Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2012, Art Education

This dissertation examines the idea that the identity of Indian artist educators and consequently Indian art education is an assemblage of socio-cultural and ideological experience and influence, and of disciplinary transgressions into pedagogical borderlands. The primary source for the concept of assemblage as employed in this study is the writing of Deleuze and Guattari. I identify and analyze three assemblages of identity, namely: a) postcolonial self-consciousness, b) disciplinary organization, and c) social organization, to consider how art education might be approached ‘other'wise in theory and practice. This analysis is based on narratives of learning, teaching and ideology that emerge in engaging composite voices of urban Indian art educators on their practice, with articulations of policy and curriculum voices. I employ a conceptual framework of ontological hybridity that folds Indian Vedanta philosophy onto concepts of Deleuze and Guattari, such as assemblage, rhizome, and space. I do so in context of developments in curriculum and pedagogy in art education on disciplinary and social levels. I place my dissertation within the discourse of postcolonial globalization theory, exploring the concept of ambivalence in relation to identity. I employ a methodology located in the borderlands of narrative inquiry and grounded theory.

Committee: Kevin Tavin PhD (Advisor); Sydney Walker PhD (Committee Member); Christine Ballengee-Morris PhD (Committee Member); Deborah Smith-Shank PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Art Education; Education Philosophy; Multicultural Education; Pedagogy; South Asian Studies; Teacher Education

Doctor of Philosophy, Miami University, 2014, English

This dissertation adds to a body of scholarship that seeks to expand Western concepts of writing and rhetoric and increase the field's knowledge of indigenous rhetorical practices (Baca, Boone, Haas, Lyons, Mignolo, Powell). The dissertation presents a framework, which I term "a rhetorical biography of things" for studying the rhetorical nature of objects. Drawing upon object-oriented theories and certain American Indian epistemologies, the model's underlying assumptions posit that objects--defined broadly to include human and nonhuman, animate and inanimate, material and non-material entities--intertwine in dynamically changing networks with humans and other objects, producing differing effects in response to the interrelationships and exigence of each context. Identifying these relationships as the objects move through space and time makes it possible to observe how objects interact and affect one another, how new relationships and understandings are reformed within each new context. Using the framework, I construct a rhetorical biography of an indigenous material production--Plains Indian pictography--by examining its trajectory through indigenous and non-indigenous contexts of the nineteenth century. Chapters 2 and 3 provide the historical and cultural context for my argument that traditional Plains Indian auto/biographic pictography is the written version of the oral coup tale used to reinforce a male's protector/provider ethos. Chapters 4 and 5 examine pictography's life in the last quarter of the nineteenth century as it becomes a tourist trade commodity when traditional Plains Indian culture is upended by Western expansion and confinement to reservations; examining the changes in content and form enacted by a group of Plains Indian prisoners, I argue that the prisoners attempted to both mediate cross-cultural communication and resist EuroAmerican colonialism through pictography. Chapter 6 examines American Indian student drawings in early off-reservatio (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Kate Ronald Dr, (Committee Co-Chair); Kelli Johnson Dr. (Committee Co-Chair); LuMing Mao Dr. (Committee Member); Daniel Cobb Dr. (Committee Member) Subjects: Literacy; Native American Studies; Native Americans; Native Studies; Rhetoric

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2004, History of Art

This dissertation explores the theme of dance imagery in south Indian temples by focusing on one aspect of dance expression, namely, the 108-karana sculptures. The immense popularity of dance to the south Indian temple is attested by the profusion of dance sculptures, erection of dance pavilions (nrtta mandapas), and employment of dancers (devaradiyar). However, dance sculptures are considered merely decorative addtitions to a temple. This work investigates and interprets the function and meaning of dance imagery to the Tamil temple. Five temples display prominently the collective 108-karana program from the eleventh to around the 17th century. The Rajaraja Temple at Thanjavur (985-1015 C.E.) displays the 108-karana reliefs in the central shrine. From their central location in the Rajaraja Temple, the 108 karana move to the external precincts, namely the outermost gopura. In the Sarangapani Temple (12-13th century) at Kumbakonam, the 108 karana are located in the external facade of the outer east gopura. The subsequent instances of the 108 karana, the Nataraja Temple at Cidambaram (12th-16th C.E.), the Arunachalesvara Temple at Tiruvannamalai (16th C.E.), and the Vriddhagirisvara Temple at Vriddhachalam (16th-17th C.E.), also use this relocation. Situated in the inner passageway of the outermost gopura, the 108-karana are arranged on vertical pilasters in a sequence that moves vertically from bottom to top. In addition, the 108 karana is present in all four of the outer gopuras that encircle the central shrine. This study situates the 108-karana sculptures within the larger iconographic program of the temple and its structures. In doing so, it analyzes and presents the meaning and relevance of the 108 karana to the vimana, the gopura, and to temple vocabulary. It investigates the 108 karana's agency in communicating themes associated with Saivite legend. In doing so, it disputes the prevailing notion that dance sculptures are merely aesthetic additions to the temple (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Susan Huntington (Advisor); John Huntington (Other); Howard Crane (Other) Subjects: