Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Ohio University, 2015, English (Arts and Sciences)

This dissertation is a study of Wikipedia's collaborative, open access culture and the opportunities for writing pedagogy it provides. Because the encyclopedia showcases productive writing processes in radically transparent ways, Wikipedia enables rich opportunities for students to observe, practice, and learn about writing. Wikipedia can help students gain social and procedural writing knowledge as well as more traditional learning outcomes related to research, writing and rhetoric. Engaging students in Wikipedia's interactive community can also lead to an increase in rhetorical knowledge as students practice negotiation and collaboration with authorities outside the “traditional” classroom. Additionally, the encyclopedia provides opportunities for cultural studies projects that involve students in the recognition of identity politics of representation and cultural marginalization as they work to rectify missing articles and topics that are underrepresented. Discussion of these opportunities provides a range of pedagogical insights into how writing instructors can approach and teach with the encyclopedia, by asking students to join the Wikipedia community and—through their writing—improve existing articles and create new ones. Such insights are supported by three information-rich classroom case studies, made available through a qualitative research design that emphasizes student and instructor experience by re-creating classroom contexts. In addition to asserting and describing the pedagogical benefits of Wikipedia writing assignments, these classroom studies interrogate the cultural politics of access and representation that emerge when students and others try to join and write in this community. Despite its ambitions for global representation and its open access editorial ethos, Wikipedia's project is hindered by problems of homogenous editorship, troubling issues of editorial access, and gaps in coverage of already marginalized topics. Examination of how these i (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Albert Rouzie PhD (Advisor); Mara Holt PhD (Committee Member); Jennie Nelson PhD (Committee Member); Howard Welser PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Communication; Composition; Cultural Anthropology; Educational Theory; Pedagogy; Rhetoric; Teaching; Web Studies

Master of Arts (MA), Bowling Green State University, 2024, Popular Culture

Retro video game collecting has seen an increase in popularity in the recent decade, however, with the increase in popularity of digital gaming and digital media the retro video game collectors are an endangered subculture of the video gaming industry due to the increase in digital gaming and the disappearance of the physical commodity. This research takes an autoethnographic approach and uses theories such as, Pierre Bourdieu's theories regarding capital and the field, Karl Marx's theory of commodity, and Ray Oldenburg's theory of the Third Place to explain the importance of this subculture and why retro video game collecting is worth researching.

Committee: Kristen Rudisill Ph.D (Committee Chair); Jeremy Wallach Ph.D (Committee Member) Subjects: Epistemology

MA, Kent State University, 2015, College of the Arts / School of Art

This research focuses on the motivation of adolescent students, including several with special needs, in an art classroom to create artworks through the use of digital and Visual Culture experiences. Action research was conducted in two different classroom settings over several months in a public school. Each class period was recorded with audio and video to analyze the students' responses to Visual Culture stimuli with structured discussion questions and relevant studio production. To blend this study with Narrative inquiry, other field texts collected as data included research notes, written and audio-recorded critical reflections on teaching, and photographs of students' artworks. Students involved in the study were part of inclusion classrooms including students with special needs, and students who are identified as gifted. All the students went through a unit of lessons that centered on artworks created as responses to Visual Culture experiences from the student's lives. Interpretations of student art production indicated that all of them were similarly motivated, though students had different responses to Visual Culture experiences that ranged from strong likes and dislikes of celebrity images and enjoyment of humorous personified animal images. Capitalizing on their fascinations with popular images such toys, video games, and animals, Visual Culture can serve as a bridge between students of varying cognitive and academic backgrounds, allowing them to create art as a community rather than as individuals. Research findings concurred with a pilot study which also found that students both collect Visual Culture as a way to construct their identity, and that Visual Culture can be a language through which students can communicate. Though in this study the Visual Culture studied was carefully curated to benefit the lessons taught, the students showed their interests in many other varied experiences that surfaced during the implementation of this pedagogy. One of the (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Koon-Hwee Kan PhD (Advisor); Linda Hoeptner-Poling PhD (Committee Member); Juliann Dorff MAT (Committee Member); Jeanne Ruscoe-Smith PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Art Education

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2008, Art Education

Gender and technology scholarship demonstrates a longstanding, persistence gender gap reflecting the inequity between the large numbers of men and small numbers of women in technology educational courses and careers. What instructional and institutional changes can address and counteract the current gender inequity status quo? This dissertation presents a two-year critical case study of Digital Animation: A Technology Mentoring Program for Young Women, a pedagogical intervention that intends to increase the likelihood of young women participants pursuing future educational, personal, and professional technology opportunities. The program, situated at The Ohio State University's Advanced Computing Center for Art and Design, provides a group of 15 to 18 young women with an intensive two-week animation experience using Maya 3D animation software to produce short films on local environmental issues. The major program hypothesis is that women may be more likely to learn technology as embedded within an arts-centered curriculum, where arts function as the primary medium for learning and communication, as opposed to traditional computer technology instruction. Learning becomes co-constructed, collaborative, interdisciplinary, creative, and personal; learners become active. The aim is to provide participants with personal instructional support, a peer network, mentors, examples of successful women in technology, personal success, and exposure to a wide range of technology possibilities. I use gender and technology scholarship in conjunction with multiple critical theoretical perspectives, including feminist poststructuralist pedagogy and visual culture art education, to create a multi-faceted, complex framework for analyzing Digital Animation, its efforts, and its outcomes. This case study presents data highlighting ways a visual culture art education orientation can also utilize other critical theoretical perspectives, such as feminist poststructuralist pedagogy, to a (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Candace Stout PhD (Committee Chair); Maria Palazzi MFA (Committee Member); Sydney Walker PhD (Committee Member); Jennifer Eisenhauer PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Art Education; Computer Science; Education; Gender; Technology

Master of Arts (MA), Bowling Green State University, 2013, Popular Culture

Thinspiration images, meant to inspire weight-loss, proliferate online through platforms that encourage the circulation of user-generated content. Despite numerous alarmist critiques in mass media about thinspiration and various academic studies investigating 'pro-anorexia' sites, surprisingly little attention has been given to the processes of creation and the symbolic potential of thinspiration. This thesis analyzes the formal hybridity of thinspiration, and its use as an expressive medium. The particularities of thinspiration (including its visual characteristics, creative processes, and exhibition) may be considered carefully constructed instances of self-representation, hinging on the expression of beliefs regarding the mind and body. While these beliefs are deeply entrenched in popular body management discourse, they also tend to rely on traditional dualist ideologies. Rather than simply emphasizing slenderness or reiterating standard assumptions about beauty, thinspiration often evokes pain and sadness, and employs truisms about the transcendence of flesh and rebellion against social constraints. By harnessing individualist discourse and the values of mind/body dualism, thinspiration becomes a space in which people struggling with disordered eating and body image issues may cast themselves as active agents—contrary to images of eating disorders proffered by popular and medical discourse.

Committee: Marilyn Motz (Advisor); Rebecca Kinney (Committee Member); Jeremy Wallach (Committee Member) Subjects: American Studies; Art Criticism; Communication; Folklore; Gender Studies; Health; Multimedia Communications; Social Research; Web Studies; Womens Studies

Master of Arts, The Ohio State University, 2024, Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies

