone who is intellectually inferior, as was the dominant idea at the time.

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Toward the end of the play, Sarastro says to Monostatos "I know that your soul is as dark as your face" (Mozart 86). This metaphor specifically connects race to soullessness. Following this statement, Monostatos betrays Sarastro in favor of the Queen of the Night. This betrayal serves to erase any last sympathy that the audience could have for Monostatos, and Monostatos ultimately ends up dead. Monostatos was written as a specifically black character at a time when black people held no social standing and were viewed and treated brutally by the European world. Additionally, Monostatos is placed in an Enlightened framework, meaning that his connection to nature and lack of intelligence are contrasted by the wisdom and rationality of the white characters, which shows a separation of race based on Enlightenment ideals.

Enlightenment Ideals An exceptionally strong theme in The Magic Flute concerns the presentation of Enlightenment ideals. Sarastro's order is located in the "Temple of Wisdom" and is an obvious metaphor for the Enlightenment. Sarastro himself also embodies the ideals of the Enlightenment. He is rational and benevolent. He allows Tamino, Papageno, and Pamina to join his order, where they are promised to find happiness. Yet, interestingly enough, Tamino, Papageno, and Pamina never verbally agree to undergo the initiation rituals. Yet, they tackle the rituals with enthusiasm and never try to leave. Through these events, joining Sarastro's order, and, by extension, following Enlightenment ideals is portrayed not only as a naturally positive path, but also something that one would naturally want to do. This portray clashes, interestingly, with the Enlightenment ideals of rationality and reasoning, since no reasoning is given. Yet, this framework is present, and serves the additional function of alienating Monostatos and non-white races from the Enlightened ideal, since Monostatos was cast out of Sarastro's order.

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Journeys and Colonialism Another aspect of the play that mirrors the state of race at the time, but is less apparent, is the journey of Tamino, Papageno, and Pamina. In her argument concerning ethnic projects, Vilna Bashi Treitler argues that the racial hierarchy is not static. Throughout history, certain ethnic groups have been able to climb the racial ladder and one of the things that has helped these groups climb the racial ladder is by adopting the views held by the dominant race, whites.

This is especially true in relation to the view on the racial status of blacks, who have historically been, and still are, at the bottom of the ladder. Some races have even been able to ascend to the point where they are now seen as equal and indistinguishable from whites, such as the Irish in the United States, who at one point had the same social status as blacks. In The Magic Flute, Monostatos is never able to raise his status, despite his many years working for Sarastro, yet Tamino, Papageno, and Pamina are able to rise through the ranks of Sarastro's order, despite being strangers. Tamino and Pamina are able to pass every test and are presented as the ideal initiates into Sarastro's order. In this way, Tamino and Pamina can be viewed as a metaphor for those races that were able to rise up to the top of the hierarchy and find themselves on the same social level as whites. On the other hand, Papageno fails almost every test, yet he remains in Sarastro's good graces and even gains a wife from the experience. Papageno can be used as a metaphor for other ethnic groups, such as Native Americans, who were able to rise through the ranks, yet never reach the top. Even though Mozart may not have intended it, Tamino, Papageno, and Pamina's journey mirrors the journey of many races that started on the same level as blacks and were able to climb up the racial ladder at the expense of black people, a journey that created the racial stratification system that we still have in place today.

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Another aspect of this journey that specifically mirrors colonialism is through the parallels that can be drawn between Tamino's induction and the doctrine of Christian conversion that was present during colonialism. Upon Tamino's arrival in Sarastro's realm, he is offered a chance to become a part of a brotherhood that is presented as something noble and desirable, yet he knows very little about it. In addition, Sarastro is elevated by the people who are already a part of his order to almost godlike status. He is presented as a benevolent father-figure, just as the Christian God is said to be. Tamino’s final trial is to pass through a cave of fire and a cave of water and his reward is that “if he can overcome the fear of death, he will rise to heaven” (Mozart 102). The cave of water is reminiscent of Christian Baptism, which allows followers to enter Heaven, just as Tamino will be able to. These examples from the opera are all very similar to someone being converted to Christianity. The colonial period at the time that The Magic Flute was written was characterized by the significant increase of the conversion of non-white Europeans. For example, The African Methodist Episcopal Church "had only 20,000 members in 1856...and in 1880 the organization claimed a membership of some 400,000" (Haynes xiii).

Given this increase in conversion, it is easy to connect Tamino's journey to Christian conversion.

However, Tamino’s journey is told in a decidedly positive and desirable way. The positive attitude is one that would have, of course, been held by European Christians and as Mozart was European, it makes sense that Tamino’s journey and Sarastro’s order are portrayed this way.

However, the reality is that aggressive Christian conversion tactics destroyed many local cultures and religions. The destruction of culture can even be seen in the opera through Monostatos. As the only black character, he is scorned and eventually meets death alongside the Queen of the Night and the Three Ladies. Tamino, Pamina, and Papageno, who abolished their ties to the Queen of the Night, were able to join Sarastro’s order and find happiness. With Tamino,

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Pamina, and Papageno serving as a metaphor for successful Christian conversion (from a European perspective) and Monostatos and the Queen of the Night serving as a metaphor for the destruction of local culture, it is easy to connect the play of The Magic Flute once more to colonialism and racism and additionally to Christian conversion.

Through these examples of Monostatos, Sarastro's order, and the journeys undertaken by the main characters, we can see the ways that Enlightenment and colonialism played into the creation of the racial stratification system, and how this system and its creation made its way into the literature of the time.

Conclusion The examples outlined above provide interesting insight into each opera on its own, but The Abduction from the Seraglio and The Magic Flute are also interesting when viewed in tandem because of the number of similarities between them. The cast of characters are very similar, featuring a hero, a follower to the hero, and both of their love interests. Additionally, there is a character in power who is initially viewed as cruel and possess one or more of the heroes against their will. In the course of the opera, these characters, in these cases, Pasha Selim and Sarastro, are redeemed. Both operas also feature a character who is a servant to the aforementioned characters in power. These servants, in the form of Osmin and Monostatos, are portrayed as cruel and not in control of their emotions, and they are the opposite of reason and the ideal. It is also through these two characters that race is most obviously portrayed. It is interesting that both operas are so similar, yet a multitude of different ideas about race and the Enlightenment can be gleaned from both of them.

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Art and literature provide a powerful window into the culture and people of the past.

Through the windows in Mozart's operas The Abduction from the Seraglio and The Magic Flute, we are able to see the creation of the racial stratification system, how this system was influenced by colonialism, and how both of these things were influenced by the Enlightenment and the ideas that came out of that movement and that time. Through these operas, we can see the creation of the West/East divide in Europe and the lowering of the statuses of black Africans and other nonwhite people. Furthermore, we are able to see the role that reason and Enlightenment ideals played in the construction of these systems. By closely examining these operas and how they portray race and Enlightenment ideals, we can gain insight into the process of thought during the 18th century, and how the ideas of this time changed the world in ways that still affect us today.

