dph2

Bes Arnaout ’20 is an Italian major, a comparatist at heart, spends time on literature, art, and critical theory. Bes wrote this essay as a junior, as part of her fall independent work research.

Danielle Hoffman ’20 is a senior from Farmington, Connecticut. She is pursuing a concentration in Philosophy and a certificate in Linguistics. In addition to serving as an editor for Tortoise and working as a Writing Center Fellow, Danielle also dances with diSiac Dance Company. She wrote this commentary as a senior.

Spring 2020, Thesis

Giulia Niccolai’s Abandonment of Photography: An Act of Subaltern Self-Awareness

BY dph2

In a Tortoiseshell: Using various feminist thinkers as a scholarly lens, her own primary source material from an interview she conducted, and a close reading of multiple artistic mediums, Bes puts forward a thesis that is clear, original, and motivated. In addition to containing all of the key ingredients for a powerful argument, though, Bes’s thesis is an exemplar model due to the way she deepens and refines that thesis as the paper progresses and as she gradually exposes the reader to more key concepts, relevant scholars, and pieces of evidence. In this excerpt, which appears towards the end of Bes’s paper, we see her thesis in its full complexity and nuance and get a taste of how Bes strategically goes about uncovering that complexity in gradual stages. Continue reading →