One recent internet phenomenon that has ignited discussions on social media and in academic circles is the topic of cancel and call-out culture. To bridge this gap, I map a cultural and theoretical lineage of digital activism and cancel culture, which intersects with black feminist studies, racial capitalism scholarship, and feminist media discourses. Within this lineage, I examine the tensions between respectability politics, homonormativity, and Foucauldian panopticism to contextualize the disproportionate policing and hate speech lobbied at black and brown queer bodies online, alongside their popular representations in the media. Furthermore, I conduct a digitally ethnographic case study that collects and analyzes instances of fan cancellations involving various contestants from RuPaul's Drag Race as evidence supporting my claims that the show encourages the fanbase to act as “cancellors,” regulating how queer individuals are allowed to express themselves on the reality television giant. Interrogating respectability further, I consider how RPDR devises its own canceling culture, funneling a homonormative and white supremacist gaze that year after year, season after season, profits from and perpetuates the social disposability of disrespectable queer persons of color. By analyzing how Drag Race constructs a “canceling culture” through its mise en scene, construction of on-screen power dynamics, and fan-polling, I intend to demonstrate that RuPaul and production company, World of Wonder, invite fans to evaluate and eliminate queens alongside the show's panel of judges, depoliticizing the transgressive potential of the camp representations the show platforms by encouraging the disposal of and minimization of its queer talent.

Committee: Mytheli Sreenivas (Committee Member); Linda Mizejewski (Advisor) Subjects: Film Studies; Gender Studies; Womens Studies

Doctor of Philosophy, Miami University, 2023, English: Composition and Rhetoric

In this dissertation, I articulate and reclaim African rhetorical traditions and apply an African rhetorical lens for examining how contemporary Ga communities can use digital communications to further cultural practices. I examine ancient Egyptian African rhetorical traditions, exploring the theories and practices of Maat so as to articulate themes and characteristics of African rhetoric. I focus on African rhetoric from Ancient Egypt and then highlight some of its practices in contemporary Ghana, including Akan and Ga rhetoric. This dissertation centers and attempts a practice of rhetoric to a local/Indigenous people, The Gas of Ghana, whose cultural and linguistic survival might depend on how they use the Internet and digital technologies to share and celebrate their rhetorics. The Gas, Indigenous to Greater Accra, the capital city of Ghana, have a rich culture similar to the Akans. However, their dwindling population, cycles of poverty, lack of education, and exclusion of their language (Ga) education in the teaching curriculum by successive governments have all contributed to a near-loss of a rich Indigenous cultural heritage. Drawing from interviews with cultural preservationists in Ghana and Ga leaders, I examine how the Gas have used and could use the internet to engage in rhetorical acts of survivance. Some of the research questions shaping this study are: (1) How might minority Indigenous peoples (specifically in this study the Gas of Ghana) use the digital to assert their cultural practices and achieve visibility and survivance? And (2) In what ways can we Africans contribute to the cultural design and decolonizing of our material and digital rhetorics? I apply a combination of local methodological frameworks to understand how local research works with Indigenous communities. These include Indigenous concepts like Sankofa, which means return to the past and fetch from it, Ga samai (symbols), decoloniality, Indigenous storytelling. Finally, I close my diss (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Heidi McKee (Advisor) Subjects: Rhetoric; Technical Communication

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2023, French and Italian

In the last thirty years, Italy has experienced an unprecedented demographic revolution. Today, about 10% of the Italian population, five million, are of foreign origins. Migrants living in Italy come from more than one hundred countries. Nevertheless, Italian mass media and political discourses have increasingly depicted the arrival of these persons as a crisis menacing Italy's political stability, an emergency threatening Italian society, identity, and future. In contrast, contemporary Italian documentary has produced a significant body of work that can be defined as "of migration”: documentaries that narrate contemporary migrations moving to, across, and within Italy, which engage with the complexity of human mobility. This dissertation investigates non-fiction films' audiovisual language, production, and distribution practices in Italy by showing how Italian emigration and colonial pasts influence contemporary perceptions of migration phenomena and the Italian national identity. Exploring documentaries produced between 2006 and 2019, I analyze their nuanced representations and narratives. Within the corpus of non-fiction films I discuss, a strain of non-fiction films embraces a poetics of emergency that focuses on the dramatic spectacle of the endangered bodies of the migrants and promotes a humanitarian approach to the migration ‘problem' but, in so doing, reinforces the obsession for the space of the border and the primacy of images in sense-making. The privileged space to investigate the reality of human mobility is the Central Mediterranean Route that connects sub-Saharan Africa, Asia, East African, and North Africa to Europe. Thousands of migrants cross the Mediterranean to reach the Italian (and European) shores whenever possible. Every year, thousands die during the attempt. These documentaries show you the unfolding of the humanitarian crises at sea. A second strain of documentaries embraces what I call poetics of urgency: a filmmaking approach t (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Dana Renga (Advisor); Jonhatan Mullins (Committee Member); Alan O'Leary (Committee Member); John Davidson (Committee Member) Subjects: Cinematography; European Studies; Film Studies; International Relations; Mass Media; Modern History; Motion Pictures; Multimedia Communications; Performing Arts; Political Science; Public Policy; Rhetoric