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Works Cited Al-Taee, Nasser. Representations of the Orient in Western Music: Violence and Sensuality. N.p.: Routledge, 2016. Print.

Broder, Nathan. "Introduction." Introduction. The Great Operas of Mozart: Complete Librettos in the Original Language with English Versions. New York: W. W. Norton, 1964. 9-15.

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Cardini, Franco. Europe and Islam. Oxford: Blackwell, 2002. Print.

Haynes, Carolyn A. Divine Destiny: Gender and Race in Nineteenth-century Protestantism.

Jackson, MS: U of Mississippi, 1998. Print.

Hunter, Mary Kathleen. Mozart's Operas: A Companion. New Haven, CT: Yale UP, 2008. Print.

Hunter, Mary. "The Alla Turca Style in the Late Eighteenth Century: Race and Gender in the Symphony and the Seraglio." The Exotic in Western Music. Ed. Jonathan Bellman.

Boston: Northeastern U, 1998. 43-73. Print.

Jahoda, Gustav. "Intra- European Racism in Nineteenth- Century Anthropology." History and Anthropology 20.1 (2009): 37-56. Race Relations Abstracts [EBSCO]. Web. 11 Mar. 2016.

Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus. The Great Operas of Mozart: Complete Librettos in the Original Language with English Versions. Trans. W. H. Auden, Chester Kallman, Ruth Martin, Thomas Martin, and John Bloch. New York: W. W. Norton, 1964. Print.

Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus. The Magic Flute. Ed. Burton D. Fisher. Coral Gables: Opera Journeys., 2001. Print.

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Omi, Michael, and Howard Winant. "Racial Formations." Rethinking the Color Line: Readings in Race and Ethnicity. Ed. Charles A. Gallagher. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2012. 17-22.

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Prandi, Julie D. "The Road to Wisdom in Mozart's Magic Flute." Studies in Eighteenth-century Culture. Ed. Syndy M. Conger and Julie Candler Hayes. Baltimore: Published by the Johns Hopkins UP for the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, 1998. 27385. Print.

Preibisch, Walter. “Quellenstudien Zu Mozart's ‘Entführung Aus Dem Serail.’” Sammelbände Der Internationalen Musikgesellschaft, vol. 10, no. 3, 1909, pp. 430–476., www.jstor.org/stable/929327.

Sadie, Stanley. "Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart." Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 22 Mar. 2017. Web. 21 Apr. 2017.

Treitler, Vilna Bashi. The Ethnic Project: Transforming Racial Fiction into Ethnic Factions.

N.p.: Stanford UP, 2013. Print.

Whaples, Miriam K. "Early Exoticism Revisited." The Exotic in Western Music. Ed. Jonathan Bellman. Boston: Northeastern U, 1998. 3-25. Print.

Wolff, Larry. Inventing Eastern Europe: The Map of Civilization on the Mind of the Enlightenment. Stanford, CA: Stanford U Pr., 2010. Print.

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Biography Samantha Massey is double-majoring in Sociology with a concentration in Anthropology and German, and with a minor in Linguistics. She is set to graduate from CNU on May 13th, 2017. During her time at CNU, she has been an active member of the Marching Captains and CNU Pep Band, a member of Spectrum, and has worked as a Front Desk Assistant for the Department of Resident's Life. She also studied abroad in Berlin, Germany during the summer of 2016 with CEA Study Abroad and became a Student Ambassador for the CNU Study Abroad Office during the 2016-2017 school year. After graduation, she hopes to find a career where she can help people, especially marginalized groups who may need help having their voices heard, and advocate for positive change.

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The Artist at War: The Marine Corps Combat Art Program in Vietnam

Mary Leonard mary.leonard.13@cnu.edu (540) 419-4296 Dr. Elizabeth Moran Department of Fine Arts and Art History elizabeth.moran@cnu.edu (757) 594-7883

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Abstract The culture and mentality of the United States in the 1960s and 70s largely revolved around the Vietnam War. Along with the Civil Rights movement and other peace movements, the war was more of a source of controversy and anger than anything else, as it was televised into the living rooms of most American homes. While overseas American soldiers, like those of the Marine Corps, traversed the unknown jungles of Vietnam and faced the elusive guerilla Viet Cong fighters hiding within them. Their stories, their experiences can all be observed and felt through the art produced within the very atmosphere the soldiers lived and fought in. Combat artists, like those belonging to the Marine Corps Combat Art program, walked the battlegrounds of Vietnam with American infantry and recorded everything they saw—the soldiers, the Vietnamese people, the atrocities of war—through a creative lens. Combat artists’ unique perspective of the Vietnam War allows us to feel the loneliness of the soldier, the depth of the unknown jungle, and the frightening reality of a hidden enemy, among many other aspects.

These first-hand interpretations of Vietnam allow us to better understand the war today, through the historic program of an underestimated sect of the fine arts field.

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The Vietnam Era of America (1964-1973) was dominated by stark social divisions, civic upheaval, protests and marches, and of course war. Protests for peace calling for an end to American involvement in Vietnam became synonymous with the Civil Rights movement, which protested racial inequality and social prejudices. The Vietnam War was such a large presence in America that the era can now be defined by the visual arts it produced—more specifically the works of art that serve as first-hand accounts and primary documents, created in the wilds and chaos of the battlefield. Combat artists employed by the United States military branches were sent overseas to utilize their own expression and artistic skill to document the Vietnam campaign in works of art including photographs, sketches, and paintings. However, first thoughts of the Vietnam War usually consist of unenthusiastic implications.

The Vietnam Era Despite the American military forces that fought as well as in any war and won many battles, the general consensus is that Vietnam was the first war that America lost.lxxxix Collective memory focuses primarily on the infamous aspects of the wars’ major controversies including chemical warfare, inhumane tactics, civil rights issues, and the infamous draft, all of which were displayed through the new age of television and colorful media. These disputes that enveloped the Vietnam Era were brought to the forefront of American culture and encouraged the breeding grounds of a chaotic atmosphere in the United States that divided the nation and would eventually lead to a collective sense of ‘failure’ in Vietnam. Television placed the war right in the living room of every American, for this reason many scholars have dubbed Vietnam the ‘living room war’ or ‘television war.’xc Consequently the reality of the atrocities and inhumane acts of combat were on display for the first time on a large scale. In order to document the exact

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experiences of the campaign of the American military in Vietnam, U.S. government branches launched combat art programs in which select American artists, either soldier or civilian, used their artistic skill and expressive interpretation to document and depict what they saw, what they experienced.

