Untitled [Senior Thesis] was a work of performance art by Aliza Shvarts which she conducted during 2008, the final year of her visual arts degree at Yale University. During the 9 month performance Shvarts inseminated herself, and on the twenty-eighth day of her menstrual cycle, she took herbal medications meant to induce menses or miscarriage (although she never knew if she was pregnant). The piece generated controversy at the time, and considerable debate revolved around whether or not the project was a "hoax" or "creative fiction". In subsequent years, scholars and critics have described that uncertainty as a core part of the work itself. Creation and performance During the 9 month performance of Untitled [Senior Thesis], Shvarts used donated sperm to inseminate herself as often as possible between the ninth and fifteenth days of her menstrual cycle. On the twenty-eighth day of her cycle, she took herbal medications meant to induce menses or miscarriage (although she never knew if she was pregnant). Shvarts intended to exhibit video of herself experiencing vaginal bleeding on four sides of a clear plastic cube, which would be wrapped with transparent plastic lined with samples of the discharged fluid. On April 17, 2008, the Yale Daily News printed an article about the end-of-year student exhibition, in which Shvarts stated that the goal of the project was to spark conversation and debate on the relationship between art and the human body, saying: "I believe strongly that art should be a medium for politics and ideologies, not just a commodity. I think that I'm creating a project that lives up to the standard of what art is supposed to be." Gawker and Drudge Report quickly picked up the story, and mainstream media reported on Shvarts's work in the days following. Caught in an international media controversy, Yale College issued a press release claiming that the work was a "creative fiction" including "visual representations, a press release, and other narrative materials." This denial was more about denying any institutional responsibility by Yale, and less about denying the possibility of what Shvarts claims happened. Shvarts maintained the veracity of her performance in a guest article for the Yale Daily News, noting that the ambiguity surrounding the performance was an essential component of the work: “the piece exists only in its telling. This telling can take textual, visual, spatial, temporal, and performative forms—copies of copies of which there is no