MA, Kent State University, 2023, College of Arts and Sciences / Department of History

American women in the 1800s lived in a social structure designed to reinforce traditional womanhood. This was emphasized and visualized by the restrictive popular fashions for women, characterized by long skirts and restrictive undergarments. Women's fashions began to change as mass production and consumption became paramount to American womanhood at the turn of the century. However, it would not be until the events of World War I where women's fashions transformed to what we would recognize today as modern. As American women mobilized in both civilian and military roles, they adopted working uniforms that were more practical, economical, and safe than popular fashions at the time. Postwar, women's modern fashions embraced the shortened hems and boxy, or boyish, cuts that increased the physical mobility of women. This gave ammunition to social critics who worried about the “masculinization” of American women as they adopted these new styles that mimicked men's fashions, with straight lines and short haircuts like the “bob”. These critics voiced fears about the collapse of traditional womanhood, and in extension, the collapse of American society. Combining historical and material culture analyses, this thesis aims to complicate the view of scholars that the 1920s was a largely stagnant period for the equality of women. Viewing this turbulent and tension filled period of American history through the lens of fashion complicates this understanding and shows how American women created spaces for resistance in their everyday lives.

Committee: Kenneth Bindas (Advisor) Subjects: American History; American Studies; Gender; Gender Studies; History; Modern History; Museum Studies; Womens Studies

Master of Science, The Ohio State University, 2022, Comparative and Veterinary Medicine

Intrasynovial tendon injuries are common debilitating conditions characterized by persistent inflammation and tissue degeneration during healing, and are associated with poorer outcomes than extrasynovial tendon injuries. Changes in tendon structure and vascularity following injury facilitate circulating immune cell influx, of which, monocyte-derived macrophages dominate and persist throughout healing. Macrophages are emerging targets for modulating/manipulating tendon healing as they play a fundamental role by initiating and/or resolving inflammation and recruiting fibroblasts via secreted signals for extracellular matrix (ECM) synthesis. Macrophages respond to local stimuli, exhibit pro-inflammatory or anti-inflammatory/regulatory phenotypes, and exert differential effects at the tissue healing site. Therefore, the aim of this research was to investigate macrophage-derived inflammatory and regulatory signals, and subsequently examine their effects on intrasynovial flexor tendon cell bioactivity. Our specific objectives included (1) optimizing peripheral blood monocyte-derived macrophage in vitro differentiation protocols, and subsequently determining their inflammatory and regulatory cytokine secretion, and (2) investigating intrasynovial flexor tenocyte-macrophage interactions in direct (cell-to-cell contact) and transwell (non-contact mediated) in vitro co-culture model systems. Peripheral blood CD14+ monocytes were isolated from 5 horses (IACUC approved) via sequential density gradient centrifugation and magnetic bead-based positive selection. Forelimb intrasynovial deep digital flexor tendons opposing the distal sesamoid bone were harvested from 4 of those horses immediately following euthanasia, collagenase digested to obtain single cell suspensions, and monolayer passaged twice to isolate intrasynovial flexor tenocytes (CD90+105+27-45-). (1) Monocytes were maintained in basal medium (RPMI + 10% FBS + 1% penicillin-streptomycin) and ± 50ng/mL equine GM-CSF (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Sushmitha Durgam (Advisor); Teresa Burns (Committee Member); Samantha Evans (Committee Member); Devina Purmessur (Committee Member) Subjects: Biomedical Research; Immunology

Doctor of Philosophy, Case Western Reserve University, 2022, Art History

In the early modern period, elite collectors began amassing magnificent collections of both locally produced and imported objects. Few were as innovative as Amalia van Solms-Braunfels (1602-1675), Princess of Orange. Under Amalia and her husband, Stadtholder Frederik Hendrik (1584-1647), Prince of Orange, the United Provinces flourished as a cultural and global power. The strength and wealth of the country, and by association the House of Orange-Nassau, is embedded in Amalia's cabinets or closets, private spaces where she carefully curated assemblages of locally produced and imported decorative and fine artworks. Under the weight of a historiographic tradition that privileges male rulers, much of the scholarship produced on the princely couple's cultural activities marks Frederik Hendrik or Constantijn Huygens as the deciding factor without discussion or justification. While scholarly interest in Amalia's role as an independent patron and collector has grown over the last two decades, the focus to date on individual, extant objects, while informative, does not provide a comprehensive understanding of Amalia's interests and motivations as a patron and collector-- how she acquired and employed objects, both individually and in decorative ensembles, to construct her various identities. My dissertation focuses on Amalia's cabinets found in the Stadtholder's Quarters (Stadhouderlijk Kwartier) and the Oude Hof (‘Old Court') at Noordeinde, and the objects displayed within. Uniting textual and visual evidence in the form of inventories, correspondence, and objects with novel digital tools, it first applies social network analysis to visualize Amalia's social, global network that provided her with access to other impressive collections and artists, as well as assisted her with acquiring objects originating from outside of Europe. It interrogates how, once acquired, objects were employed by Amalia in ensembles within the most intimate spaces of her residences to construct her (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Catherine Scallen (Advisor); Andrea Wolk Rager (Committee Member) Subjects: Art History

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Bowling Green State University, 2021, American Culture Studies

This dissertation analyzes how far-right digitally networked German and American Islamophobic communities on Twitter frame, discuss, and imagine Arab and Muslim communities as supposedly destabilizing the Western-nation state as a racially homogenous national cultural community. Employing a feminist grounded theory methodology this dissertation involves scraping the comparative hashtags #Islamization and #Islamisierung, visualizing digitally networked Islamophobic communities, identifying user-types, analyzing discursive themes, and tracking information transmission to examine the way in which Islamophobic digital discourse is not merely Transatlantic but increasingly transnationalized among American, German, Indian, and Nigerian digital networks. In charting the contours of these Islamophobic digitally networked communities and the content of their conversations, this dissertation tracks the way in which German and American far-right Twitter users increasingly articulate a series of paranoid linkages between Muslim, Jewish, and Black communities alongside political progressives, multi-lateral institutions, and national governments as united in seeking to destabilize an imagined white or ethnic German, Christian, hetero-patriarchal nation-state and the broader cultural imaginary of the West. This dissertation contributes to contemporary studies of far-right digitally networked communities and finds that even as far-right German and American Islamophobic networked communities are mired within racially exclusionary nationalist rhetoric they are increasingly linked to the growth of transnational and multi-racial far-right networks that span the Global North and South.