There was no longer an overtly Romantic impression of battle and honor. This was war— pure and disastrous. While anti-Vietnam outlooks flourished on the home front, aided by new age media, combat artists worked within the intimate domain of war overseas to produce works representative of the theatre of battle while completely immersed in it. Due to the provocative conditions encompassing the Vietnam War, advertised through television and agitated by overwhelmingly negative American opinion, the value and appreciation of these works of art created by the combat artists has been undervalued. Today, however, these works should serve as tools to both help us better understand and interpret the history of the Vietnam War, as well as to present the works based on their artistic value and further study them in the fine arts field.

There was no parade, no celebration. America did not feel victorious as U.S. forces departed from Saigon on April 30, 1975, leaving South Vietnam to the Communist National Liberation Front.xci In the eyes of collective American history, mentioning Vietnam is attributed with a sense of failure however, the works of the combat artists reveal another perspective.xcii The United States Marine Corps (USMC) Combat Art program was initiated to record the actions of the Marines’ military campaign in Vietnam for documentation and later historical reference. The works vary in subject—representing every feature of the Vietnam war, including the soldiers, the demilitarized zone, the jungles, and the people and culture of Vietnam. Why are these works not as appreciated or more considered in the art world? Before American involvement in Korea and Vietnam, paintings of combat, battle, and military achievements were

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a highly-valued art form. Especially in the nineteenth century where grand history painting was considered of the most important steps an aspiring artist could take.

Combat artists, or artists who place themselves physically in the realm of war, have been active long before the war in Vietnam. Many combat artists actually looked to these ‘precursor’ artists as inspiration, for example Charles Waterhouse, who said “to be a member of such company proved irresistible.”xciii In the nineteenth century, producing large paintings depicting honorable men, exciting battle, and romantic scenes of victory were taken on by such valued artists like John Trumbull (c. 1756-1843) who documented the American Revolutionary War (c.

1775-1783). The works of Winslow Homer (c. 1836-1910) and Alexander Gardner (c. 18211882), whom interpreted the American Civil War (c. 1861-1865), are very well-known today for their artistic and historical significance to American antiquity (Figure 1). Most of these works by early combat artists now hang in the National Gallery in Washington, D.C. or the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.

What we do not see in these institutions is works of the Vietnam War or the works of these combat artists. As a result of the debasing of the war as a flawed crusade in American history, negative connotations have been left on the art produced by it.

The Marine Corps’ Combat Art program employed artists overseas in the jungles of Vietnam. By 1969 fifty-three combat artists had already been involved in the Marine Corps’ program by touring Vietnam with military infantry.xciv Combat artists included both soldier

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artists and civilian artists hired by the United States military branches including the Navy, Army, and the Coast Guard. These combat artists voluntarily put themselves onto the battlefield, in the jungle alongside the Marine infantry as to most accurately portray the reality of war using their own artistic style and expression. The Marine Corps Combat Art program specifically produced a great variety of works, and its freedom of expression and throng of talented artists made it highly successful in its goals to document Vietnam and create remarkable works of art worthy of investigating.

History of the Combat Art Program The history of combat art did not begin with Vietnam but under the Marine Corps’ art program, it flourished. In fact, the relationship between the association of the Marine Corps and art began less than a year after its beginning.xcv Moreover, Vietnam was the first war that a specific art program was employed by the USMC. The 23rd Commandant, or chief officer, of the United States Marine Corps from 1964-1967 was General Wallace M. Greene, Jr. (c. 19072003). General Greene was the driving force behind the Combat Art program during the Vietnam War, as he saw what the other armed services had done and were doing and saw no reason why his Marines could not do the same.xcvi The story of the Corps and its history is a vital aspect of the personality and essence of the men and women who serve as Marines. Their chronicles began on November 10th, 1775 in the Tun Tavern of Philadelphia where the Marine Corps was founded and from that point forward, every moment has been revered as dogma.xcvii General Greene recognized Vietnam as a controversial war as well as the opportunity to use art as an information vehicle in order to produce first-hand accounts and visually enthralling documentation of the Marines at war.xcviii

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On June 1st, 1966, a Marine Corps Order manifested under the Historical Branch was drafted and promptly signed to determine the suitability of art works for acquisition by the Marine Corps Museum.xcix The hunt for willing artistic talent began shortly after and it was very successful. The USMC Combat Art program was unlike the Navy or Air Force in their process of locating artists. Where the Navy and Air Force relied on two artists’ associations for their source, the Corps handpicked each artist individually and gave them the greatest latitude possible in choice of subject matter and technique.c Some art began to trickle in but within the year, the programs first official combat artist, Capt. John T. (“Jack”) Dyer, USMCR (1938-2014) was interviewed, screened, and accepted as the first Vietnam Marine Combat Artist and within a month was on his way to the capital of South Vietnam, Da Nang.ci The program was successful in its locating of artists as well as its producing of hundreds of works, each adding to the overall goal of documenting the war in a visual mode. Before the end of the war, sixty-five professionally trained artists—Marines and civilians—would follow Dyer into the program and witness Vietnam.cii Before diving into the jungle however, each artist was given supplies and training for the battlefield. One combat artist Christine ‘Trella’ Koczwara, the only female combat artist in the USMC Combat Art Program, recalls classes on varied subjects including booby traps, the M-16 rifle and .45 pistol as well as being issued a utility uniform and field jacket.ciii For different artists their supplies and what they carried with them varied. One such artist, Charles Waterhouse, details in his Vietnam Sketchbook the variety of supplies he carried including: a map case containing several sketchbooks, a paint set, an Instamatic camera with pockets full of film, enough plastic bags to keep his sketchbooks dry in case he ‘fell down in a paddy,’ and a pistol belt with a marine knife, among many other items.civ

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These materials were necessary for forming sketches, marking down ideas for later pieces, and taking reference photographs.

The program was based on 30 artists being employed overseas to Vietnam each year— twelve civilians and eighteen Marines, regular, reserve, or retired—and it was estimated that each artist would produce an average of twenty-five exhibitory works.cv Many artists would actually go above and beyond this goal and the USMC Combat and Navy Art Collections today are filled with their results. A budget was also crafted for the program covering essentials for the artists such as travel expenses, art materials for thirty artists, shipping and framing cases for an anticipated 750 works, storage bins, and filing systems for curatorial care.cvi Combat artists were to document the USMC and Vietnam during minimum in-country tours of six weeks after which they would be shipped out on an Air Force jet accompanying wounded or supplies to the USMC base at Okinawa, Japan where they could complete formal works. Waterhouse, who toured Vietnam as combat artist on three separate excursions, recalls his first tour and leaving with several hundred drawings, 30 rolls of film, and as he put it “thousands of sights, sounds, and smells locked in my mind of a place and people I will never forget.”cvii In his book Forgotten Warriors: Combat Art from Vietnam, Dennis L. Noble an American military historian asks the question: How can anyone picture combat unless they have been in battle?cviii The combat artists employed by the Marine Corps are unique from the contemporary artists of their era as well as from other combat artists of the armed forces.

Combat artists differ from an artist of the more traditional sense because of their duality— existing as a hybrid of artist and combatant. Even if a combat artist was a civilian, they were immersed in war and logged a soldier’s life through their sketches, photos and memories, forming connections that would remain with them even after they left. Noble explains how

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combat art can help provide contemporary Americans with the visual means of understanding those that served in the Vietnam War as it offers one of the best means of obtaining insight into the domain of war.cix Contemporary artists of the time remaining in the United States who were also producing works on Vietnam could not comprehend the prolonged exposure to the rigors of the bush on a soldier, the depicting of the effects of combat on the grunts, and the sense of comradeship among infantrymen in the field, as a combat artist did as they witnessed these vital principles personally.cx The combat artists of the USMC Art Program differed from the other branches because of their freedom to express their own artistic pursuits and subjects, as well as their individual personalities and backgrounds that resulted from the Marine Corps’ handpicking of its artists.

Brief History of the Vietnam War Under the Nixon administration (c. 1969-1974) which today is discernable by its covert operations and heavy-handed secrecy, the campaign in Vietnam reached peak levels of controversy as more and more protests and marches became widely practiced. American troops were being sent in more numbers overseas each year to replace those who had died. One soldier quipped that Vietnam was ‘just a little pissant country that nobody could find on their map.’cxi At the early stages of the war, many Americans shared this soldier’s sentiments— ‘this wasn’t a real war, this was just Vietnam.’cxii Moreover, the United States was actually first involved in Vietnam in the early 1940s with the Roosevelt administration during WWII with the forerunners of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).cxiii With the French pushed out of Indochina, the

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Vietnamese took the opportunity of Japan’s surrender after the U.S. dropping of atomic bombs on Aug 6th and 9th 1945, and established an independent Democratic Republic of Vietnam.cxiv Despite the seemingly approving support of the American government, this support was illusionary. As noted by Vietnam War historian James Westheider, President Roosevelt did not support colonialism, via the return of French rule, but did not necessarily support independence for Vietnam either.cxv Overtime, especially with the immediate beginning of the Cold War era and the return of French rule in South Vietnam a year later, it became clear that this ‘illusionary’ support was just that. This lack of a democratic government—the United States—to support self-determination in Vietnam coupled with return of a foreign rule over their land and government, led to further instigate the Communist government of North Vietnam.

By 1961, President Kennedy was sending American military advisers overseas to train the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN), including some of the best and brightest the U.S. had to offer like Colin Powell who would later serve on the U.S. Joints Chief of Staff, and as Secretary of State under President George W. Bush.cxvi Within years, it became clear that ARVN was militarily unable to handle North Vietnam’s Viet Cong and within a year or so American boots were being sent into Vietnam for combat support. The Viet Cong were the guerilla fighters of the Communist National Liberation Front whose mobility and elusiveness made them a tenacious and unpredictable enemy.cxvii In the early stages of American involvement in Vietnam, many young Americans volunteered for service driven by patriotism or economic opportunity.cxviii By 1969 the draft, or the Selective Service Act, became the primary source feeding American troops overseas. Despite being only 16% of the military, draftees were 88% of the infantry doing the actual fighting against the Viet

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Cong.cxix The system efficiently produced an ample number of soldiers to the unforgiving environment of war and because of this was highly controversial back home in the United States.

By defending South Vietnam, the United States was following its containment policy of the Cold War era, keeping Communism from spreading while attempting to uphold its status as a world power. Despite this, opponents of the war believed that South Vietnam was not a proWestern democracy, but a corrupt dictatorship.cxx If Americans were supporting this dictatorship, why not just leave? What does this war have to do with us? Is the American bloodshed necessary? As a result of the various questions and perspectives that surrounded justification of American involvement in Vietnam, the campaign became the foundation of a controversial and frenzied environment.

Many of these soldiers were very young men, most of whom were in their early 20s. As many of these young American soldiers died in a foreign nation most Americans couldn’t find on a map in the 1960s, resentment grew rapidly towards American policymakers in Washington D.C. and major cooperation’s backing the war. As a result, a credibility gap grew between the American soldiers in Vietnam and the American public, instigating further confusion and mayhem among civilians who marched for several different reasons. Another major aspect of the Vietnam War that bitterly divided the American people, was the controversial use of chemical weaponry.cxxi Many protests against big companies like Dow occurred with the goal to halt the production of chemical weapons like herbicide and napalm which were being used on the Vietnamese and indirectly, the American soldiers stationed there.

Dow Chemicals, a multinational American company, was a major producer of the chemical weapons such as napalm jelly and Agent Orange herbicide.cxxii These destructive weapons were used to aid American soldiers in their tracking down of the elusive Viet Cong

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guerilla fighters. American soldiers were also victims as they were exposed to toxic chemicals that literally rained down on them during the war, most of the time by their own planes and bombs.cxxiii The Viet Cong guerilla fighters hid in the thick jungles and winding trails of the Ho Chi Minh trail in neighboring Cambodia and Agent Orange herbicide was used to clear the jungle and thick grasses that hid the enemy.cxxiv There were many other variations of herbicide and each one left similar damaging results on the environment as well as the human body’s health—regardless of whether you were Vietnamese or American. Napalm, however, was one of the most destructive and feared forms of devastation used in the jungle warfare. Napalm was one of the most enormously opposed aspects of the American military campaign in Vietnam.

Napalm is a simple compound of gasoline and a slower burning petroleum jelly base and was used extensively in the bombing campaign in Vietnam and Cambodia.cxxv A feared weapon by all, its horror [lay] not in its capacity to inflict death, but in the agony of those who survive the initial bombing.cxxvi These horrors accompanied every mood and consideration, as American Marines accompanied by combat artists trailed the jungles of Vietnam.

Henry Casselli Kyle Longley, the Snell Family Dean's Distinguished Professor of History and Political Science at Arizona State University, wrote that death remained a constant companion for most grunts, or American infantrymen in Vietnam, however the ‘key’ was to mourn and then move on or risk losing themselves.cxxvii The firsthand visual accounts of the combat artists like that of Henry Casselli’s (c. 1946-) Operation Napoleon show many of these controversial features of the Vietnam War protested on the home front that continue to effect collective historical memory (Figure 2). The watercolor and graphite sketch of American soldiers carrying a wounded person

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represents the essence of art produced in Vietnam. Combat artists voluntarily dove into the jungles of Vietnam with American infantry and as one could imagine, it is extremely difficult to be sketching while bullets are flying about or high explosives are landing nearby, although some artists did exactly this.cxxviii Although many combat artists would use their preliminary sketches and photos to produce formal paintings, many of their works consisted of rough, quickly drawn, compositionally simple sketches, like Casselli’s Operation Napoleon, which uses graphite and watercolor.

These materials would have been more convenient to carry and were easily available in a combat situation. The base of the image includes three very lightly sketched Marines whose bottom halves are visually cut off by a dramatic cloud of red watercolor and blended graphite lines that shade the center of the composition. We know these three figures to be soldiers based on the clothing items we can see—a helmet and pack on the figure on the far left, straps with ammo on the figure on the far right who also holds the quickly drawn outlines of a rifle, and a third soldier between them. The Marine on the right holds out his rifle as his helmet falls backwards supporting the movement of the diagonal composition, of an erratic dashing forward. There is a sharp contrast between the bright and bold strokes of red and the lightly penciled graphite drawing beneath it again, reinforcing the idea of a quick production as well as the documentation of a brutal and intense moment (Figure 2).

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We know these men are American Marines because Henry Caselli was using his sketches to document their infantry units. The title discloses the location being Saline, on the Cua Viet River in Vietnam. This small description floats in the bottom right corner and was typical of combat artists for documentation and reference later on. Although the sketched men are barely visible, we can count three that seem to tensely push forward with what could be a fellow wounded soldier in tow. The head of a man, most likely another Marine, rests at the bottom of the boldest spot of red in the center of the composition. We don’t know the extent of this man’s wounds but can assume the worst by looking at the color and boldness of the hue. The positioning of the man’s head is upside down and backwards from the three men who are upright. Casselli must’ve seen this moment, as the experience is evident in the expressive lines and dramatic diagonal composition of the almost entirely white page. He must’ve seen these soldiers trudging by him as they carried a wounded man, or possibly a dead man.

In Douglas David Duncan’s (c. 1916-) Removing the Dead from the DMZ, we see a very related scene (Figure 3). Four helmeted soldiers remove and carry away the body of a fellow infantry men in Con Thien, Vietnam.

Duncan, a combat artist with a focus on photography as his sole medium, captures a moment after the chaos. A still, quiet moment of loss and yet there’s the sense that we have to move on as these men do walking over the hill. The men walk as one, their arms swing as they balance themselves and their deceased comrade. Casselli’s Operation Napoleon captures a similar moment—the hard and difficult duty of a soldier who follows his fellow combatants into battle,

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and then carries them off of it. Despite the stillness of the floating head and the half bodies, the image in Casselli’s graphite and watercolor sketch is full of movement. The wounded man is barely recognizable as he is eclipsed by the blood, we only see his head as it sags backward. The image of the group trudging forward, wounded in tow being a common image especially among photographs like those of Duncan’s.

David Douglas Duncan David Douglas Duncan is a veteran photographer for the USMC having taken images of Marines in action in WWII, the Korean War, Somalia, Afghanistan and many others. Duncan was also a close friend of Pablo Picasso (c. 1881-1973) having received the rare opportunity to photograph the famous artist and his personal collection in his home.cxxix Photographs were used extensively throughout the Vietnam War as both a major art form and tool of documentation. The camera’s ability to capture an exact moment in exact detail helps to articulate to us the view, the environment, and the experience of war. Duncan’s photograph of an Exhausted US Marine at Con Thien, Vietnam give us a glimpse into the surroundings of an American Marine at war, the sights, and even the textures (Figure 4). Photographs of the war allow us a short moment of existence, being in the presence of these soldiers. Duncan’s exhausted Marine draws us right into his gaze as he stares intently at us with striking eyes. The young Marine wears a standard uniform and utility jacket as well as his helmet. The composition of the photo focuses primarily on the soldier’s face. This Marine has not had a

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wash in some time. The dirt on his darkened face creates a stark contrast with the whites of his eyes that stare far past us into the jungles, the rice paddies and the fields of elephant grass of the Vietnam landscape. The title suggests exhausted but the facial features of this young man suggest otherwise. The Marines’ alert, wide eyes which captures the viewers’ attention and his mouth which hangs slightly open suggest a tense anxiety and awareness. No matter how aggressive this Marine’s stare may be, he has very soft, rounded features that balance out his tense line of sight and the rigidity of the composition as it focuses on this one exhausted subject. This image was also famous for being on the cover of Life magazine in October of 1967, which included other images and stories from the battle front at Con Thien (Figure 5).

Another photo by Duncan titled Vietnam, gives a menacing, mystical view of the battlefield (Figure 6). The atmosphere in the background of the photo takes on its own existence as it ebbs and flows with white fluffy clouds that deeply contrast the dark hues of the plumes of smoke. The foreground of the image is ripe with ammo boxes, preparing soldiers, and a sense of calm before the storm. The back of the composition immediately draws us into the environment of combat, with smoke plumes from explosions that rise into the already ominous atmosphere that overlooks the crusaders as they prepare to charge. One soldier stands on the right of the composition above all the others—one hand on his thigh, the other

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holding his rifle. Calm and ready for battle, he prepares with his fellow comrades who sit among the sand bags and look out onto the battlefields of chaos and destruction.

Charles Waterhouse Charles Waterhouse (c. 1924-2013) was invited by the Secretary of the Navy from Rear Admiral Henry L. Miller, Chief of Information, to be a combat artist in Vietnamcxxx. In addition to the Marine Corps Artist Program during Vietnam, Waterhouse had previous experience as a combat artist including WWII and Korea.cxxxi The main goal of his sketches he said himself was to “let you visually experience some of the activities of our fighting men in Vietnam and perhaps for some, to recall a place, a person, or a feeling once shared.”cxxxii Waterhouse’s drawing The Parade Outside Delta Med in Dong Ha, South Vietnam shows a grouping of Marines of all different sorts who march into medical facilities together, arm and arm as one (Figure 7). This image highlights an important aspect of combat art that makes it so distinctive and worth further study—the sense of comradeship among infantrymen in the field that can only be perceived through a combat artists’ eye.cxxxiii American soldiers arrived in Vietnam with different reasons for fighting—whether it be for the ideals of democracy and the pushing out of Communists, or for the virtues of honor, etc.

In most cases, the reasons and the why for fighting would change and for many this change took place almost immediately upon arrival. The immediate immersion left many Marines disoriented as the heat, humidity, and rancid smells of South Vietnam occupied every sense and thought.cxxxiv Kyle Longley, a scholar of American history, wrote that the combination of these smells— rotting garbage, incessant sweating, and decaying plant life from chemical weapons like herbicide—only furthered the sense of loneliness and anguish soldiers felt all the while

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attempting to live in the battle ground setting.cxxxv Which is why comradeship among fellow soldiers became such a significant part of the Marines lives while in Vietnam. Depictions of this togetherness and dedication to one another can be seen in drawings like that of Waterhouse’s Parade Outside Delta Med. This clustering of Marines pushes on towards the left of the drawing. The entire sketch is done in pencil with different varying contrasts. The background is completely white, the main focus being the parade of Marines who look as if they had just stepped off the battlefield. Although every Marine seems to have his own type and personality—one with camouflage gear, another with a sniper rifle, another a medical officer propping up a wounded—the group moves as one, and every soldier leans on the other as the line of boots trudges on. The same type of documentation that Casselli uses is on the lower part of the right side of the sketch drawing. This information relates where the artists witnessed the image he drew, along with his signature.

Peter ‘Mike’ Gish Combat artists even included high ranking officers such as Col. Peter Michael (‘Mike’) Gish who was a highly-polished product of Dartmouth, the Yale School of Fine Arts and Architecture.cxxxvi His painting titled Forward Field Hospital from 1967 depicts a moment during a surgical operation where the doctor is tentatively looking upwards. The doctors’ hand

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probes the wound of the soldier, holding it open to the viewer, as he calmly looks for a bullet or other materials lodged beneath the skin (Figure 8). As the title suggests, the hospital likely did not have all the materials necessary as the doctor wears no face mask and uses his bare hands to operate. The artist uses the paint strokes to ‘focus’ the center image almost like a photograph.

The other soldiers who hold down and comfort the patient are blurred in the background as we cannot recognize any distinct facial features.

An IV of liquid hangs on the left side of the painting. The tube flows down to its patient but also acts as a tool to intently keep our attention in the center of the composition. The same can be said for the nurse on the right side of the medical procedure as his hands hold the patient who is awake and being operating on in this field hospital. The doctor is hunched over his patient with his elbows bent wide beside him. His hands firmly grasp and inspect the open wound of the patient. The brushstrokes are evident on the wound, especially on the portion of hanging skin that the doctor has peeled away to operate on. Gish has employed a spotlight effect, the light of a surgical lamp no doubt, to highlight the centerpiece of the painting, the main focus—a rather gruesome surgery being done on a wounded soldier. Surgeries on detrimental wounds would’ve been another regular occurrence for American soldiers in Vietnam. The casualty rate was rampant in Vietnam with the brutal use of guerilla warfare tactics employed by the Viet Cong soldiers as well as the constant bombing campaigns employed by American B-52s. Hospitals such as the one Gish depicts in Forward Field Hospital teemed with the brutally wounded. These

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wounded included more than just soldiers as the U.S. medical officers treated Vietnamese men, women, and children as well.

For example, in Gish’s painting of a Vietnamese Girl from the same year as the Forward Field Hospital. Gish’s painting of a Vietnamese Girl accentuates the Marine Corps Combat Art program’s flexibility in allowing its artists the greatest leverage in technique and topic, but also reveals an overlooked aspect

of the Vietnam War—the

people and culture of

Vietnam (Figure 9). We

have no specific information

regarding her name or age or

where she is from. The

animated and blurred

brushstrokes as well as the

contrast of harsh black and

white throughout the

painting offer us no

identification. The dramatic

rendering of the painting

creates for a soft depiction

of a young girl. She wears a

long, light-colored gown and

leans forward with a

gentleness. The young girl even extends her hand forward possibly towards us the viewer, or to Gish himself.

Just like Gish, this young Vietnamese Girl was a witness to war. The small nod of the girls’ head and her unknown status elicits a pain, as we the viewer know we cannot help or remove her from the situation she endured. Moreover, this Vietnamese girl represents the young Vietnamese children and the people who were subjected to the gruesome realities of war, the life and death aspects of battle that encompassed their country for decades. This painting, rather than a portrait is a testament to the people of South Vietnam and brings attention to the people who immediately felt the effects of the destructive warfare there alongside the Marines. Another

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combat artist, Christine ‘Trella’ Koczwara focused primarily on these subjects as she toured Vietnam as a combat artist.

Christine ‘Trella’ Koczwara When asked about why she made art in a live combat environment Koczwara stated that “it is a labor of love, I feel like I am contributing something lasting to the country.”cxxxvii When considering art made by a soldier artist for the government or military, many could assume these would be works of propaganda, not of love as Koczwara puts it. That, more than likely, because most governments do not wish the home front to know the bad aspects of war, the art produced as a result of that war would generally be used to justify and make tolerable their actions to the public.cxxxviii This was not the case with the Marine Corps Combat Art program, as well as the other participating branches including the Army and Navy programs. Marine artists were given full reigns to fulfill their creative ambitions while recording nearly every aspect of Marine activity, every type of weapon, vehicle and tool used in Vietnam or in the air over it.cxxxix Koczwara aptly illustrates this flexibility in her Faces of War series in which she documents the people and culture of South Vietnam.

As the only woman assigned to Vietnam during the war by the Department of the Navy, Koczwara understood the risks as well as opportunities that came with being a combat artist.cxl The experience was so enriching and life changing to Koczwara personally, she would later sign her works as ‘Trella’—a name taken from a Vietnamese grandmother she particularly admired. cxli

At first, the presence of an American woman in Vietnam was an anomaly to most soldiers.

Despite this, the reaction to her was more of curiosity. Koczwara was always well received by the Marines as she could relate well to them, being the same age as many of them at the time.cxlii

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In 1970 Koczwara was touring south of Da Nang, South Vietnam by Huey helicopter and spent many hours at one particular stop, the China Beach orphanage.cxliii The children she met and the feelings she felt can be seen in the paintings she made based off the sketches she took down while visiting the orphanage.

In Koczwara’s painting titled Faces of War from 1970, the primary focus is the profile of young Vietnamese boy (Figure 10). The expressive brush work of the painting is characteristic of Koczwara who used the evident paint strokes to create a sense of movement and direction.

The background of the work is a simple plain of grey. The young boy has a striking shock of black hair that seems to sway as he looks away from us. The light blue shirt he wears almost fades into the background hue with the blending of the brush. This young Vietnamese boy has seen so much of the war at a very young age, and the conflict and violence shown on American TV sets, had encompassed his country well before he was born. There is no smile on this Face of War. Despite the loneliness and innocence illustrated in this image, Koczwara recalls more positivity in her travels throughout Vietnam. While at the China Beach orphanage, the children flocked around her and touched her, it was a moving experience to her watching the Marines holding hands with young children, and the nurses caring for rows and rows of infants.cxliv This painting Faces of War from Koczwara’s larger series shows combat art’s flexibility in the field, as well as emphasizes the documentative aspect of the artist’s role, as they recorded those who felt the reverberations of the war in their homeland.

