Thesis examples

what’s missing:
serpent
apple/ fruit
eve with fruit
adam is perfect
size

What’s present:
equality

Although the sculpture appears to be Adam and Eve, the lack of the serpent and the fruit, the lack of perfection, and the similarity in size suggest it is actually about gender equality.

The stark similarity in size between the two statues impresses upon the viewer the reality of gender equality.

This is not your usual Adam and Eve. These two are equal, they are involved, they are unfallen. The artist is suggesting that it is not the paradise that made them perfect, but their equality, their giving, their synergy; it is these things that make them perfect. This statue is indicating that the perfect humans are those who are in harmony and equality.

• equal in height
• smaller average adult
• equal authority
• between the woods and campus buildings – between eden and knowledge
• no apple, no serpent, no sense that eve did something bad first
• what do I do about the missing pieces – why important
• eve is not the first sin
• maybe it’s not about the moment of that sin
• context – college campus
• knowledge is bad, disobedient
• knowledge – college; pursuit of knowledge; childhood adulthood
• more positive spin on the pursuit of knowledge

context: between wilderness and classroom buildings
on a college campus: growing up and independence and gaining knowledge seeking identity
Adam and Eve: knowledge and disobedience

normal story: seek the fruit of knowledge, they are disobedient, and gain knowledge, but gain sin and death, pushed out of eden

borders: childhood ending; gaining knowledge

The Adam and Eve statue seems to be depicting the search for knowledge as part of our humanity?

The context of the Adam and Eve statue on a college campus seems to be saying that we are in a border territory between childhood innocence and knowledgeable adulthood.

The Adam and Eve statue in the border space between classrooms and Dunn Woods seems to slyly reference the transition from child to adult, from innocence to experience that we associate with college.