Committee: Radhika Gajjala Ph.D. (Advisor); Samuel McAbee Ph.D (Other); Yanqin Lu Ph.D. (Committee Member); Timothy Messer-Kruse Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: American Studies; Communication; Ethnic Studies

MFA, Kent State University, 2021, College of the Arts / School of Art

This body of work stems from my interest in drag culture, gender, and how we visually present ourselves to others. Based on vintage silk screens depicting drag queens and gay bars from the 1970's Cleveland this work is created to celebrate pioneering drag queens as well as preserve a forgotten history. To do this, the gallery space is transformed to reflect the atmosphere of one of the clubs where individuals convened to recognize beauty, glamour, and an individual's sense of femininity. Soft sculptures reminiscent of elaborate drag gowns are illuminated to emit a soft glow. These symbolic sculptures shed light on photographic images of prominent drag queens digitally printed on layers of silk organza.

Committee: Janice Lessman-Moss (Advisor); Linda Ohrn-McDaniel (Committee Member); Andrew Kuebeck (Committee Member) Subjects: Aesthetics; Fine Arts; Gender; Performing Arts; Textile Research

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Bowling Green State University, 2017, English (Rhetoric and Writing) PhD

First-year composition pedagogy and course communication (especially as implicitly endorsed by institutionally presented means) is often limiting in modes and modalities, which juxtaposes vibrant composing practices in the daily lives of students. Additionally, writing program requirements tend to value primarily alphabetic texts despite multimodal composing's empirically-supported benefits to students. Many in the General Studies Writing program at Bowling Green State University (a sequence of Academic Composition courses) are also enjoying the affordances of Web 2.0 (an umbrella term for digitally connected platforms including file sharing, video and audio conferencing/commenting, and social networking) while creating ePortfolios. My dissertation takes advantage of this rich learning opportunity given the field's call for published teacher research on digital pedagogy. Based in technofeminism, phenomenology, and grounded theory, this project reveals quantitative and qualitative data from digital surveys and interviews on the practices and preferences surrounding Web 2.0 in GSW. Voicing these likes is part of an ongoing thread on digital composition scholarship and teaching. This project provides examples, ideas, and activities showing how Web 2.0 can explicitly support GSW learning outcomes, university writing program goals, BGSU missions, state regulations such as the Ohio Transfer Module (OTM), and federal right to privacy.

Committee: Kris Blair Dr. (Committee Co-Chair); Lee Nickoson Dr. (Committee Co-Chair); Sue Carter Wood Dr. (Committee Member); Ernesto Delgado Dr. (Other) Subjects: Rhetoric

Doctor of Philosophy, Miami University, 2016, English

This dissertation examines the library as a memory system. To do this I craft a rhetorical history of both the classical canon of memory as well as the institution of the library. Within the Graeco-Roman Western rhetorical canon of memory was born out of an oral culture. Memorization was a tool primarily used to deliver speeches; however, the mnemonics rhetors used to remember grew into systems of memory. The use of systems is often viewed as a tool for organization, but they are also tools for memorization. If we move beyond the idea of memorization as a relic of the oral culture and view it as system, it becomes apparent that memory is still an active force in print and digital culture. In this project I examine the library as a memory system—as a structure and institution that helps collect, preserve, organize, and distribute knowledge. The library is one of the most influential and widely-used memory systems we have for collecting and disseminating knowledge. Like the canon of memory, it remains undertheorized within rhetorical studies. This project tracks the history of the library in Western culture, as it moved from a collection of inscribed scrolls, to printed materials, to digital artifacts. I also examine a variety of counter systems—alternate forms of memory storage that push against the traditional memory structure of the library. This project contributes to the field of rhetoric/composition by expanding our understanding of the rhetorical canon of memory, pushing it from a tool too closely associated with orality and delivery toward a more-relevant network of knowledge. For compositionists who frequently access these systems for information, this network of memory creates potential for more avenues of invention. Additionally, the view of memory as a system has the potential to recognize the flaws and cultural hegemony that take place in institutional memory. Consequently, the use of systematized memory could alter the ways in which we choose (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: James Porter (Committee Chair); Jason Palmeri (Committee Member); Lihn Dich (Committee Member); Tim Lockridge (Committee Member); Glenn Platt (Other) Subjects: Composition; Library Science; Rhetoric