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Conclusion The negative connotations and controversial policies surrounding the Vietnam War immediately undervalued the works of art created by combat artists in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Moreover, the combat artists of the American Civil War during the nineteenth century, such as Homer and Gardner, are today recognized as visual archivists of significant American history. They used art to record their chaotic surroundings, much alike the combat artists of the USMC program. The combat artists of both of these eras traveled with American military regiments and witnessed war for themselves. The artworks by both the American Civil War and Vietnam artists establish an era of American history and reveal to us the perspective of the battlefield and the soldier. Much alike David Douglas Duncan’s photographs, Alexander Gardner photographed Union regiments and documented President Abraham Lincoln touring Union camps in 1862 (Figure 11). The most significant difference between the works of these combat artists lies in their presentation, their value in the eyes of the American public.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City has many of Homer’s paintings on display in its American Art Gallery (Figure 12). The gallery’s aesthetic exhibits a major theme of American exceptionalism and historic nostalgia of significant American events and people, recorded through visual works of art. This gallery has no works relating to Vietnam or the

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combat artists. The artistic quality and historic value of the Marine Corps Combat Art program’s artists and their works are not idealized or Romantic, but real and representative of a historic era of American history. The lack of presence of these works is due to the Vietnam Wars’ intense environment and its effects on the American collective memory. The works that resulted from the Marine Corps Combat Art program can today serve as visual documents of the Vietnam War, as well as proponents of the combat art field. These artists willingly leapt into the depths of war and took on a historic role as combat artist—infusing their impactful surroundings into their art as records of the Vietnam War and the people it affected.

When asked about being a combat artist in Vietnam, Henry Casselli noted that he had no idea of the horror that existed there and found himself fortunate to have a piece of paper on which to put it down.cxlv

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Endnotes

1

Giorgio Vasari, The Lives of the Artists (Oxford: Oxford University, 1991), 417.

Ibid, 415.

3 Ibid, 416.

4 Ibid, 416.

5 Ibid, 416.

6 Ibid, 420.

7 Joachim Poeschke, Michelangelo and His Works: Sculpture of the Italian Renaissance (New York: Harry N. Adams, 1996), 16.

8 Dr. Matthew Besdine, The Unknown Michelangelo (New York: Adelphi University, 1985), 24.

9 Besdine, The Unknown Michelangelo, 25.

10 Anthony Blunt, “Michelangelo’s Views on Art,” Artistic Theory in Italy, 1450-1660, Oxford University (1956).

11 Ibid.

12 Ibid.

13 Ibid.

14 Ibid.

15 Ibid.

16 Ibid.

17 Ibid.

18 Ibid.

19 Peter Murray, The Architecture of the Italian Renaissance. (London: Thames and Hudson, 1963), 178.

20 Vasari, The Lives of the Artists, 465.

21 Ibid, 465, 467.

22 Murray, The Architecture of the Italian Renaissance, 178.

23 William E Wallace, The Treasures of Michelangelo (London: Andre Deutsch, 2010), 51.

24 Murray, The Architecture of the Italian Renaissance, 178.

25 Ibid. 182.

26 Poeschke, Michelangelo and His Works, 16.

27 Ibid, 16.

28 Ibid, 16.

29 Wallace, The Treasures of Michelangelo, 54.

30 Philipp Fehl, “Michelangelo’s Tomb in Rome: Observations on the ‘Pieta’ in Florence and the ‘Rondanini Pieta,’” Artibus et Historiae, vol. 23, no. 45 (2002): 10.

31 Ibid.

32 Ibid, 12.

33 James Hall, Dictionary of Subjects and Symbols in Art (London: John Murray, 1974), 99.

34 Ibid.

35 Ibid.

36 Fehl, “Michelangelo’s Tomb in Rome,”10.

37 Hall, Dictionary of Subjects and Symbols in Art, 246.

2

158

38

Ibid, 247.

Fehl, “Michelangelo’s Tomb in Rome,” 10.

40 Ibid, 18.

41 John T Paoletti, “The Rondanini ‘Pieta’: Ambiguity Maintained through the Palimpsest,” Artibus et Historiae, vol. 21, no. 42 (2000): 53.

42 Ibid.

43 Ibid.

44 Ibid.

45 Wallace, The Treasures of Michelangelo, 56.

46 Paoletti, “The Rondanini ‘Pieta,’” 53.

47 Ibid, 59.

48 Ibid, 60.

49 Ibid, 58.

50 Ibid, 58.

51 Ibid, 58.

52 Ibid, 58.

53 Ibid, 68.

54 Ibid, 70.

55 Ibid, 70.

56 Ibid, 55.

57 Ibid, 55.

58 Ibid, 55.

59 Ibid, 55.

60 Ibid, 55.

61 Ibid, 56.

62 Ibid, 56.

63 Poeschke, 31.

64 Kelly Baum and Andrea Bayer, and Sheena Wagstaff, Unfinished: Thoughts Left Visible (New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2016), 18.

65 Ibid, 18.

66 Ibid, 23.

67 Ibid, 23.

68 Ibid, 31.

69 Besdine, The Unknown Michelangelo, 105.

70 Creighton E. Gilbert “What is Expressed in Michelangelo’s ‘Non-Finito,’” Artibus et Historiae, vol. 24 no. 48 (2003): 60.

71 Ibid, 58.

72 Fehl, “Michelangelo’s Tomb in Rome,” 12.

73 Ibid, 12.

74 Ibid, 10.

75 Ibid, 10.

76 Besdine, The Unknown Michelangelo,104.

77 Fehl, “Michelangelo’s Tomb in Rome,” 12.

78 Besdine, The Unknown Michelangelo, 104.

79 Ibid, 104.

80 Blunt, “Michelangelo’s Views on Art.” 39

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81

Ibid.

Paoletti, “The Rondanini ‘Pieta,’” 56.

83 Besdine, The Unknown Michelangelo, 105.

84 Paoletti, “The Rondanini ‘Pieta,’” 60.

85 Wallace, The Treasures of Michelangelo, 56.

86 Besdine, The Unknown Michelangelo, 104.

87 Peter Porter, Michelangelo, Life, Letters, and Poetry, (Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 157.

88 Fehl, “Michelangelo’s Tomb in Rome,” 24.

82

lxxxix

Dennis L. Noble, Forgotten Warriors: Combat Art from Vietnam (Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers, 1992), 6. xc Ibid, 4. xci John M. Carland, "Abandoning Vietnam" The Journal of Military History 70, no. 1 (2006): 183. xcii Noble, Forgotten Warriors, 6. xciii Charles H. Waterhouse, Vietnam Sketchbook: Drawings from Delta to DMZ (Rutland, VE: Charles E. Tuttle Company, 1968), 6. xciv “The Corps’ Combat Art Program,” Leatherneck, August 1969, 86. xcv Raymond Henri, “Combat art since 1775,” Marine Corps Gazette, November 1974, 23. xcvi Ibid, 35. xcvii Robert Klosowics, "The U.S. Marine as a Symbol of a Soldier and a Part of the American Myth." Ad Americam Vol. 15, (2014): 159. xcviii Henri, “Combat art since 1775,” 38. xcix Ibid, 35. c Ibid, 39. ci Ibid, 38. Major Jack T. Dyer would eventually become the curator for the Marine Corps Combat art collection. cii Ibid, 38. ciii Bill White, “Lady Combat Artist,” Leatherneck, June 1987, 42. civ Waterhouse, Vietnam Sketchbook, 7. cv Henri, “Combat art since 1775,” 38. cvi Ibid, 38. The estimation for the amount of works these artists would make was very low. Each combat artist produced over this amount, some producing hundreds of works on their own. cvii Waterhouse, Vietnam Sketchbook, 7. cviii Noble, Forgotten Warriors, 2. cix Ibid, 4. cx Ibid, 4. cxi Kyle Longley, Grunts: The American Combat Soldier in Vietnam (New York: M.E. Sharpe, 2008), 79. cxii Ibid, 79. cxiii James E. Westheider, Vietnam War (Westport, US: Greenwood Publishing Group, 2007), 1. cxiv Ibid, 2. cxv Ibid, 2. cxvi Ibid, 11. cxvii Ibid, 3-4. cxviii Longley, Grunts, 5. cxix Ibid, 4. cxx Westheider, Vietnam War, 31. cxxi Ibid, 31. cxxii Longley, Grunts, 184. cxxiii Ibid, 181. cxxiv Navroz Mody, “Chemical Warfare in Vietnam,” Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 5, No. 24 (13 June 1970), 948. cxxv “Napalm—a Useful but Not a Pretty Weapon” New York Times, December 10, 1967, 247. cxxvi Mody, “Chemical Warfare in Vietnam,” 948. cxxvii Longley, Grunts, 88-89.

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cxxviii Noble, Forgotten Warriors, 53. th cxxix David Douglas Duncan, My 20 Century (New York: Arcade Publishing, 2014), 42-55. cxxx Waterhouse, Vietnam Sketchbook, 6. cxxxi Ibid, 6. cxxxii Ibid, 7. cxxxiii Noble, Forgotten Warriors, 4. cxxxiv Longley, Grunts, 74-75. cxxxv Ibid, 75. cxxxvi Henri, “Combat art since 1775,” 40. cxxxvii White, “Lady Combat Artist,” 45. cxxxviii Noble, Forgotten Warriors, 3. cxxxix “The Corps’ Combat Art Program,” 86. cxl White, “Lady Combat Artist,” 40. cxli Ibid, 40. cxlii Ibid, 44. cxliii Ibid, 43. cxliv Ibid, 43-44. cxlv Noble, Forgotten Warriors, 4.

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Images Cover Page: Henry Casselli, Full Gear, Operation Lancaster II, NW Quang Tri Provence, South Vietnam, c. 1968. Pencil. (Retrieved from Heritage Studio/USMC Art Collection webpage) Figure 1: Winslow Homer, Prisoners from the Front, c. 1866. Oil on canvas. (Retrieved from ARTstor)

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Figure 2: Henry Casselli, Operation Napoleon—Saline Cua Viet River, Vietnam, c. 1968.

Graphite and watercolor. (Retrieved from Artist Daily webpage)

Figure 3: David Douglas Duncan, Removing the Dead from the DMZ, Con Thien, c. 1967.

Photograph. (Retrieved from ARTstor)

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Figure 4: David Douglas Duncan, Exhausted Marine at Con Thien, Vietnam, 1967. Photograph.

(Retrieved from The Red List Society webpage: Photography, Duncan, David Douglas)

164

Figure 5: Life magazine front cover, c. October 1967. (Retrieved from Erwan Grey Photography web-blog)

Figure 6: David Douglas Duncan, Vietnam, c. 1967. Photograph. (Retrieved from The Red List Society webpage: Photography, Duncan, David Douglas)

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Figure 7: Charles Waterhouse, Parade Outside Delta Med, Marines at Sick Call, Dong Ha, South Vietnam, c. 1967. Felt-tip pen. (Heritage Studio/USMC Art Collection webpage)

Figure 8: Col. Peter M. Gish, Forward Field Hospital, An Hoa, South Vietnam, c. 1967. Oil on canvas. (Heritage Studio/USMC Art Collection webpage)

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Figure 9: Col. Peter M. Gish, Vietnamese Girl, c. 1967. Oil on canvas. (Retrieved from webpage of the artist, Col. Peter Michael Gish)

Figure 10: Christine ‘Trella’ Koczwara, Faces of War, c. 1970. Oil on canvas. (Retrieved from US Navy Art Collection print webpage)

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Figure 11: Alexander Gardner, During the Civil War: President Lincoln, c. October 3, 1862.

Photograph. (Retrieved from ARTstor)

Figure 12: American Art Gallery, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City. (Retrieved from article on Wall Street Journal webpage)

168

Bibliography Carland, John M. "Abandoning Vietnam." The Journal of Military History 70, no. 1 (2006): 183186.

Duncan, David Douglas. My 20th Century. New York: Arcade Publishing, 2014.

Henri, Raymond. “Combat art since 1775.” Marine Corps Gazette, November 1974, 22-43.

Klosowicz, Robert. "The U.S. Marine as a Symbol of a Soldier and a Part of the American Myth." Ad Americam Vol. 15, (2014): 157-170.

Longley, Kyle. Grunts: The American Combat Soldier in Vietnam. New York: M.E. Sharpe, 2008.

Mody, Navroz. “Chemical Warfare in Vietnam.” Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 5, No. 24 (13 June 1970), 948.

“Napalm—a Useful but Not a Pretty Weapon.” New York Times, December 10, 1967, 247.

Noble, Dennis L. Forgotten Warriors: Combat Art from Vietnam. Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers, 1992.

“The Corps’ Combat Art Program.” Leatherneck, August 1969, 86-87.

Waterhouse, Charles H. Vietnam Sketchbook: Drawings from Delta to DMZ. Rutland, VE: Charles E. Tuttle Company, 1968.

Westheider, James E. Vietnam War. Westport, US: Greenwood Publishing Group, 2007.

White, Bill. “Lady Combat Artist.” Leatherneck, June 1987, 40-45.

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Author Biography Originally from Stafford, Virginia, Mary Leonard graduated Christopher Newport University this May 2017 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Art History. As a CNU alumna, Mary will assist with the management of the Marine Corps Combat Art collection in Dumfries, VA under the National Museum of the Marine Corps. While a student at CNU she worked for the Fine Arts Department as an intern for the Falk Gallery. Mary also worked in the Center for Academic Success as a private tutor. Her passion for museum studies and art history has taken her to many galleries and historic institutions where her desire for the hands-on and expressive environment of the field has only grown.

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