Thesis Introduction :)

Hi everyone!

I'm Rain, I'm an Anthropology and Museum Studies double major. I am doing my thesis on graphic communication as a form of resistance, with most of the focus likely being on North America and the Caribbean in the 19th-21st centuries. I came into MUSE-489 with a rough idea (and it very much still is) for my thesis that I was very passionate about doing and can't picture myself doing anything else. I feel very strongly about this topic because I believe that it would allow me to bring my majors together, through my love for research, in a way that also connects with my interests in bottom-up history and politics generally, which has followed me my whole life despite the amount of frustration it causes. The goal of this project is to understand how have ordinary people across North America and its margins have used forms of graphic communication as a way to resist oppression, express emotions, and exert agency over their own lives in times when they have felt powerless, divided, or outright ignored, and what lessons can we learn from these people to better convey our messages in a time where many feel the same? A few of the topics I would personally like to explore are poster art in post-revolution Cuba, anti-war art in the U.S. and Canada, Labor Union prints (specifically those of the Industrial Workers of the World), and I would like to incorporate anecdotal graphic communication (e.g. Diaries) as an example of resistance against manipulation of legacy, because resistance isn't always about resisting a tangible thing.