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2014, Comparative Studies

The goal of this dissertation is to demonstrate some of the ways in which neoliberal social and economic discourse, in particular the work of Friedrich Hayek and Gary Becker, has influenced the cultural evolution of the late-twentieth and early-twenty-first centuries. Chapter One introduces the scope and methods of the project and situates market-oriented social epistemology alongside the development of complexity theory in the physical and information sciences. Chapter Two situates Hayek's philosophies of social science and communication within the broader science cultures of the postwar decades, arguing that his conceptualization of prices and markets is deeply rooted in coterminous projects of cybernetics and general systems theory. Consequently, Hayek's ideas about autonomy, information, and cultural transmission are seen to dovetail with the dominant scientific paradigms and media technologies of the late twentieth century. Chapter Three argues that contemporary financial markets and telematic screen cultures have become operationally analogous in their actualization of neoliberal rationality and social thought. Expanding my reading of neoliberalism beyond Hayek's macrological approach to examine the emerging and all-consuming micrological approach of “human capital” theorists like Becker, this chapter details the ways in which new media platforms, algorithmic cultural practices, and what cultural critics have named the “financialization of daily life” have become primary agents of governmentality today. Chapter Four offers an original interpretation of Michel Foucault's 1979 lectures on neoliberalism, one that reads the abrupt change of course in his research—which, directly following his interrogations of Hayek, Becker, and others, jumped from contemporary political economy to ancient cultures of self-care—as an attempt to locate a genealogical precedent for the subjectivist governmental rationality he had revealed as a dominant theme of neoliberal discourse. (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Brian Rotman (Committee Co-Chair); Philip Armstrong (Committee Co-Chair); Eugene Holland (Committee Member); Kris Paulsen (Committee Member) Subjects: Communication; Comparative; Economic Theory; Philosophy; Philosophy of Science; Social Research; Social Structure; Technology; Web Studies

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2013, Comparative Studies

This work reimagines autonomy in the age of spatial enclosure. Rather than proposing a new version of the escapist running to the hills, "Escape" aligns the desire for disappearance, invisibility, and evasion with the contemporary politics of refusal, which poses no demands, resists representation, and refuses participation in already-existing politics. Such escape promises to break life out of a stifling perpetual present. The argument brings together culture, crisis, and conflict to outline the political potential of escape. It begins by reintroducing culture to theories of state power by highlighting complementary mixtures of authoritarian and liberal rule. The result is a typology of states that embody various aspects of conquest and contract: the Archaic State, the Priestly State, the Modern State, and the Social State. The argument then looks to the present, a time when the state exists in a permanent crisis provoked by global capitalist forces. Politics today is controlled by the incorporeal power of Empire and its lived reality, the Metropolis, which emerged as embodiments of this crisis and continue to further deepen exploitation and alienation through the dual power of Biopower and the Spectacle. Completing the argument, two examples are presented as crucial sites of political conflict. Negative affects and the urban guerrilla dramatize the conflicts over life and strategy that characterize daily existence in the Metropolis. Following a transdisciplinary concern for intensity, the work draws from a variety of historical, literary, cinematic, and philosophical examples that emphasize the cultural dimension of politics. The wide breadth of sources, which range from historical documents on the origins of the police, feminist literature on the politics of emotion, experimental punk film, and Deleuze and Guattari's nomadology, thus emulates the importance of force over appearance found in contemporary radical politics. Departing from many of the accounts (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Eugene W. Holland (Advisor); Philip Armstrong (Committee Member); Mathew Coleman (Committee Member) Subjects: Literature; Philosophy; Political Science

PhD, University of Cincinnati, 2011, Education, Criminal Justice, and Human Services: Educational Studies

