The Sheremetevs and the Argunovs: Art, Serfdom, and Enlightenment in Eighteenth-Century Russia

This dissertation studies a case of Enlightenment art created in feudal conditions of servitude. The Sheremetevs, one of the richest and most powerful families in eighteenth-century Russia, had some of their hundreds of thousands of serfs trained as painters, architects, opera singers, and musicians. Two of these serfs, Ivan and Nikolai Argunov, became successful portraitists who painted a range of sitters from Empresses to fellow serfs. Tensions between social rank and individuality, already a preoccupation for eighteenth-century portrait painters, became particularly pronounced in this situation. While recent scholarship has focused on the Argunovs' cosmopolitan influences, their paintings of fellow serfs and others of low rank are sometimes visually and iconographically distinct from their usual output. This category of portrait, this dissertation argues, should be considered within the context of the other artistic projects of the Sheremetev household. Despite strong Western European influences on the Argunovs, the painters were also exposed to extremely personal and local precedents. These include earlier portraits, garden prints, an atlas project, the Sheremetevs' many collections, and operas staged by the family's renowned serf theater. Working within this visual environment, Ivan and Nikolai Argunov painted their subjects in intricately allusive ways. Their portraits represented and negotiated the complications of serfdom in a setting where unusual social change was possible

The influence of children\u27s race/ethnicity and adaptive behavior information on school psychologists\u27 classification and placement decisions

The present study examined the effect of information regarding a student\u27s adaptive behavior functioning and race/ethnicity on school psychologists\u27 educational classification and placement decisions. School psychologists were randomly assigned three psychoeducational summaries and asked to rate their agreement with three classification and five placement options for each child. Respondents were also asked to complete follow-up questionnaires and a small sample of respondents were interviewed. There were no main effects for either Adaptive Behavior Information or Race/Ethnicity. School psychologists in the present study were significantly more likely to recommend a resource room placement for either Anglo or Black children when adaptive behavior information was presented only in narrative form than when adaptive behavior scale scores were included in their psychoeducational summaries. This finding could not be readily explained. Since this was an isolated finding, it was concluded that it could possibly have occurred by chance