Educational paradigm shifts call for 21st century learners to possess the knowledge, skills, abilities, values, and experiences associated with multiple forms of literacy in a participatory learning culture. Contemporary educational systems are slow to adapt. Outside of school, people have to be self-motivated and have access to resources in order to gain media production experiences. Community-based media centers join arts and culture with technology and computing while addressing issues of social justice, access equity, and public policy. These agencies function as community technology centers and can be complex organizations, existing in many forms, each with unique characteristics as well as fundamental commonalities. The goal of this study was to learn if and how community technology centers foster learning in multiple forms of literacy. Three forms of literacy were identified: technological, media, and critical. To move beyond the phenomenological approach to understanding teaching and learning practices, the objective was to develop an evaluation protocol that would capture the rich ecological context of the organization with qualitative indicators of the unique aspects of each center, as well as objective, measurable factors aspects common to all. This study was conducted in two phases. Phase One was the creation of the protocol including indicators of multiple literacies, a site selection matrix, and a data collection guide. Phase Two was piloting of the evaluation protocol to develop a foundational case to be used for future comparisons. In Phase One, indicators of multiple literacy learning were devised relevant for 21st century learners. These indicators were aligned specifically with organizational, programmatic, and production activities within a community media arts center. The site selection instrument was developed as a means to pre-screen sites for the likelihood of multiple literacy learning experiences. The data collection guide was aligned with (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Lanthan Camblin PhD (Committee Chair); Catherine V. Maltbie EdD (Committee Member); Roger Collins PhD (Committee Member); Karen Davis PhD (Committee Member); Wayne Edward Hall PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Educational Evaluation

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2011, Art Education

In an expanding technological ecology, the spaces of learning in art education require a new appraisal of the role that visual technologies serve to learners. Through intersections of actor-network theory and theories of visuality from visual culture studies, this research focuses on developing a social ontology to investigate the role that the visual technology Photoshop plays in collaborating with users within a human-technological hybrid. In a role reversal, for this research I become the instrument of research and Photoshop becomes the focus of a non-human ethnographic inquiry that utilizes an ontological framework to consider how technology performs with us and not on us. This symmetry between human and non-humans in a social ontology generates the complexity of Photoshop in a heterogeneous network formation of agencies, through more than its instrumentality, by seeing it working with me in the production of digital visual culture.

Committee: Kevin Tavin (Committee Chair); Sydney Walker (Committee Member); Jennifer Eisenhauer (Committee Member); Robert Sweeny (Committee Member) Subjects: Art Education

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2003, Art Education

Net.art is an art form that uses the Internet as a medium, and has been created specifically for viewing on the World Wide Web. For the art instructor whose curriculum includes art criticism, art history and aesthetics with studio activities, including net.art in such a way that encourages critical thinking and new perspectives on art as well as the Internet is a daunting challenge. The art instructor needs the computer skills necessary to assist students in creating net.art, as well as an understanding of the cultural, technological and theoretical underpinnings of net.art in order to demystify it for students. Net.art tends to be highly conceptual, strongly challenges commonly held notions regarding art, and often requires the viewer to have some knowledge of the history of the Internet. It also requires the viewer to understand the Internet as a cultural phenomenon rather than a technological tool. My primary empirical objective was to formulate effective pedagogical strategies for the high school art instructor incorporating net.art into their curriculum in such a way that would facilitate students' critical thinking, meaning making, and deeper understanding of the cultural aspects of the Internet. The principal research question is: how can net.art be integrated into a high-school level computer art and graphics curriculum? Over the course of the study, the principal investigator engaged in reflective practices that enabled her to devise pedagogical strategies that, in turn, facilitated a demystification process that enabled the students to overcome their initial disorientation and became increasingly able to appreciate and understand net.art. Despite the students' familiarity with the Internet and traditional art forms, however, they were not able to translate their knowledge gained from these experiences into an adequate vocabulary in which to describe and interpret net.art as an artistic form When asked to compare the web sites they are more accustomed to wi (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Vesta Daniel (Advisor) Subjects: Education, Art; Fine Arts